Interviews

Silver Bear - Jury Grand Prize for Beijing Bicycle
Wang Xiaoshuai is a stubborn man. Despite bans on his first 3 films The Days, Frozen and So Close to Paradise, he has been steadfast in his efforts to make films, whether underground or legal. "Since So Close to Paradise, I've become legal," he reveals. But don't think it's easy for this rebellious filmmaker -- as he explains to Robin Gatto.

From Baking to Filmmaking: Lin Cheng-sheng

Silver Bear to the Best Director for Betelnut Beauty
Lin Cheng-sheng, was a baker for 12 years before making the switch to directing in 1993. All of his four films have been screened at major international film festivals, and Betelnut Beauty is his second entry into the Berlin competition after Sweet Degeneration (1998).

An "Intimate" Interview with Marianne Faithfull

She replied courteously to questions, enthused about the film -- Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy -- which she had by then seen twice. It is hard not to notice that a woman who more or less redefined sexuality in the 60s (but is now herself in her 50s) didn't take any part at all in the bits of Intimacy everyone talks about: the bonking.

The organizers of the Berlinale came to Ulrich and Erika Gregor when they wanted to create a new section of the Berlinale. Ulrich explains: "We already ran a film society, Friends of the German Film Archives, which was founded in 1963. So the Berlinale reps came to us and said: 'Are you willing to organize, with complete freedom of choice, a section of your own which will be part of the Berlin Film Festival?' They were willing to give us a budget and the leeway to show the films we wanted to show. And we thought this was a very interesting offer." And thus was born the International Forum of Young Cinema.

Nick Roddick Interviews Roger Donaldson

Roger Donaldson is in Berlin with Thirteen Days which, for all the very public events with which it deals (the Cuban missile crisis), he reckons to be his most personal movie since Smash Palace. "This is probably the movie that's the closest to my own heart, in terms of what I want to say as a filmmaker," he declares. "Obviously, I'd like my movies to be taken seriously, to affect how people think. And you're not going to get that out of a movie like Species. "There are lot of elements in Thirteen Days which reflect my own sort of feelings about the Vietnam War -- a lot of resonance in this movie for me, personally.

"I wanted to make a film about the meeting between Africa and black America but, in so doing, I wanted to reverse the scheme of Roots: I wanted it to be about an African coming to America and discovering the gulf which divides the two cultures." In competition at the Berlinale, Little Senegal tells the story of Alloune, a 65-year-old widower who works as a tour guide at the Museum of Slavery in Senegal, and who fulfills a lifelong ambition by heading for North America to try and trace the route taken by his ancestors into slavery in the New World.

Jean-Jacques Beineix, the man who changed the face of French cinema with Diva and Betty Blue is certainly less ebullient than he was last time Nick Roddick met him, about five years ago, at a symposium in Dublin. Roddick asked him (among other things) why he had decided to bring out a director's cut of Betty Blue.

"Very simple," said Beineix in his fluent but distinctly idiosyncratic English. "More sex, more violence, and more money for me." The French director was in Berlin to present Mortel transfert, his first feature in nine years.

Nick Roddick Interviews JSA Director Park Chan-Wook

My conversation with Park Chan-Wook, director of Joint Security Area, takes place over the telephone, through an interpreter -- the efficient and courteous Miss Catherine Park of CJ Entertainment. It is nearing bedtime in Seoul, but before lunch for me in Berlin. Despite the remoteness, however, there is a moment, 15 minutes into the conversation so striking it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Wit didn't make Mike Nichols think about his own mortality, he tells Nick Roddick, because he thinks about it all the time anyway. "This is a very interesting woman who wrote the play," Nichols is saying. Then he begins rummaging in his jacket pocket in the way that only smokers do. "She worked for three years in a cancer research centre," he says, the cigarette now in his mouth. "And then" - a pause, a jet of flame from his lighter, a deeply satisfied inhalation - "she wrote the play."

Until Nick Roddick talked to Riju Go at the Berlin Film Festival, Nick thought he was the last surviving Boris Vian fan. He didn't find out the easy way, though. Roddick began by asking Riju where he got the idea for his new film, Chloe. It's not, after all, an everyday plotline: a man who discovers that the girl with whom he is helplessly in love is dying because a lily has taken root in her lung …

Very much a member of the 'new generation' of Argentine artists - she was born in 1966, but looks five or ten years younger -- Martel is in Berlin with her debut feature, La Ciénaga (The Swamp), the first Argentinean film to screen in competition in Berlin in 13 years. I know this because Martel's producer, Lita Stantic, joins us at this moment to point it out.

"I'm sort of surprised I'm making so many crime films," mused Steven Soderbergh during his Berlinale press conference. "I grew up in suburbia, my father was a college professor, I've never been exposed to any sort of crime other than film!" he added. From Kafka's crazy twin killers to Erin Brockovich's shady corporate dealings, Soderbergh has been one of the most challenging explorers of the criminal world, and he brings this to most realistic heights (or rather, depths) in Traffic.

Jean Jacques Annaud has one of the most distinguished film careers in history -- having won both Cesar Awards and an Oscar -- in a film career that crosses from French to English. In Berlin to present his latest work, the opening film Enemy at the Gates, Annaud spent time with the press to discuss filmmaking, Los Angeles, Berlin, and having the Final Cut.

It's an intriguing thought that there is, on the one hand, no English word for "Schadenfreude" -- literally, a delight in the suffering of others -- and, on the other, no German word for 'happy end'. Judging by the experience of the past couple of days, Bill Mechanic bridges the gap. There has been a happy end to what might otherwise have been the Schadenfreude some could have taken in the fact that even the President of the Jury's luggage can get lost between Los Angeles and Berlin. Which it did (hee hee), but not for long (hooray).

Michael Winterbottom's keenly anticipated gold rush/Mayor of Casterbridge drama, The Claim, screens in the competition section at this year's Berlin Film Festival. Stephen Applebaum caught up with the workaholic Brit director who is already well underway on his next offering, 24 Hour Party People. Set at the heart of the late 80's and early 90's music revolution and portraying the bands and lives of the infamous Factory Records -- this should be a huge film in the UK.

This exclusive interview with Jan Harlan, Stanley Kubrick's brother in law and executive producer of his films (from Barry Lyndon to Eyes Wide Shut) was held in Paris shortly before the French release of Eyes Wide Shut in september 1999. Harlan's latest records include the executive production of A.I., which Spielberg resumed from Kubrick, and a three part documentary on Kubrick entitled Stanley Kubrick - A Life in Pictures including never before seen footage of Kubrick's family life and work, with the narration by Tom Cruise. Jan Harlan's documentary will be world-premiered at Berlin 2001.