PRESIDENT'S REMARKS
On the occasion of the 48th International Film Festival, German President Roman Herzog greeted members of the film industry, among them Berlinale honorary guest Curt Siodmak, at a reception in the presidential residence Bellevue Castle. These are excerpts from his speech:

"This year's Film Festival has evoked much interest. It shows once again how far cinematography has advanced from the days when 'pictures learned how to run' to the present, highly developed artform which holds millions of people all over the world in its spell. About 500 films will be shown, 28 features and 10 shorts have been entered for the competition... You know best of all the importance of the Berlin Festival. It is one of the three big ones alongside Cannes and Venice. The Beinale, being a world film exhibition and medium of contact for people and pictorial language, is one of Germany's most outstanding events and one which has a huge impact on the public. All of you have helped make it that way. You can be proud of this achievement and I am grateful to you."

"By their nature, films have always been international. America has been particularly successful in this respect. Not so the European filmmaking countries, in spite of their great traditions. They ought therefore to seize opportunities for co-operation in order to make better use of their potential and increase their impact. If films are to remain what they are then they will have to retain their international character. And that is not only a question of crossing frontiers. It also means having films from all cultures."

"In 1999 the German Parliament and Government are moving from Bonn to Berlin... The International Film Festival is also going to move, though only a few kilometres. In the year 2000 it is to be helat Potsdamer Platz. So, apart from being physically in the centre of Berlin, it will also be more of a focal point, and not only in Berlin itself."

SHOWING TODAY
Dubbed the 'Elizabeth Taylor of China', Joan Chen was a star in her native China by the time she was a teenager. She left China to study filmmaking in the US in 1981, was "discovered" by Dino De Laurentiis in the Lorimar car park, and has gone on to appear in countless US feature films, everything from Bertolucci's The Last Emperor to Oliver Stone's Heaven And Earth. She assumed cult status with her role as Josie Packard in David Lynch's Twin Peaks.

Xiu Xiu (screening today in competition) marks her directorial debut. Set during the Chinese cultural revolution, it tells of the interracial romance between a teenage girl and a Tibetan herder.
Also screening today in competition, Rowan Woods' searing psycho-drama, The Boys, which stars David Wenham (already tipped as "the next Russell Crowe" and Toni Collette (shortly to be seen in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine).

The third competition film is Il testimone dello sposo, the 28th film from the prolific Italian filmmaker, Pupi Avati. Set in a small Northern Italian village at the turn of the century, this is a romantic of a reluctant bride and the best man at her wedding. Spanish actress Ines Sastre stars. GM

UPDATE
* The additional PANORAMA entry Pearls & Swine by Icelandic  comedian/director Oskar Jonasson (who will attend the screening with his live act) will be shown at the International today at 14.00. Further screenings: 18.30 on 21st February at the Filmpalast, and 18.30 on the 22nd at the Filmpalast.
* The second part of the Eisenstein symposium has been postponed and will be held today, 12.00, at the Akademie der Kuenste, Hanseatenweg 10. Among oters, Naum Klejman from Moskau, Alexander Kluge and Ulrich Gregor will attend.
* There will be an additional screening of Panorama entry Milice, Film noir today, 10.30, at the Filmpalast (French with German subtitles). Also the Panorama Retrospektive featuring Jack Smith classics will be repeated today, 23.30, at the Filmpalast.
* Italiens Vizepraesident und Kulturminister Walter Veltroni wird heute abend um 20 Uhr bei der Vorstellung des Wettbewerbsbeitrages Il testimone dello sposo  anwesend sein.

IN TOWN
Alfonso Cuaron, Slawomir Idziak, Prof. Dr. Alexander Kluge, Stewart Till, Margarethe von Trotta, Dana Vavrova, Walter Veltroni, Angel Amigo, Pupi Avati, Oskar Jonasson...
 

PANORAMA SHORT FILM WINNERS
To give the young filmmakers their due attention, Panorama short film prize winners were announced at the section's annual festival reception on Tuesday. Elizabeth Schub's Cuba 15, and Martin Davies and Andy Brown's Keep in  Dry Place and Away from Children shared the Panorama Award of the New York Film Academy for best short film, and Michael Brynntrup won a scholarship to the aforementioned institution for his Tabu V (Things We Can't Talk About). Honorable mentions went to Carsten Flebeier's Road Block and Genevieve Anderson's Boxed. OL

BOX OFFICE WEEKEND German pics Der Campus and Comedian Harmonists held their own at the German box office this weekend, making DM1.35 million and DM730,600 (eighth week) in sixth and seventh spots respectively. Only one new pic, As Good as it Gets, made it into the top ten tally this weekend, landing in second place and earning over DM3 million from 418 prints.
James Cameron's Titanic is proving unsinkable, holding on to rank one for the sixth week running and making a nice DM11.4 million over the weekend. Til Schweiger starrer Bastard came in19th on just 40 copies. Starship Troopers, meanwhile, crossed the 1 million visitors benchmark in its third week. LF

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FILMMAKER With over 300 films shown in the market, it can easy to miss out on some good things. The market screening of Deux amis et la pluie, a short film by the Berlin-based director Ulrich Rogalla and produced by a small Berlin-Mitte company, corn filmproduktion, is another victim of the "so many films, so little time" phenomenon. But there's always a second chance in life - the film, based on Paul Bowles' short story, transplanted to Berlin, but featuring Moroccan actors, will be shown tonight at 12:45 am (after midnight) the Hackesche Hoefe Cinema at Hackescher Markt. A post-screening party takes place near the cinema at "Giesserei-Sprachraum", Linienstrasse 144. NG

WHAT THE PRESS ARE SAYING

"I'm from the 'Bild Zeitung', I have to write about it!"
(Desperate reporter who didn't get into Jackie Brown  in: taz)

Japanese films in general seem to be the kind that critics like to call 'poetic'. That's just a code for film journalists meaning that they fell asleep, which is inevitable if one takes one's job seriously. Later that evening in the bar, they can brag about all the films they saw. Provided they ran into someone. Which is difficult, if one takes one's job seriously.
(taz)

Moving the press centre from the House of World Cultures back to the Zoo area downtown also has a metaphorical dimension. Considering the circus surrounding the Berlinale, it has less to do with world culture and more with a zoo. And that doesn't just describe the scenery in front of the movie palace, where the masses gather every evening behind the barricades to to grab a smile for a photo and an autograph from the stars.
(Frankfurter Rundschau)

About Jackie Brown:
We can imagine that the director Tarantino looked in the mirror one day and a cult figure who seemed very alien to him looked back. The man, who filled student pads around the world with soundtracks and posters, gave film students dumb ideas and talked the ear off of journalists of every nationality, no longer wanted be this man. And thus it became clear that the next film would have to be different, not something to be broken up into party conversation snippets and favorite scenes.
(Sueddeutsche Zeitung)

About Sweet Degeneration:
That the characters dift into the loneliness of their own movie and past each other and connections are made with technical means or via a common urban loneliness is what is contemporary and typically Asian about this competition film.
(Berliner Zeitung)

About I Want You:
This film is pure sensuality, somewhere between Atom Egoyan's Exotica and Yolande Zauberman's Clubbed To Death - not as pleasurably puzzle-like as Exotica, not as minimalistic as Clubbed To Death. More like a videoclip of insanity, which expresses the slow motion of our perception as film.
(Der Tagesspiegel)