I have finally managed to not miss the Berlinale, Berlin’s annual film festival which takes place every February, also known as the coldest part of the oft-cold Berlin winter (the timing has always been a mystery to me, in terms of inducing people to visit the city, but maybe it makes sense in that it’s a wonderful time of the year to stay inside for hours at a time).
Anyway, like I said, I normally manage to completely miss the Berlinale, not seeing a single film through inability to get organized/work deadlines/not understanding how the system functions. But this year I have a press pass and that has made a huge difference. I have seen four films so far this weekend: Crossing The Line (a fascinating documentary about American defectors to North Korea), O Ano em Que Meus Pais Sairam de Ferias (The Year My Parents Went on Vacation), Goodbye Bafana, and Letters from Iwo Jima. I have greatly enjoyed all of them, thereby restoring my faith in the Berlinale. The first year I was in Berlin I attended and saw some of the worst films of my life — another reason I never went again.
My favourite of the four has been O Ano…, which is a Brazilian movie set in 1970, during the military dictatorship and also the World Cup (which — and I think I’m not giving away too much of the plot here — Brazil won). Having lived in Brazil, it all seemed very familiar to me — the 1950s Bauhaus-influenced architecture, the tiled kitchens, the snack bars — and made me miss the country. And it made Brazil in the 1970s look great, notwithstanding the police state — the fashions, the music, a time when there was less rampant violent crime (well, in the movies at least). Oddly enough, I feel this incredible nostalgia for this Brazil I never knew, not the 1990s Brazil which I really experienced, but the Brazil of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the heyday of Brazilian pop music and a time of great ventures such as building Brasilia in the desert. I developed an affection for Brazil through its music, and a deeper knowledge of that music is one of the main things I am grateful for having gained during my two years living there. But then listening to it makes me miss this imagined and idealised Brazil where this wonderful music was created. I don’t feel the least desire to have lived in the UK or even the US during the 1950s or 1960s, but what wouldn’t I give to have hung out in Copacabana with Tom Jobim in the glory days of bossa nova?
