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The opening night of the 20th Interfilm International Film Festival Berlin (2-7 November 2004), the second oldest film festival on the Spree, in the House of World Cultures was one of those spectacular successes festival directors can only dream about. The auditorium, filled to the brim, was in high spirits. So, too, festival host Adrian Kennedy, who, together with Interfilm director Heinz Hermanns, underscored how his dedicated festival team has once again accomplished so much out of so little. Indeed, the films programmed as previews on this opening night whetted the appetite for more.

Take, for example, the French animation film, Blandine Lecointe’s Bus Stop. In this hilarious tale a fat elk squats down on a bench at a bus stop. Along comes a little guy, who finds that he can rest just half of his behind on the bench. As it happens, the pair ends up missing the bus ­ only to find that the bench is now occupied by a porcupine! Another audience howler was Horst Da Luz’s Water on Mars (Germany), an animated short running a full 35 seconds! We see two astronauts landing on Mars. They stab their flag into the ice-crust on the planet. It cracks ... whoosh ... goodbye astronauts. In another highly amusing short, Jordan Feldman’s Noodles (France), a diner in a restaurant sets off a chain-reaction while eating noodles ­ soon everybody is involved in this deftly orchestrated actors’ ploy!

For the 20th anniversary Heinz Hermanns programmed 400 films from 43 countries. Besides the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Tiergarten, the venues included Filmkunsthaus Babylon, Hackesche Höfe Kino, Acud, Instituto Cervantes, Kaffee Burger, the Volksbühne, and Taucher/Backfabrik. Some 30 sponsors and partners backed the festivities. The Eject Party in the Festival Club Roter Salon programmed a »Long Night of Bizarre Films for the 21st Century.« In the »Micromovies« section ­ sponsored by Siemens Mobile ­ Indian director Janantik Skukla journeyed to Berlin to present in a competition his homemade Exist-Exit shot with a megapixel camera on a Siemens »handy« mobile. Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg contributed 80,000 Euros in prize purses. Another 25,000 Euros came from the European Union Subsidy Fund. During the festival the German Short Film Prize was awarded to Tom Tykwer’s True, an eleven-minute re-run of a daily routine.

For the closing night in Filmkunsthaus Babylon, Interfilm welcomed another packed house of »shortie« enthusiasts. Some of the winners, toasted with champagne and flowers before rolling TV cameras and hand-held digital gimmicks, could now see their entries for the first time on a large screen before an oversized public. Even a TV crew from Kosovo was on hand to interview the winners. Among a handful of prizes, Thomas Windrich’s Zur Zeit verstorben (Dead, at the Moment) was awarded Best German Short Feature Film. On a sunny afternoon a forgetful old gentleman (Michael Gwisdek) pays a comical visit to a pair of old cronies on a park bench before departing this world in a bus transporting him into the hereafter. The Berlin Short Film Prize was given to Bill Morrison’s Light Is Calling (USA), an eight minute experimental musical clip.

While penning this festival report, the news broke that the Filmkunsthaus Babylon is facing a subsidy crunch that may endanger its visionary vitality. The Babylon, next to Arsenal-Kino and Zeughaus-Kino, is a key Berlin cinema dedicated solely to the seventh art, organizing tributes and retrospectives and hosting events like the Interfilm festival. Let’s sincerely hope that we will not lose this splendid venue in the restored Poelzig-Bau next to the Volksbühne.

Dorothea Holloway