Focus Features

The Berlin Film Festival lights up the city.

The Berlin Film Festival turns 60 this year, with no signs of slowing down. For Focus Features, two upcoming films––Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg and Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids are All Right––are in competition, and Yuen Woo Ping’s martial arts extravaganza True Legend (which is being handled by Focus International) is in the Berlinale Special category. Of course, there are many more films than these three. The festival that now screens nearly 400 films from some 130 countries didn’t start out that way. To get a sense of what the life of a film festival looks like, we’ve picked select years to profile (with much help from Festival’s extensive historical archive.)

The poster for the first Berlinale.

In post-war, divided Berlin, with many buildings still in ruins, American occupation forces pushed to help redeem the city’s pre-war cultural status. Oscar Martay, the Film Officer of the American military administration in Germany, gathered together a committee of interested parties to put into motion the Berlin Film Festival. After a year of planning the first festival began on June 6, 1951 with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca as the opening night film. In addition to importing culture and glamour, the festival served as a “showcase for the free world.” To emphasize this ideological function, the festival made a decision early on to categorically refuse any films from the Soviet Union or any other Communist country. While East German films couldn’t be shown, East Berliners could still attend the festival, since the city was still open. The festival’s chief prize, the Golden Bear, went to Four in a Jeep, a Swiss film set in Vienna, another war-torn city, in which representatives of the four powers agreement have to deal with an illegal border crossing.

The 1955 Berlinale poster.

Now in its fourth year, the festival made a push to be recognized as a truly international event. With an amped-up publicity budget, the Berlinale framed itself as the “Olympics of Film,” an event where the nations of the world came to compete. Unfortunately since FIAPF (Federation Internationale des Associations des Producteurs des Films) hadn’t granted them international status, the festival was restricted from having a jury vote on the films. Instead from 1952 to 1955, audience members chose the Golden and Silver Bears. Perhaps as a gesture of national pride, audiences picked the first German film, Robert Siodmak’s Die Ratten, to be awarded a Golden Bear.

The buzz of the Berlinale in 1958.

After setting a distinctly Cold War stance, the Berlinale attempted to warm relations a bit by inviting the Soviet Union to submit films. The outreach, however, was rebuffed. No Soviet film would screen at the Festival until 1974. Berlin’s new mayor Willy Brandt pushed for openness, stating, “The cinematic standards of different nations… differ from one another no less than the languages and customs of different peoples. But that can’t allow us to be narrow-minded. I trust in the cosmopolitanism of this city.” Such cosmopolitanism could be seen in the range of films that won awards that year, from Ingmar Bergman’s moving drama Wild Strawberries (which won the Golden Bear) to a Silver Bear for Best Actor to Sidney Poitier for his performance in The Defiant Ones.

Jayne Mansfield in Berlin.

In August 1961, just two months after the festival, the Berlin Wall was finished, making tangible the political divide between the two Germanys. A different kind of divide was slowly separating the festival. As critics embraced the French New Wave and Italian art cinema, establishment figures bristled at these cinematic upstarts. The year before, when Jean-Luc Godard won a Silver Bear for Breathless, an editorial in Stuttgarter Zeitung had complained of a “criminal wave, of the ‘steal when you can’ variety.” Others found the 1961 Golden Bear winner Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte too formal and nihilistic. And as Godard was deconstructing the cultural concepts of femininity in A Woman is a Woman­­­––which earned the Silver Bear in 1961––the tabloid press was having a field day exploiting female stars. The appearance of actresses, like Jayne Mansfield, earned the festival the nickname “Bosom Berlinale.”  At the same time, the festival’s director, Alfred Bauer, complained that the press has put too much “emphasis on the physical allure” of the female guests.  

1965 Golden Bear winner Alphaville.

In order to accommodate the different cinematic styles being invited, the festival created new programs.  The Information Show would welcome films too controversial for competition, and the Representation Show provided individual countries the space to program their own films, especially since the political dimensions of the festival somewhat enforced of national quota. But even as the festival attempted to house its controversies, the competition had no shortage of debate. Roman Polanski’s Repulsion polarized audiences, and Jean-Luc Godard’s sci-fi noir Alphaville won the Golden Bear only after much discussion about its dark vision of the future.

From Rosa von Praunheim's It is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives.

On the brink of its 20 anniversary, the Berlin Festival nearly imploded. In 1970, the inclusion of Michael Verhoeven’s political drama o.k turned the Jury inside out. Even though the tough drama about a woman raped and murdered by a group of soldiers took place in Europe, critics understood it alluded to a real life case in Vietnam. The jury, lead by American director George Stevens, attempted to “neutralize” the film by asking the selection committee to reconsider it. As a result, the jury was dismissed, the festival came to a halt and no awards were presented. Berlin attempted to heal this rift in 1971 by adding the International Forum for New Cinema (or what would become known as the Forum). Originally conceived as a counter festival, Berlin absorbed it, giving it the decree to “publicize and support progressive and avant-garde developments in film from around the world.” In addition to political and formally challenging work, the Forum took on presenting gay work with its inclusion of Rosa von Praunheim’s It is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives. The competition, on the other hand, awarded the Golden Bear to the WW II Italian drama The Garden of the Finzi Contini.

Canadian comedy The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz.

The breakthrough in 1974 was the first Soviet film to be screen at the festival. After years of first rejections, then invitations, Rodion Nakhapetov’s comic romance With You and Without You was programmed at the festival. Interestingly, the year the Soviets appeared, no big name US film played in competition. In fact, the Golden Bear went to a Canadian comedy, The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz.

Berlin takes its hat off to the ’78 festival.

In 1977, film journalist Wolf Donner was picked to head the festival after the end of Alfred Bauer’s long reign. And with new management came many changes that showed up the next year. In 1978, the festival was moved up to February (rather than June), putting it in contrast rather than in competition with Cannes (which occurs in the spring). Also to further solidify the local spirit, Donner initiated a program of “German Films” which were to showcase local talent. Along with spotlighting German cinema, Donner beefed up Berlin’s Film Market, providing a viable place to sell German as well as films from around the world. Support of national cinemas seemed to be everywhere. The jury that year, lead by the novelist Patricia Highsmith, awarded the Golden Bear not to a specific film, but to the Spanish films present that year.

A scene from The Deer Hunter.

In his third (and last) year, director Wolf Donner, who’d done much to promote harmony between the programs and filmmakers, hit an international crisis. The admission of Michael Cimino’s critical acclaimed Vietnam War drama The Deer Hunter became the target for communist countries. The Soviet Union had singled it out as an insult to the Vietnamese specifically, and communism in general. Other socialist states joined the protest to support  “the heroic people of Vietnam.” The selection committee rebuffed demands that the film be withdrawn, stating publicly “Independently of how we view the content and aesthetics of the film, we see it as challenging us to a debate  – a debate an international festival like ours cannot afford to forego.” As such, socialist countries withdrew en masse from the festival, a factor that interesting hit the Kinderfilmfest (the Children’s Film Festival) the hardest, since much of work that year came from Eastern Europe. Bruised but not beaten, the festival continued, handing out awards with a large number (the Golden Bear, the Silver for actress and the Silver outstanding achievement) going to German films. Even before the Festival began, Donner had resigned, and former director of Locarno, Moritz de Hadeln, took over as the Executive Director, a position he would hold till 2001.

Moritz de Hadeln, R.W.Fassbinder, actress Rosel Zech, James Stewart.

The festival made assertive steps to address the needs of German filmmakers, who for the last few years felt they had been overlooked.  More German films were selected and the New German Films program got its own budget and a prominent place in the burgeoning European Film Market. In addition, one of Germany’s most vibrant filmmaker, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, was recognized when his drama Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss took the Golden Bear. But even as Germany was coming together, another film highlighted the sharp divides. After the selection committee rejected Delbert Mann’s Night Crossing, a Disney film based on a true story of two families escaping East Germany via a hot air balloon, angered right wing pundits accused the festival, and especially Berlinale director Moritz de Hadeln, of bowing to the East German pressure. In response, the Axel-Springer publishing house hosted a special public screening of Night Crossing at the same time as the festival’s opening night ceremony. As for the rest of the world, the festival was becoming a truly international, especially with the attention paid to Asian film in the Forum.

Programmer Manfred Salzgeber and Wieland Speck start the Teddy Award.

The Festival may have been set up as a beacon of Western (i.e. Capitalist) values in the face of the Soviet Union and its satellites. But by 1987, the Berlinale had not only turned around, but had become one of the major showcases for Soviet cinema in the world. Partially this came from the festival’s new openness, but importantly the influx of work from the East was made possible by the slackening of control of film and culture by Gorbachev. Work that had been forbidden for export was now touring the world. Indeed Gleb Panfilov’s Tema, a film that was made in 1979, won the Golden Bear this year. In the same year, the festival’s attention to lesbian and gay work, especially in the Panorama section, was made tangible with the presentation of the Teddy Award, a festival prize bestowed upon the best GLBT work. In 1987, the Teddy went to Pedro Almodóvar’s The Law of Desire (starring an previously unheard of actor called Antonio Banderas).

Berlin wall comes down.

Just months before the 1990 Berlin Film Festival, something happened that reshaped the identity, not just of the festival, but of the country as well. East Germany authorized free movement between East and West Berlin, thus, in effect, taking down the Berlin Wall. As a testament to the new Berlin, the festival made arrangements for films to be screened in both East and West Berlin. That year, few films captured the public’s attention as much as what was happening in the city. Interestingly, the winning film that year, Costa-Gavras’ The Music Box, a thriller about a Nazi war criminal hiding out in Chicago, brought back another aspect of German history.

Julia Roberts at the festival.

After years of debate over the proper composition of the festival, the 1996 line up seemed to please most critics. The opening night film, Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, not only set the tone, but went on to win the Golden Bear. In addition, the festival was filled with A-list talent, like Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis, to be splashed on the tabloid’s front pages. Cineastes acknowledged the presence of strong independent work from around the world, be it the American Todd Soldonz’ Welcome to the Doll House,  Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels from China, or Alejandro Amenábar’s Tesis from Spain. In addition, the festival started looking forward to the possibility of building a permanent home in the once East-Berlin area of Potsdamer Platz.

The festival’s new home at the Potsdamer Platz.

On the occasion of its 50th year, the festival gave itself a magnificent present – a new home on Potsdamer Platz. In addition to the theaters that would screen most of the festivals films, the area housed the European Film Market, the Berlin Film Museum, and other institutions of Berlin’s cinema world. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia won the Golden Bear, but it was one of the few stand-out films. Indeed the festival’s new digs was unfortunately not celebrated with remarkable films. As Katja Nicodemus observed in Die Tageszeitung, “What was missing in the Competition were films with the class of Almodóvar, Loach, Tarantino or the Dogma school, which could make up for the emptiness of the mainstream with their world view, their concerns, their commitment.”

Fatih Akin with his Golden Bear.

The big surprise in 2004 was not that a German film won the Golden Bear, but that the filmmaker was Turkish. Fatih Akin’s much praised Head-On, about an unruly romance in Berlin, garnered praise and political pondering. The newspaper Die Welt asked, “We’re somebody again – but the question arises, who ‘we’ actually are.” Indeed concepts of national cinema were thrown into more confusion with the push for international financing at the Berlinale Co-Production Market.  Other films also echoed this deconstruction of national identity. The Silver Bear-winning film Lost Embrace was directed by Daniel Burman, who holds both Polish and Argentine citizenship. And the Columbian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno won a Silver Bear for her performance in the American independent film Maria Full of Grace.

The European film market.

At the onset of the 2006 Berlinale, director Dieter Kosslick suggested this festival would be “as political, cruel and uncomfortable as the situation in the world right now.”  And while some would have preferred not to notice the war in Iraq, many of the films focused on international political events–– Michael Winterbottom’s docudrama The Road to Guantanamo Bay, Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana, and the Balkan after-war drama Jasmila Zbanic’s Grbavica (which went on to win the Golden Bear). The year also marked the move of the European Film Market to the grand Martin-Gropius-Bau, not far from Potsdamer Platz. The move, among other things, signaled the emergence of Berlin as an international force, but this time on the economic front. Berlin’s role internationally was signaled in another way in 2006. The Teddy Award, Berlin’s prize for Gay and Lesbian work, turned 20 with a retrospective of twenty winners through the years.