Berlinale

We've enjoyed the Berlin Film Festival, also known as the Berlinale. We didn't really get to the big name films, or even get to see the restored big screen epics like West Side Story and Ben Hur. But it's still been pretty interesting to see it going on and to be a part of it in some small way.

Each of us grownups has taken our class to see a set of short films, which is a fun thing to do with a group of students. My class went to see 6 short films, all of which were about young people, with topics ranging from bullies blowing things up to a boy disappearing in a cave opening onto the ocean (did he die? Don't know!) to the finale which involved a trio of girls taking turns pretending to do something they shouldn't in a closet with a spoon. Eewwww....but suffice it to say that this one too was about bullying and in the end the bullied girl spectacularly turned the tables on her tormentors. A little bit of the diner scene from When Harry Met Sally. The kids were really talking about that one! We'll have to hope for not too many parent emails about this trip!

Today we saw an interesting film from the Czech Republic, called Who's Afraid of the Wolf? It was billed as a romance you can take the kids to, but I didn't think it was so kid-friendly. A little girl sees her parents' relationship breaking up after the sudden arrival of her biological father (which she doesn't know anything about) and interprets her mother's weirdness as evidence that she's really an alien. A great reminder of the dangers of making off-hand comments to kids without thinking through how they might interpret it. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I weren't worried about what the kids were thinking.