FLUTER

Tina Hassania, 27, from Ottowa, Canada, Michal Oleszczyk, 29, from Krakow, Poland, Makbul Mubarak, 21,one of more than 200 blog-authors from Tolitoli, Indonesia, Katja Čičigoj, 24, from Koper in Slovenia, Janaina Navarro, 22, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, Guido Pellegrini, 24, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Anders Wotzke, 22, from Adelaide, an award-winning member of the Australian Film Critics Association and Aderinsola Ajao, 26, from Lagos, Nigeria, who knows more than everything about Nollywood, are invited to stay in Berlin and write about the filmscreenings at the Berlinale.

Now we're glad to present them all with their attitude to be a film critic - in quite different ways. Take a look at our extracts; the articles will be published daily from Feb 11, 2012 on the Talent Press website, www.talentpress.org, which features articles by current participants and alumni throughout the years, as well as on the Goethe-Institut, the FIPRESCI websites and fluter.de, the magazine published by The Federal Agency for Civic Education. "Best of Talent Press", a print publication comprising a selection of articles written during the Campus week, will be released on the last Campus day, on Thursday, Feb 16.      

Makbul Mubarak, 21

Makbul Mubarak: Cinema of My Surroundings

Makbul Mubarak pays his main attention to the "cinema of my surroundings. Indonesia is a country with endless generations of filmmakers. But on the other hand, we have almost no regeneration of film critics. There are three notable causes. First, when a film critic has gained some acclaim, they turn to filmmaking. Second, there wasn't a Film Studies major in any university in Indonesia for a very long time. Binus University just opened one several years ago, and it is the only one. Third, film criticism is not a financially promising job.

I wasn't aware of those calamities when I started writing about films on my tiny blog which turned out to have thousands of readers. My sole motivation was that "a massive tradition of filmmaking is logically blind without a balanced response of film appreciations." There are many potential films made in Indonesia, but there is no one there to write about them and to later capture and place them into some frame in our history. This is where I wish I could do my task.

The majority of Indonesian films nowadays are repealed from the social story that they speak about yet serve just as amusement for the audiences before they go back to their hard life. This is where my wish lies, I wish to keep spreading thoughts to people that Indonesian films are actually a binocular to observe their own reality, not a dark wall that stands between them and their reality.

Tina Hassannia, 27

Tina Hassania: Talents right under our Noses

Tina Hassania, a Canadian critic with a film studies background, mentioned the canadian cinema as a "talent right under our noses", but also she sees "that Canada has an inferiority complex. This often makes us lose sight of our own significance in international cinema and film history." Sure, Canadian cinema means perhaps at first the films of David Cronenberg, so Tina Hassania, "I'd be reluctant to call even Cronenberg a household name. There is a tremendous lack of awareness among Canadians that a national cinema even exists here, or what it looks like. Our video rental stores stock our own films in the foreign film section."

And she refers, that there are the francophone-canadians, who "will watch Quebecois films because it's an act of cultural preservation. Anglophone-Canadians, on the other hand, suffer from cultural cringe. The only province where this is a non-issue is Quebec, which has its own respective and rich history. Canadian films never receive ample distribution and exhibition. Canadians equate "cinema" with "Hollywood" because that is the diet force-fed to us. The Canadian government has a track record of refusing cultural protection measures that would solve this problem. Our close relationship with Hollywood has made defining a film "Canadian" difficult to do, because so many American films are shot in Canada or with Canadian production crew. We've also remained quite ambivalent about defining Canadian identity, to the point that our ambivalence has actually become a cultural emblem. We’re not quite sure what would make a film "Canadian" (those are indeed, scare quotes, because conversations about national identity regularly raise the hairs on the back of our spines)."

I find it difficult to discuss cinema with many Canadians that travels outside the well-known "movie lore" of Hollywood. But the optimist in me also sees an opportunity for education. Sure, there are information gaps. That should give Canadian film critics a sense of purpose then, to inform our countrymen of exciting new foreign films – even when they're from our own backyard.

Michal Oleszczyk, 29

The Pizza Dreams - Michal Oleszczyk

Seemingly passive, based on an endless cycle of watching and reflecting upon what one has just seen, film criticism seems a supremely enviable profession. However, watching movies all the time can be as much of a drudgery as anything – unless it's fueled by some sort of inspiration that would turn it into a quest of self-discovery. The language we use to describe movies – to pin them down, or at least to render an impression they leave us with – inevitably testifies to who we are and how we respond to the world around us. If we're attuned enough to how our own language shifts over the years, film criticism can become a true platform of self-knowledge.

By engaging with movies, we engage with things as abstract as societies and cultures, but also as concrete as actor's bodies or physical objects shown upon the screen. Having grown up in communist Poland, I can still remember vivid impressions made on me by Hollywood films – literally everything in them seemed exciting and colorful. For me, the biggest special effect in Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters II wasn't the walking Statue of Liberty at all, but a plain delivery-pizza box seen in one of the scenes. How I dreamed of a pizza like that; how I mythologized the world in which pizza like that even existed …

Polish cinema of the last twenty years has been trying to come to terms with the 50-year period of communist enslavement, and so far has achieved only partial success. As we still wait for great Polish movies that would help us understand our collective identity, the world of Polish film criticism is divided by a sharp generational split: the older critics rely almost entirely on print outlets, whereas the young cinephiles eagerly embrace social networking as means of making film criticism a communal experience.

We are witnessing a time of enormous change in film criticism – and I firmly believe it is one for the better. The mere fact that I can discuss new movies via Facebook or Twitter with my friends from around the world is incredibly enriching. The whole world seems to have become one huge round-table, capable of seating thousands of people passionate about cinema. It's strangely comforting for me to think that our conversation goes on every hour of every day and night, bringing us all together and inviting to shape the world in new, exciting ways.

Katja Cicigoj, 24

Katja Čičigoj keeps waiting for a public debate

She has inhaled her Gilles-Deleuze-Sessions, especially "To Have Done With Judgement". But she thinks very basically about the position of a film critic today: "Even though knowledge of film history and theory certainly enables one to consider more contextual factors when analyzing a film-text, there can be no unequivocal set of norms that would enable us to 'objectively' assess a film's value."

Why then engage in film criticism at all? In a country like Slovenia (but as far as I know this is the tendency elsewhere in Europe as well), where film (and other) critics are by and large precarious workers that have to entertain several other occupations to make ends meet, this is not exactly a prospect for a nice and easy career, certainly not for the young generation. Why perseverating then, if not with the belief of separating what is good from what is bad?

Katja Čičigoj thinks, that "Film criticism might be grasped also as an opportunity for public analyses of cultural objects that we cherish, an opportunity to produce knowledge about them, not to discern the truth in the form of a value judgement, as well as an opportunity to raise certain issues we deem important, to encourage a public debate. Film criticism might be used to turn the attention of the public towards works that might otherwise go unnoticed or to raise issues that are generally overlooked. This might be of some help especially to young filmmakers making their way towards film audiences.

After long periods or waves of difficulties in film production in Slovenia due to an obscure system of state financing (the main financial source for Slovene filmmakers) and political games within it, which made it very hard for filmmakers to get to do their first, and made it even harder to do their second feature, they are slowly finding their way out, also by resorting to low budget or independent productions.

Guido Pellegrini, 24

Guido Pellegrini and his fellow porteños from Buenos Aires

"Film critics and bloggers now have an international audience, and their interactions are equally cosmopolitan. Those who have grown up online can sometimes feel like they have a border-less cinephilia. From an isolated house in Los Angeles, I honed my film love with an Englishman living in Italy, a French-Canadian who mixed brilliant insights with hilarious typos, a New Zealander who had apparently seen every film in existence, a Portuguese restaurateur who would write every other word in italics, and an Australian who preferred men but would make an exception for Audrey Hepburn."

Janaína Navarro, 22

Janaina Navarro: maybe a flâneur, but not a dilettante

Janaina Navarro is a young Visual Arts student, and with her work as a critic she tries "to articulate realms of knowledge seen as diverse. I believe in an interdisciplinarity of Arts, and I see in cinema the possibility of putting them together, creating new significations and significances." The brazilian situation for filmmakers is not hopeless: "However, I see the situation of Brazilian cinema with optimism. The incentive laws (based on tax deduction), are contributing with our cinematographic production – which had been suffering with a monetary shortage, that may had delayed it. Nowadays directors can look for this aid, which enables the process of making a movie. That, further then bringing us some young and new filmmakers, gives the possibility of great directors to develop their works and improve it with each new film. The fact that these filmmakers are able to regularly make new movies is, without a doubt, a very positive aspect of Brazilian cinema today."

Anders Wotzke, 22

Anders Wotzke and his mother's new hairdo

He can't leave anything without comment, not even the new look of his mother. That's how he became a filmjournalist: "At first, I teased my newfound appetite for film analysis as a writer for The University of Adelaide's student magazine On Dit, each trip to the cinema offering welcome respite from my double degree in Media and International Studies. Next, I took to the internet where I began to develop my critical voice as an editor, contributor and video presenter for the website Cut Print Review, using humour as a means to lure the movie-going masses into thinking critically about film. Since then, I've been accepted into the Online Film Critics Society and have become an award-winning member of the Australian Film Critics Association, granting me the credence necessary to turn my passion into a career.

Admittedly, film journalism is hardly the most sensible career path to undertake in Australia, a place where local critics tend to be the first shown the door during any mass media restructuring, and local filmmakers tend to seek out international approval before daring to take on the Hollywood-obsessed market back home."

Aderinsola Ajao, 26

Aderinsola Ajao: Critics Anonymous

Aderinsola Ajao is an expert not only in Nigerian cinema and she mentions the role of the film critic quite critically: "In the forever-expanding world of international cinema, there is hardly a bad time or place to be a film critic. Being one means I stay informed, enjoy myself (or not), influence the audience's viewing decision sometimes (and perhaps, earn a living.) Despite my critic's instinct to hunt for the bad and the ugly, I myself have a few favourites. Alas, I remain generally undecided about the greatest movie ever made.

Fotos: ©privat

The 10th Berlinale Talent Campus will take place from February 11 – 16, 2012.