by Larry Kardish, FilmColumbia Co-Executive and Co-Artistic Director The Berlin International Film Festival, known as the Berlinale, ended on Sunday, February 23, the day Germans went to the polls. I suppose this was appropriate, as the first Berlin Film Festival, which took place in 1951 on the initiative of an American serviceman in Berlin, a city then in ruins and divided into four districts each administered by an Allied occupying force, was established to “showcase” the culture of the “free world.” In short, the Festival began as a political gesture aimed at the civilian population of Berlin, and for the next seventy-four years, through the creation of West Germany and East Germany, and the building and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, it has remained, more than less, an artistic event inflected by politics. This year, the 75th edition of…
