Filmfest Dresden 2008
April 21st, 2008 by Erin
The Dresden Film Festival happened this past week. I was invited by the festival to present Birthday Girl, which was showing in the Panorama Quebec series curated by Etienne Desrosiers.
I Got into Dresden Friday afternoon. Picked up my festival pass and immediately sat down for some kaffee und kuchen (coffee and cake). I brought my laptop so that I could blog from the festival but found out very quickly that the WLAN wasn’t compatible with my Mac. So now I’m back in Berlin but here’s what I would have been blogging about from the fest.
The film screened Friday evening at 9pm and Sunday at 5:30pm.
The response was wonderful. I was a little nervous showing the film to a foreign speaking audience but it went over very well (most Dresdeners speak excellent English). It was also a great exercise in learning that the best jokes were the ones that didn’t require language to comprehend. Even though the audience laughed at the verbal jokes, the silent ones got the best reaction.
There’s a scene in Birthday Girl where two sisters are sitting on the living room floor at the birthday party eating sandwiches. One sister gets up to get some soda and while she is gone the other sister opens her sister’s sandwich, places the cheese from the sandwich onto the floor and then back in the bread.
This scene happened to be everyone’s favorite scene during the script writing phase. When the film was finished people would tell me it was their favorite scene in the film. I think people like it because it’s full of genuine conflict. It was nice to see that even in Germany, the scene got the most laughs. My lesson: conflict is universal. Doesn’t matter what language it’s in, as long as it’s there, people will identify with it. And if it’s a gag with conflict, people will laugh as well.