Berlin Film Festival 2012

Today was the last day of the Berlin International Film Festival, which is also known as the Berlinale. 

2012 Berlinale Poster

The festival began in 1951, only six years after World War II ended, in an attempt to rejuvenate Germany's cultural scene.  Rebecca, starring Joan Fontaine and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, opened the festival in 1951.  For more information on the beginnings of the Berlinale look here.

                                                   1951 Berlinale Poster                         

                        

Joan Fontaine

Rebecca Film Poster

Back to 2012's festival and for me, the best outfit was Diane Kruger in a glamorous Giambattista Valli Couture 2012 gown pictured below.  Which outfits stood out for the right or wrong reasons at the festival for you? 

Diane Kruger in Giambattisa Valli

Other famous film festivals include Cannes, Venice and Edinburgh.  The Cannes Film Festival states "it has remained faithful to its founding purpose: to draw attention to and raise the profile of films with the aim of contributing towards the development of cinema, boosting the film industry worldwide and celebrating cinema at an international level."  However, Boorstin (1987) describes celebrities as "human pseudo-events" (p.45) who are "known for [their] well-knownness" (p.57).  He explains that pseudo is defined as false or intending to deceive (p.9) and argues that film stars are "figments of the media" whose "chief claim to fame is their fame itself that they are not known for their achievements.  They are notorious for their notoriety" (p.60).  Film stars have then generated other pseudo-events such as the premieres and these festivals.  These are not real life news events worthy of our attention, he argues, but trivial and only spawned in order to create news and for these human pseudo events to be seen.