Having experienced my first two festivals as a member of the press, I feel compelled to compare them, noting the areas where one festival outperformed the other. Although London and Berlin are quite different festivals, I think that it’s possible for them to learn from each other.
The first, most notable difference is that in London the press pass was free, whereas Berlin’s involved a 60 euro ‘service charge’. To be fair, the Berlin press pass entitled the holder to a handy and attractive navy blue canvas satchel with the festival logo on it (alongside the sponsor’s). The LFF deserve praise for providing free programme guides to everyone: admittedly, as the festival screens fewer films than Berlin, their guide is relatively thin, but it is both comprehensive and portable. At the Berlinale, only the press were entitled to a free programme catalogue, impossibly heavy but a generous gesture. Given its weight, you would expect it to contain a synopsis of every film in the festival, but you would be wrong: some films were listed in separate brochures, depending on the section they belonged to.
This atomization was symptomatic of a larger problem at Berlin: a lack of logical, centralised organisation, which gives you a constant, uneasy feeling of missing out on something. LFF made the sensible decision to leave everything to Premier PR: it was Premier that sent out up-to-the-minute e-mails about press screenings, red carpet events and interview opportunities. If you needed any information, you knew exactly where to go. Premier PR was, confusingly, present at Berlin, but was responsible for only a handful of films, and sent out information about these films only. Berlin’s appealing web site offered an easy way to consult the press screening schedule, but for press conferences, you needed to make a daily visit to the press centre at the Hyatt Hotel and pick up the daily information sheets. This was not always convenient if you were staying at one of the festival’s ‘partner hotels’, which could be several metro stops away from Potsdamer Platz and the Hyatt.
One area where Berlin was better organised than London was in providing press tickets to public screenings. In London, it was easy to apply for a press ticket, as you simply had to e-mail Premier PR; however, you never knew if you would get a ticket or not, so it was difficult to plan ahead. In Berlin, although you had to go in person to the press centre ticket office, you could find out right away if you would be going to the film, and you’d leave with a ticket in hand. Most of the time, there were tickets available for public screenings, especially if you asked for them well in advance. For some public screenings, it was even possible to attend just by flashing your press badge at the door. There was a rather complicated set of rules about this (as ever, on a separate sheet of paper), and the rules weren’t hard and fast: you might be in luck just by turning up.
For all its complication, the Berlinale certainly seems to value its press guests more than LFF does. Berlin’s press centre at the Hyatt, right at the centre of the action, provided free bottles of chilled water, luxurious toilets, and a writing room with computers where you could check your e-mail on the fly or sit for ages writing up a review. In London, on the other hand, if your screenings were at Leicester Square it was not so convenient to pop by BFI Southbank’s cramped press area to take advantage of free refreshments. A press room in the basement of a hotel at Leicester Square mysteriously closed shortly after the festival began. Although LFF had the fantastic idea of providing ‘screener’ DVDs of some films, so that you could catch any films you missed, it was rare to find the DVD that you wanted, as the few copies were constantly on loan. Worst of all, when it came to press queues for rush tickets at LFF, some cinema staff had not been informed of the importance of film criticism: they seemed to think of journalists as freeloaders, rather than people doing a job like anyone else (though more often for little or no pay). If journalists really wanted to see the film in question, one cinema employee suggested, they could go ahead and buy a ticket like anyone else.
LFF was far more generous when it came to providing images, however: once again, their system was efficient because the job was entrusted to a company that specialised in this area. Image.net was the place to go for film stills as well as photos from press conferences and red carpet events: LFF only asked that you gave credit to the photographer. Berlin, by contrast, guarded its images jealously. Film stills were available via the Berlinale’s web site, but to access them you had to e-mail somebody at the festival to obtain a username and password. Even then, the images had to be used within a particular time frame (by the15th of March). Images from festival events, on the other hand, could not be used at all, and taking any unofficial photos at press conferences was verboten. LFF, meanwhile, didn’t seem to mind if a journalist became star struck and whipped out her mobile phone when Colin Firth took to the stage.
Finally, kudos to the Berlinale for making the actual business of watching films so pleasant. There was a wide selection of press screenings at various times of day, and all of them took place in the area around Potsdamer Platz: you could run from one screening to the next within minutes—no uncivilized dash across the river required, ever! The cinemas themselves are also fantastic: clean and modern, well-heated, with comfortable seats, a lot of leg room, big screens and great sound. Odeon and Cineworld have nothing on Cinemaxx and Cinestar! Any takeover bids?
