YES BLOG

For the last few weeks in London I have been sorting an accumulation of fifteen years of papers, scripts, letters and images which have grown to uncontrollable dimensions. It has been a huge, demanding task and so getting on a plane to Berlin for a press junket almost felt like a holiday.

Driving in from the airport, the city looked grey and the apartment buildings massive in the steely late afternoon light, but Christmas lights were twinkling in nearly every window, suggesting cosiness within. The hotel, sleek and modern, was around the corner from the hotel I stayed in last time, built on what was 'no-man's land' when the wall was still in place. Christopher Sheppard and I arrived early enough to go for a walk before dinner and set off in search of a traditional German Christmas fair. The streets, which were previously in East Berlin, now were lined with expensive shops and the fair, in a square next to a church, was elegant and crowded. We drank hot gluhwein, standing stamping our feet to keep warm in the cold air and bought some Christmas treats ; stollen, dates stuffed with walnuts, honey marzipan sweets with cranberries pressed into their sides.

The next morning, after waking extremely early, I  stood and stared out of the window as dawn slowly lightened the sky, watching thousands of black crows wheeling and screaming above the tall glass buildings, settling momentarily in long rows on the high ledges like small winged soldiers. Eventually I sank into a long hot bath before the day's interviews began. The journalists were enthusiastic, intelligent, and warm. The question of hope - as a chosen point of view - came up again and again, as did relations East and West. Of course Germany is dealing with its own internal East/ West tensions, which may explain some of their thoughtful questions. Several of them also asked me what it is that I do in the long pauses between films. I probably winced as I tried to explain that I never pause - I am working all the time - but the cycle of making a film if you are a writer/director is a slow one. (Of course I wish it was not so slow. I wish I had been able to make manifest more of the scripts and ideas I have unearthed in my archiving process of the last weeks. )