Directors Lounge - An Independent Cinema Festival in Berlin.
At a time when Berlin is addicted to cinema Directors Lounge presented rare,
experimental or simply unknown works which often don't fit into any category.
Video installations and Live-events that go beyond the boundaries of the screen.

[DL8] the contemporary media and film festival
at Naherholung Sternchen, behind the Kino International

The Wonders of the World stopped at seven; DL is going one better at eight.

[DL8], The 8th Berlin International Directors Lounge, the festival for contemporary media and film, 2012, is hitting Berlin in a new vein and venue, this year making the up-and-comer insider tip Naherholung Sternchen its stomping ground.
The reason for the move will be clear to all once they hit the doors, literally a stone’s throw from the iconic Kino International near Alexanderplatz: the location, a one-time thespians’ hangout already steeped in its own history, has clearly been waiting for this moment. This place wants to be, and [DL8] is the ticket make it happen.
There will be people you know and wish you did, performers, filmmakers and films, films, films, make no mistake – what you haven’t seen, what you don’t get to see, films not normed for consumption by the broad masses, but films of this length and that, free of clichés and predictable endings, free of everything you don’t need to see yet again.
No longer an upstart after seven consecutive years and scads of films of every conceivable genre, the Directors Lounge (DL to the initiated) is still free of formula, corralling batches of like-minded works into presentable groupings but not bowing to predictability. No one knows quite what they are going to see here. That viewers can move freely around, draping themselves around the bar to take in what’s splashed onto the screen may add to the slightly helter-skelter atmosphere. Question-and-answer sessions with selected directors and performers can prove as offbeat as some of the offerings, and left field live performances take it over the top.
Seeing meets being.
There is nothing else like quite this in Berlin, one of the hardest claims you can make in this city. DL, while still arriving, has arrived.
Conveniently run parallel to that other media extravaganza down at Marlene-Dietrich-Platz, but free of red carpets and frozen celebs. Photo-ops only if and when you make them.
How do we get a thing like this up and rolling? Bucketloads of dedication. How can you miss it? There’s the question with only one answer. You can’t. Don’t.
1001 nights at the cinema, all in eleven days, films like you forgot or maybe never knew they could be made, films that will change the colour of your eyes and thoughts… on-beat, offbeat and everything between.
Kenton Turk

http://directorslounge.net/

WIDE OPEN SPACES (2009)