37th Berlin International Film Festival
February 20 - March 3, 1997

"It has been rather seldom that I have been to a festival where I felt that there was a genuine understanding of what my work individually stood for. ... The screening of The Journey at the Forum in February 1987 was the single most important professional experience that has occured to the film in its career thus far, and it has been our profound regret that we have not been able to find similar experiences in the years that have followed - another indication of the uniqueness of your festival."

(Peter Watkins in a letter to the Forum.)

"Glasnost" and "Perestojka": The vaults are opened

The 1987 Berlinale was shaped by political changes in the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies had led to widespread democratisation and an easing of East-West tensions. “Glasnost” and “perestroika” – transparency and reform – were the dominating political concepts of the time.

There had been pioneering personnel changes within the Soviet film industry: The reformer Aleksandr Kamshalov had been appointed as chair of the state film committee “Goskino”, and the Association of Filmmakers was now presided over by the director Elem Klimov, whose films for a long time had been banned from export. His film Proshchanie s Matyoroy | Farewell to Matyora had not been released for screening at the Berlinale in 1984 and was now shown out of competition. The censorship bureau’s vaults were opened and a Russian viewing committee worked its way through suppressed masterworks by Elem Klimov, Gleb Panfilov, Aleksandr Sokurov, Kira Muratova, Sergei Parajanov and many others. For the first time, the Soviet public was allowed to see the wonderful films of their compatriots, discriminated works were rehabilitated, and some directors, like Andrei Tarkovsky, were posthumously honoured.

The Nuclear Age casts its shadow

Films by the Georgian directors Aghasi Ayvazyan and Sergei Parajanov ran in the Forum, while the Panorama focused primarily on documentaries seeking out the “truth” of “really existing socialism”. Rolan Sergeyenko’s documentary Kolokol Chernobylya had been eagerly awaited but arrived at the festival late and was shown in a sold-out special screening. The reactor meltdown in Chernobyl had been one of the most dramatic events of the decade, giving the discussion about the nuclear threat a new quality and urgency.

While there was still a conflict in Sergeyenko’s film between the unambiguous images and the conciliating commentary, Peter Watkin’s The Journey was an attempt to give words to the uneasiness and fear. His film journey lasts over fourteen hours, spanning five continents, twelve countries and eight languages, and produces no less than a description of the condition of the world in an age of global nuclear threat. “Watkins not only conducts an information-overloaded global dialogue on the insanity of the real prospect of war, but also shows that he considers the creation of the film itself as a journey of agitation, as a tool for debate”, Michael Kötz wrote in the Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt. The measure for Watkin’s future work would also be the real – and the real was increasingly total.

In the future, "films that take the art of film in a new direction" were to be awarded with a special prize at the Berlinale every year. Léos Carax’ Mauvais Sang | Bad Blood was the first to receive this distinction. In October of 1986, long-time festival director Alfred Bauer had died and the new prize was named after him – the man who had helped the Berlinale onto its feet and established it as one of the world's most important film festivals.