The Attaché Enigma

Having a short film in the Berlinale is a wonderful but conflicting experience. On the one hand, you have a film in an important international festival and on the other hand … nobody cares.

Having a short film in the Berlinale is a wonderful but conflicting experience. On the one hand, you have a film in an important international festival and on the other hand … nobody cares. Like the guy in the sidecar – you’re in that grey area between nowhere and somewhere. If there’s ever been a city to match the feeling, it’s Berlin.

The buildings, monuments, flags and images outsiders (like myself) associate with Berlin are of course long since destroyed – but in a very strange way you can still feel their presence. Never will you see a tour guide pointing more at buildings that used to be other buildings. It’s a city in between, a metropolis in flux.

Rented an apartment for the week on Orderburger Strasse and was surprised to find it located directly behind an Indian restaurant. My pillow was saturated with flavours so pungent I awoke with a full stomach.

Went for a three-hour walk and found Berliners don’t smile too much, but they sure like to talk. One man sitting beside me on the subway started talking without prompt to complain how people are always approaching him to talk. He began talking about his friend that has been lighting buildings on fire, then placed his hand on my knee.

My film screened on a Saturday as the final in a group of five shorts. The first film was a woman dancing in a thorn bush, scratching herself again and again. The next one warned epileptics to leave. It was like a SNL parody of German film – one voice repeating the same phrase (“Can you see me?”) over a series of flashing images. I’d never wished I had epilepsy before … The third picture was about a dad that killed his HIV-positive baby. That was light drama compared to the fourth, after which, waking, my co-producer described her sleep as “profound.” Finally, when it came time to show our film – a light-hearted comedy that animates the hypothetical "island" homophobes want to stick gay people on (and celebrates the idea, since, after all, it would make a great party) – it was hard to tell if the audience was laughing from humour or relief.

The question and answer period is especially brief for shorts. After two lousy answers, it was time to get drunk and forget the obscene amount of time it took to make the five-minute film. But that’s fine, Berlin is a city designed for forgetting....

By the time our little group arrived at the marquee event of the week at the Canadian embassy, we were well on our way to blotto. Security was heavy. The architecture modern. People everywhere. Plenty to drink (nothing Canadian). Oh look, they’re playing our film on the wall. How sweet. More drink, please. A colleague introduced me to someone from the embassy to poke dumb questions at – Katharina Fichtner, Cultural Attaché – Visual Art, Film, New Media.

Now, I've always wandered what an attaché is. But first I had to get to the bottom of something else. "Ms. Attaché, why is there no music?" In a German accent, she responded, “We discussed this very much and decided this is more function for networking, yes?” I asked why, if she’s working for the Canadian government, isn’t she Canadian. “Well normally yes, but not this time.” I asked her if I may speak plainly. She smiled. “Katrina, what the hell is an attaché?”

It’s pretty simple, actually. An attaché is someone who’s “attached.” In Katrina’s case, she’s attached to the Cultural Minister – the same “cultural expert” who decided not to play music at a party. She acknowledged there wasn’t much she could do – after all, she’s only the girl in the sidecar.