Politically Berlinale? Correct!
Gary Cooper protested against anticommunist excesses, once a film was considered pornographic, sometimes as anti-Semitic ... Berlinale and was canceled because the jury denied.
Of the major film festivals, the Berlinale has always been the most political. Why? Not only because West-Berlin was during the Cold War frontier city, showcase of capitalist consumerism and civil liberties. West Berlin was also the refuge of the West German youth, a city without armed forces, with cheap apartments and an unrivaled nightlife in Germany. The official West Berlin was probably the antikommunistischste city on German soil, the unofficial developed, young West Berlin, however, the politically most left, wildest and anarchistischsten city. This tension between West Berlin was artistically fruitful, it also influenced the Berlinale.
It was impossible to be apolitical in West Berlin. Even the actor Gary Cooper was not. In 1953 he protested at the Berlinale against the anticommunist witch-hunt of Senator McCarthy and pointedly went to the eastern part, where he happened to witness the uprising of 17 June was.
The Berlinale was created as a political tool of the United States and an advertising space for Hollywood, but they are emancipated. In the 60 years the focus shifted to the new European and Asian cinema, directors such as Chabrol, Godard, Antonioni or Kurosawa. The so-called "Eastern Bloc" did not take part because East and West about the status of Berlin were not united. In the 60s, but also increased the feeling of being caught in an impasse with the festival - both the nascent new German cinema and Hollywood felt badly treated. On the one hand, critics demanded left to abolish admission fees as well as awards of individual films, both were undemocratic and elitist, are not all equally valuable and movies equally well? On the other side of the mighty hire United Artists boycott Berlin for a decade after 1969, the audience and critics favorite "Midnight Cowboy" - with Dustin Hoffman Director: John Schlesinger - when the awards empty-handed.
