“From Monday, landlords in the capital [Berlin] will be barred from increasing rents by more than 10% above the local average. Such controls were already in place for existing tenants but have now been extended to new contracts.”
More at The Guardian
I ran into Matthew, who I had dated for around six months last year, while on my way to my weekly lesekreis, German reading group, meeting. His hair was short and purple. We caught up on some of the news. Although he’s not currently with the guy he had been dating, he said they would probably get together again, as they dated on and off since he and I stopped seeing each other. He asked about my spine injury, although he hadn’t contacted me at all before to check with me about it. He also asked if he could hug me and I said yes, so we hugged. Luckily, my past obsessive feelings of attraction for him seem to be firmly in check. We wished each other well and parted.
I saw my last film of the Berlin & Beyond German film festival this evening. It was called “Halbe Treppe” (translated horribly as “Grill Point” when it actually means “Landing” like on a stairway). It was a good film about two East German couples and an adulterous incident.
My favorite of the festival is still “Irgendwo in Afrika” which I described in a prior blog entry.
Berlin & Beyond, a German film festival here in San Francisco, has been excellent this year. On Thursday evening, I saw “Irgendwo in Afrika” (translated as “Nowhere in Africa”) which was the best of the three films I’ve seen at the festival so far. It was a very compelling portrait of a Jewish family that flees Nazi persecution to a new life in Africa. Highly recommended!
The second film I saw on Friday afternoon was about a schizophrenic guy. I found the film quite disturbing, especially knowing that my cousin Deirdre recently went back to the hospital for treatment for mental illness.
The third film, which I saw this evening, was called “Nackt” (or “Naked”). It involved three couples who are suffering from existensial crises of sorts. They meet for dinner and end up playing a game where they get naked and try to tell each other apart. Messy troubles and unexpected pleasures result from the game. Dorris Doerrie, the director, was there and suggested that she was trying to take the typical film dialog a bit further into explorations where most films fail to go. It was quite good.
I will go to one more film of the festival tomorrow evening.