From the "On The Scene" Archives:

by Cameron Bailey

Panorama

Daniel Calparsoro's "Asfalto" opens with a car crash. From there it doubles back and follows two guys and a girl as they crack wise, pull off petty crime schemes, and strut through Madrid looking drop dead cool.

Calparsoro, whose film screens in the Panorama sidebar at the 50th Berlin International Film Festival, keeps the focus on star Najwa Nimri, a woman with legs that'll probably extend into his next movie. This is his fourth Spanish feature since he graduated from NYU film school in 1993. If "Asfalto" is anything to go on, Calparsoro's missed the boat; the film does not represent the more sincere works in the section.

Cool is over. Irony is done. This year, Berlin continues the trend seen at Sundance and other festivals; honest, trick-free films are blowing through Potsdamer Platz like a wind from the east. And the best place to see those films unfold is in the Berlinale's sidebar sections, where lower budgets and fresher talents are breaking with the church of clever.

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, who were last in Berlin with "The Celluloid Closet," are back in Wieland Speck's Panorama section with Sundance entry, "Paragraph 175," a documentary about the Nazi persecution of gays. And Pepe Danquart, whose "Black Rider" won the 1994 Oscar for best short drama, is also in the Panorama with "Home Game."

"Home Game" is a documentary, but it makes sure to underline the point with an opening title: "Nothing in this story is fictitious." Still, Danquart composes this terrific ode to Berlin's Eisbaren hockey team and its fans as if it was a fiction feature. In different hands, these people could have looked like beer-swilling louts, but "Home Game" treats its subjects with deep respect, and cultivates that same respect in the audience, largely by going deep into the history of the Eisbaren. The team used to be Berlin Dynamo in the old East Germany; the story of what happened to Dynamo is the story of how East Berliners were conquered by the richer, savvier west.

Though Jerry Ciccoriti's "The Life Before This," has an elaborate, circular time structure that may seem artificial, Emily Hampshire is the sincere center of an otherwise all-too-clever movie as an aspiring Toronto actor who moves through life with her heart wide open. If direct, sincere cinema has indeed returned, all props must go to Iran for making it happen. Abbas Kiarostami and his heirs have shown filmmakers all over the world that simple stories told simply still have enormous power to move people. This year's Iranian gem is Babak Payami's "One More Day," about the tentative, dangerous romance between two world-weary people in Tehran.

Of course, the Berlin film festival never completely took to the high irony of mid-90s movies. There's always been room for towering seriousness here, especially in Ulrich Gregor's super-rigorous Forum section.

Forum

The Forum, which was born out of a bitter conflict between old guard and vanguard at the 1970 Berlinale, prides itself on its independence. So its selection this year, which includes Johan van der Keuken's harrowing cancer memoir "The Long Holiday" and Todd Verow's small-town freak-out "A Sudden Loss of Gravity," is par for the course. Verow has been a Forum favourite since "Frisk" back in '96. While his films can tend to the ironic, it's their intensity and willingness to challenge audiences that attract Forum interest.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, but still in small-town America, stands David Gordon Green's "George Washington." Green, who is white and from Texas, brought together a bunch of black kids from North Carolina, where he went to film school. The story revolves around love, obsession and betrayal -- familiar stuff -- but Green came up with the brilliant, simple idea of shooting in CinemaScope. He's said he wanted to get as far away from the "Slacker"-"Clerks" visual style, while still keeping the indie ethos alive.

Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen's "Benjamin Smoke" continues the new naturalism movement with a story of an Atlanta band led by Benjamin, a drag queen living with AIDS. Again, it's the combination of a previously urban subject, an unexpected setting and an un-ironic treatment that sets this film apart.

Every movement has its quirks, and this turn to naturalism is no different. Maybe it's just me, but it feels like a surprising number of white American indie directors are turning to poor people and African Americans as part of their quest for realness. Whether it's Green's black non-actors in "George Washington," or Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffman documenting South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in "Long Night's Journey into Day," there's a very old search for authenticity at work.

Ironically, at least one African filmmaker in Berlin is adopting a decidedly less sincere approach in his films. Jean-Marie Teno's "A Trip to the Country" signals its tone in its title. Teno has already made a number of sharp, acerbic essay films about his home country, Cameroon. With this new film, he travels from the big city, Yaounde, into the bush towards his village. And he does it with a jaundiced eye. "A Trip to the Country" is a document of how European modernity has dumped its rusty ideas on Africa. And Teno narrates the film with the irony of the truly pissed-off.

[Cameron Bailey is a film critic and screenwriter based in Toronto.]