Heimkino neun

I have never gone to the collection of shorts that the German Film Festival puts on, preferring to see a whole movie for my euro.  A few of the films have a short shown before them anyway.  The collection is a ... really extensive one, not just 30-40 minutes, and everything in a couple of particular genres.  There are regular love action shorts mixed in with animation and blended live/animation.  The highlights for me were the personal, portable border wall and Mascarpone.  Others were more of a documentary style, like Formas, the interviews with spinal problems, talking about how they worried about their posture and symmetry in the eyes of others, or had come to disregard it in favor of their own comfort in themselves.  In Jupiter a family seems to be running from the end of the world when a comet crashes into the earth, but it turns out they are part of a sect that believes the comet is a ship coming to take them back to their true home.  The daughter in the family doesn't quite believe them, even at the very end.  Liuetenant Luna and Nest have beautiful images and simple stories, La Boutique and Der Junge im Karohemd examine love among our everyday companions, Die Tinte trocknet nicht shows us two Muslim girls discussing how they hope their future relationships to be.  In the beginning they're wandering around a church and one is telling the other how ceremonies are performed to the best of her knowledge.  It sounds like some Christian friend has dragged her to church before, possibly she's even had a Christian boyfriend.  One animated short shows a village fleeing armed conflict, children grabbed up and carried off by their parents with only the barest of necessities,  Finally they reach a dock and the children are offered up by their parents to sailors on the ships to make sure they can get away, although at the end it looks like everyone is reunited.  I don't know if I'll choose to see the shorts in the future, but it was quite the selection for this year.

Another Andechs beer for this installment, this time a standard helles.  Not as much fun as the doppelbock, but something much more predictable and in line with what you're expecting.  It's not super alcoholic, but has a heavy feel, and doesn't even give off a lot of aroma to let you imagine what you're in for.  And what that is is a calm and relaxing lager, nothing demanding or attention grabbing, just in the framework of the style, if that's what you're looking for.