Film Festival Opens With Rolling Stones Documentary

Geir Moulson - Associated Press

BERLIN -- Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese teamed up with the Rolling Stones to produce an intimate concert movie on a band that has long inspired him - "Shine A Light," which opened the annual Berlin film festival on Thursday.

Scorsese, the big winner at last year's Academy Awards with mob epic "The Departed," captured the veteran rock legends at New York's Beacon Theater in 2006.

The director said that "the nature of the music is something that has inspired me constantly throughout the years," and he had long been discussing possible projects with singer Mick Jagger.

"Whenever I saw the show I'd get excited - I want to get a camera up there," Scorsese said at a news conference. "We tried to get as close as possible to the energy of a live concert."

Jagger said he originally proposed to Scorsese filming a big show on the beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - but the director "said he would like to do something much more intimate, so that's how we got to the Beacon Theater."

The resulting movie "gives you a really intimate look about what's actually going on in the relationships on the stage, which I've never really seen in a concert movie before," he said.

Scorsese and Jagger were joined by the rest of the band for the movie's premiere in Berlin.

Guitarist Keith Richards said he had been curious to see "what Martin would come up with," and praised the unobtrusive approach of the director and his crew.

"We didn't even see them, we didn't even know they were there, and that was the important thing to me," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, we played three nights at the Beacon and Martin happened to capture it on film - it's a beautiful way to do it."

Scorsese has made a number of previous films focusing on music stars - among them 1978's "The Last Waltz," in which he captured the farewell performance of The Band; and the 2005 documentary "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan."

He already has another in the pipeline: a portrait of the late Beatles guitarist George Harrison.

"It's going to be a straight documentary on his life," Scorsese said Thursday. "I'm just beginning to look at lots of ... footage over the years."

"Shine a Light" is showing out of competition. Twenty-one films are competing for the main Golden Bear award at this year's "Berlinale" - the first of the year's major European film festivals, which runs through Feb. 17.

They include Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar contender "There Will Be Blood," European offerings such as British director Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky," and entries from Iranian director Majid Majidi and Japan's Yoji Yamada.

The competition traditionally includes films from around the globe, and the top honors often go to less-heralded productions - such as last year's Golden Bear winner, Chinese director Wang Quan'an's "Tuya's Marriage."

This year's winner will be chosen by a six-member international jury led by Constantin Costa-Gavras, the Greek-born director of "Z" and "Missing."

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