Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009; Berlin remains a very grey city. But on Monday, i did get my Village Voice/LA Weekly ballot handed in, and i realized that it was quite a good year, especially for women directors. Not that every film made by a woman that was released in 2009 was some sort of masterpiece, but the fact that there were so many was impressive. Just off the top of my head: Agnes Varda's "Les Plages d'Agnes", Lone Scherfig's "An Education", Jane Campion's "Bright Star", Claire Denis's "35 Shots of Rum", So Yung Kim's "Treeless Mountain", Doris Dorrie's "Cherry Blossoms", Kathyrn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker", Lucrecia Martel's "The Headless Woman", Naoko Ogigami's "Megane", Ursula Meier's "Home", Rebecca Miller's "The Private Life of Pippa Lee", Katherine Dieckmann's "Motherhood", Mira Nair's "Amelia", Monika Treut's "Ghosted", Nancy Meyer's "It's Complicated" and Marie-Helen Cousineau & Madeline Piujuq Ivalu's "Before Tomorrow." Plus Anthology Film Archives had the programs of films by Erika Beckmann, Su Friedrich, Abigail Child and Peggy Awesh, as well as the retrospective of Ulrike Ottinger. I'm impressed, but i guess nobody else is.