The 62nd Berlin film festival wraps up Sunday after awarding its Golden Bear top prize to Italy’s veteran directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani for their gripping prison docu-drama Caesar Must Die.
The picture shows real-life murderers and mafiosi from a high-security jail in Rome staging Shakesp-eare’s tragedy Julius Caesar, with their own personal dramas giving resonance to the play’s themes of betrayal and vengeance. “We hope that when the film is released to the general public that cinemagoers will say to themselves or even those around them ... That even a prisoner with a dreadful sentence, even a life sentence, is and remains a human being,” Paolo Taviani, 80, said. “Thanks to the sublime and simple words of Shakespeare, these prisoners for a few days came back to life. I would like to dedicate this to them.”

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Daily exercise can improve memory: study
Exercise is good for health, doctors have always insisted. Now, a new study says an hour’s workout daily could help improve improve memory and learning abilities in children as well as the elderly.
Researchers have found that walking or cycling regularly for between six months to a year can help improve memory and problem solving skills in the elderly by between 15 and 20 per cent, the Daily Telegraph reported. In their study, the researchers have shown that such exercise increases the size of crucial parts of the brain. Professor Art Kramer, director of Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, who led the research, said their findings could have major implications for improving children’s performance at school. “It is a sad fact of ageing that our brain function decreases as we get older,” he said. — PTI