The UK's Simon Perry, Holland Film's Claudia Landsberger and Pandora Film's Christoph Friedel are among the members of the revamped selection committee for the Berlinale's official competition section at the forthcoming festival (February 6-17, 2002).

The 13-person line-up comprises: Dieter Kosslick (festival executive director), Wieland Speck (Panorama), Christoph Terhechte (International Forum), Beki Probst (European Film Market), Alfred Holighaus (Perspectives German Cinema), Anke Leweke (film critic), Matthias Elwardt (cinema owner, Hamburg), Rainer Rother (film historian, Berlin), Katrin Schloesser (producer, O-Film, Berlin), Claudia Landsberger (Holland Film, Amsterdam), Simon Perry (producer, London) and Cristina Hoffmann (Export-Union French representative, Paris).

That the heads of the festival's main sections are collaborating on the official competition section is evidence of the new approach being adopted by Dieter Kosslick. "We now have a almost complete transparency because everybody knows what the other is doing", Kosslick told local journalists in Berlin this week , adding that he did not intend to change everything at the festival: "I think Moritz de Hadeln and his team did their job very well. We will give ourselves two, three years for changes, but we will carry on the Berlinale in the way it has been in the last 51 years".

Plans to stage a "Talent Campus" for 1,000 film students in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (the former Kongresshalle which had served as the Berlinale for a while during the 1990s) have now been put off until 2003 due to time restrictions