Berlinale
Mattias Frey, February 18, 2007
Last night the Gold and Silver Bears were awarded at the Berlinale's prize ceremony. The jury, headed by director and screenplay author Paul Schrader and including the actors Hiam Abbass, Mario Adorf, Gael Garcia Bernal, Willem Dafoe, the producer Nansun Shi, as well as editor Molly Malene Stensgaard, bestowed upon the Chinese contribution Tuya's Marriage the prize for best film. Joseph Cedar won as best director for the Israeli drama Beaufort. El Otro received both the Jury's Grand Prize as well as the prize for best actor, Julio Chavez. Nina Hoss picked up best actress honors for her role in the German film Yella. The German press declared this year's Berlinale unfortunate. As they do every year. And although there were some disappointments, the best films I saw screened were on the periphery of the festival's Panorama, Forum, and Perspective German Cinema series. Such as Prinzessinnenbad, a documentary which trails three sexually precocious girls through the streets and parks of Berlin. Ferien was my favorite feature from the festival. Thomas Arslan's latest outlines the strained composition of a family and the disintegration of a marriage... set in a luminous Brandenburg summer. The film is confined: the story takes place almost exclusively on the grounds of the mother's country house and the cinematic language speaks only static shots and long takes. Just at the very end of the film does one see the whole family together. Arslan's feat reveals the shifting constellations of family members in individual conversations and encounters: the grandmother is tender and wise while alone with granddaughter Laura, cold when Laura's sister Sophie enters, and nasty in scenes with her daughter Anna. The story's tragic irony is the incongruity between the stability of each character's identity in his or her own mind and the constantly changing roles each actually inhabits. Arslan's film has neither the explosive (and exploitative?) power of Vinterberg's Celebration nor the psychological depth of Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. But Ferien is the most alive. Arslan binds the family scenes with shots of a depopulated nature accompanied by a lush rustling: the film breathes. More than anything, it will be these tiny cinephile moments by which I'll remember the 2007 Berlinale.
Last night the Gold and Silver Bears were awarded at the Berlinale's prize ceremony. The jury, headed by director and screenplay author Paul Schrader and including the actors Hiam Abbass, Mario Adorf, Gael Garcia Bernal, Willem Dafoe, the producer Nansun Shi, as well as editor Molly Malene Stensgaard, bestowed upon the Chinese contribution Tuya's Marriage the prize for best film. Joseph Cedar won as best director for the Israeli drama Beaufort. El Otro received both the Jury's Grand Prize as well as the prize for best actor, Julio Chavez. Nina Hoss picked up best actress honors for her role in the German film Yella. The German press declared this year's Berlinale unfortunate. As they do every year. And although there were some disappointments, the best films I saw screened were on the periphery of the festival's Panorama, Forum, and Perspective German Cinema series. Such as Prinzessinnenbad, a documentary which trails three sexually precocious girls through the streets and parks of Berlin. Ferien was my favorite feature from the festival. Thomas Arslan's latest outlines the strained composition of a family and the disintegration of a marriage... set in a luminous Brandenburg summer. The film is confined: the story takes place almost exclusively on the grounds of the mother's country house and the cinematic language speaks only static shots and long takes. Just at the very end of the film does one see the whole family together. Arslan's feat reveals the shifting constellations of family members in individual conversations and encounters: the grandmother is tender and wise while alone with granddaughter Laura, cold when Laura's sister Sophie enters, and nasty in scenes with her daughter Anna. The story's tragic irony is the incongruity between the stability of each character's identity in his or her own mind and the constantly changing roles each actually inhabits. Arslan's film has neither the explosive (and exploitative?) power of Vinterberg's Celebration nor the psychological depth of Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. But Ferien is the most alive. Arslan binds the family scenes with shots of a depopulated nature accompanied by a lush rustling: the film breathes. More than anything, it will be these tiny cinephile moments by which I'll remember the 2007 Berlinale.
Brigitta Wagner, February 17, 2007
The End is Near.
This afternoon the prizes of the independent juries were announced at an exclusive reception at the Ministry for the German state of Saarland. There were many surprises as representatives from various political and cultural interest groups awarded those films that most successfully achieved the objectives in question. The Asian films Tuya's Marriage, Getting Home, Tuli, and Faces of a Fig Tree were among the winners as were the Swiss films Heimatklaenge and Chrigu. As for the German films, the Femina Film Prize went to editor Bettina Boehler for her work on Christian Petzold's Yella while the French 'Dialogue en Perspective' Award went to newcomer Bettina Bluemner's Prinzessinnenbad (reviewed below) with an honorable mention for Sonja Heiss's Hotel Very Welcome. Other awards went to Anders Nilsson's When Darkness Falls and David Mackenzie's Hallam Foe. As things wind down on Potsdamer Platz, exhausted journalists rush to finish their articles on computer stations that will be disassembled tomorrow. Today there is still time for a last film or two before the evening's final red carpet parade...
The End is Near.
This afternoon the prizes of the independent juries were announced at an exclusive reception at the Ministry for the German state of Saarland. There were many surprises as representatives from various political and cultural interest groups awarded those films that most successfully achieved the objectives in question. The Asian films Tuya's Marriage, Getting Home, Tuli, and Faces of a Fig Tree were among the winners as were the Swiss films Heimatklaenge and Chrigu. As for the German films, the Femina Film Prize went to editor Bettina Boehler for her work on Christian Petzold's Yella while the French 'Dialogue en Perspective' Award went to newcomer Bettina Bluemner's Prinzessinnenbad (reviewed below) with an honorable mention for Sonja Heiss's Hotel Very Welcome. Other awards went to Anders Nilsson's When Darkness Falls and David Mackenzie's Hallam Foe. As things wind down on Potsdamer Platz, exhausted journalists rush to finish their articles on computer stations that will be disassembled tomorrow. Today there is still time for a last film or two before the evening's final red carpet parade...
Mattias Frey, February 16, 2007
Two minutes after I had seen Antonio Banderas being chased from the back door of the Grand Hyatt Hotel by 40 teenyboppers squealing 'Espana,' a documentary was beginning at the Cinemaxx. The subject of the film was another European who lived many years in the US: Wim Wenders. Von einem der Auszog Ð Wim Wenders' fruehe Jahre (One Who Set Forth Ð Wim Wenders' Early Years) chronicles the director's childhood and film work up to Der amerikanische Freund (The American Friend), the breakthrough after which he moved to the States. The story of Wenders' youth is nearly unbelievable: convinced 'existentialist' at 15, meeting with Peter Handke at the premiere of Publikumsbeschimpfung, watching 1000 films in one year at Paris' Cinematheque Francaise. As sensitive as Wender's films are, the documentary implies how neglectful he could be of his lovers, friends, and collaborators. Long-time cinematographer Robby Mueller's interview is excruciating to watch; the pain and bitterness Wenders caused him are plainly legible after so many years. The German's exodus to his country of projected fantasies burned all bridges behind him. Current wife Donata diagnoses her partner with an 'almost autistic' communication style. Indeed, the documentary depicts Wenders as a brilliant or perhaps genius filmmaker, but socially handicapped.
Two minutes after I had seen Antonio Banderas being chased from the back door of the Grand Hyatt Hotel by 40 teenyboppers squealing 'Espana,' a documentary was beginning at the Cinemaxx. The subject of the film was another European who lived many years in the US: Wim Wenders. Von einem der Auszog Ð Wim Wenders' fruehe Jahre (One Who Set Forth Ð Wim Wenders' Early Years) chronicles the director's childhood and film work up to Der amerikanische Freund (The American Friend), the breakthrough after which he moved to the States. The story of Wenders' youth is nearly unbelievable: convinced 'existentialist' at 15, meeting with Peter Handke at the premiere of Publikumsbeschimpfung, watching 1000 films in one year at Paris' Cinematheque Francaise. As sensitive as Wender's films are, the documentary implies how neglectful he could be of his lovers, friends, and collaborators. Long-time cinematographer Robby Mueller's interview is excruciating to watch; the pain and bitterness Wenders caused him are plainly legible after so many years. The German's exodus to his country of projected fantasies burned all bridges behind him. Current wife Donata diagnoses her partner with an 'almost autistic' communication style. Indeed, the documentary depicts Wenders as a brilliant or perhaps genius filmmaker, but socially handicapped.
Brigitta Wagner, February 16, 2007
A Night at the Opera.
When the bastions of high culture open their doors to cinema, it looks something like the following: a full house, a full orchestra, and a film that lends itself to acoustic experimentation, in other words, a 21st century silent film. Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain!--part of the Berlinale's International Forum of Young Film--was screened last night at the Deutsche Oper, whose regular repertoire consists of Wagner festivals and all the classics done classically. Last night, this black-and-white film of love, loss, and longing was interpreted by Isabella Rossellini, the star of Maddin's 2003 The Saddest Music in the World, in much the style of an early cinema showman. Beside the stage, elevated above the orchestra pit, was a team of sound effects experts whose tools consisted of a tub of water, what appeared to be celery, a door, and countless other everyday objects. At specific moments during the performance, Rossellini or a male musician would sing, beautifully underscoring Maddin's quick cuts, lyrical compositions, and playful intertitles. After endless applause, the audience headed to the Forum's final bash in the many-storied lobbies of the Opera. In the cordoned-off VIP section, Rossellini--dressed in a suit and red tie--and the shy Maddin greeted guests. The Canadian filmmakers were out in full force, and actress Sarah Polley, whose directing debut Away from Her explores the effects of Alzheimer's on an older married couple, held court at a table in the middle of the room. She claims that it was only after reading the short story upon which her film is based that she decided to try her hand at directing. The young Carsten Zoltan, who until recently was waiting out his days in the lower ranks of Germany's star system by selling ice cream in Prenzlauer Berg, skillfully introduced himself to every woman in sight. If he is indeed the lead in an upcoming version of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and if his self-promotion skills are any indication, we may be hearing from him again. Germany's next 'shooting star,' perhaps? The evening ended the way things do in Berlin--with a gradual exodus to those parts of the city where young filmmakers and their supporters live and party: Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg, and Friedrichshain.
A Night at the Opera.
When the bastions of high culture open their doors to cinema, it looks something like the following: a full house, a full orchestra, and a film that lends itself to acoustic experimentation, in other words, a 21st century silent film. Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain!--part of the Berlinale's International Forum of Young Film--was screened last night at the Deutsche Oper, whose regular repertoire consists of Wagner festivals and all the classics done classically. Last night, this black-and-white film of love, loss, and longing was interpreted by Isabella Rossellini, the star of Maddin's 2003 The Saddest Music in the World, in much the style of an early cinema showman. Beside the stage, elevated above the orchestra pit, was a team of sound effects experts whose tools consisted of a tub of water, what appeared to be celery, a door, and countless other everyday objects. At specific moments during the performance, Rossellini or a male musician would sing, beautifully underscoring Maddin's quick cuts, lyrical compositions, and playful intertitles. After endless applause, the audience headed to the Forum's final bash in the many-storied lobbies of the Opera. In the cordoned-off VIP section, Rossellini--dressed in a suit and red tie--and the shy Maddin greeted guests. The Canadian filmmakers were out in full force, and actress Sarah Polley, whose directing debut Away from Her explores the effects of Alzheimer's on an older married couple, held court at a table in the middle of the room. She claims that it was only after reading the short story upon which her film is based that she decided to try her hand at directing. The young Carsten Zoltan, who until recently was waiting out his days in the lower ranks of Germany's star system by selling ice cream in Prenzlauer Berg, skillfully introduced himself to every woman in sight. If he is indeed the lead in an upcoming version of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain and if his self-promotion skills are any indication, we may be hearing from him again. Germany's next 'shooting star,' perhaps? The evening ended the way things do in Berlin--with a gradual exodus to those parts of the city where young filmmakers and their supporters live and party: Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg, and Friedrichshain.
Brigitta Wagner, February 14, 2007
Who needs James Bond?
As much as we would like to believe that film festivals contribute to local culture by broadening the repertoire available in a city's multiplexes, the Berlinale has multiple agendas behind the scenes. A visit to the booths of the European Film Market reveals the true purpose of this annual gathering: the buying and selling of moving images. A film screened at the festival or in the mini-cinemas of the Market doesn't just inform us about, for example, the lives of high school students in Seoul, love triangles in Paris, or avant-garde alpine musicians in Switzerland. Rather, it is a pawn in a global game. Potential distributors and exhibitors are more concerned with whether a film 'works' transnationally. Does the humor carry? Is the story comprehensible? Is the content too eclectic or too political? Will the film draw viewers and thus make a profit? It is clear, at press and market screenings, which films are most highly anticipated: those that draw the most journalists, those with the fewest mid-film walk-outs.
Both Julie Delpy's 2 Days in Paris and Hal Hartley's Fay Grim were well-attended. These films of a new era of European co-productions provide another piece in the global film industrial puzzle. As cities such as Paris and Berlin vie for English-language productions, the line between the film and tourism industries is blurred. Delpy's debut feature about a New York-based couple (played by Delpy and Adam Goldberg) confronting cultural difference and exploring the contours of their relationship transplants Woody Allen and Richard Linklater-inspired dialogue to the streets of Paris. Like Delpy's collaborations with Linklater and Ethan Hawke, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, this film talks its way (mostly in English) through humorous situations involving everything from Delpy's real parents and cat to Jack's (Goldberg's) run-ins with on one hand a group of Bush-Cheney supporters and on the other a German vegan terrorist.
Fay Grim picks up where Hartley's 1997 Henry Fool left off. The difference is that years have passed, and the American Indie of the 1990s has had to take into account the changed political circumstances in the U.S. since September 11, 2001. Shot in New York, Paris, Berlin, and Istanbul, the film reimagines Fool's Queens-based characters as entangled in international espionage of the War-on-Terror kind. The witty dialogue, canted angles, and farcical tone of the film provide a cynical view of international politics. As U.S., Russian, French, and British intelligence hunt for Henry Fool's notebooks, reputedly written in code, the unwitting Fay (Parker Posey) finds herself in the center of Jallal Said Khan's (Anatole Taubman) jihad. Her schoolboy son and garbage-collector-poet brother join her efforts to foil the CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) in pursuit of Khan insider Henry Fool, and the film ends with just enough openness to invite a sequel. If Hartley, who now resides in Berlin, does not know where U.S. politics will go in the next years, his film cleverly reminds us that we are all a part of a massive network of culpability.
It is too early to tell whether 2 Days in Paris and Fay Grim will play well in the U.S. But they certainly prove that English-language European co-productions can provide a space for critical American voices while marketing local scenery and feeding local industries. A mutually beneficial relationship...
Who needs James Bond?
As much as we would like to believe that film festivals contribute to local culture by broadening the repertoire available in a city's multiplexes, the Berlinale has multiple agendas behind the scenes. A visit to the booths of the European Film Market reveals the true purpose of this annual gathering: the buying and selling of moving images. A film screened at the festival or in the mini-cinemas of the Market doesn't just inform us about, for example, the lives of high school students in Seoul, love triangles in Paris, or avant-garde alpine musicians in Switzerland. Rather, it is a pawn in a global game. Potential distributors and exhibitors are more concerned with whether a film 'works' transnationally. Does the humor carry? Is the story comprehensible? Is the content too eclectic or too political? Will the film draw viewers and thus make a profit? It is clear, at press and market screenings, which films are most highly anticipated: those that draw the most journalists, those with the fewest mid-film walk-outs.
Both Julie Delpy's 2 Days in Paris and Hal Hartley's Fay Grim were well-attended. These films of a new era of European co-productions provide another piece in the global film industrial puzzle. As cities such as Paris and Berlin vie for English-language productions, the line between the film and tourism industries is blurred. Delpy's debut feature about a New York-based couple (played by Delpy and Adam Goldberg) confronting cultural difference and exploring the contours of their relationship transplants Woody Allen and Richard Linklater-inspired dialogue to the streets of Paris. Like Delpy's collaborations with Linklater and Ethan Hawke, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, this film talks its way (mostly in English) through humorous situations involving everything from Delpy's real parents and cat to Jack's (Goldberg's) run-ins with on one hand a group of Bush-Cheney supporters and on the other a German vegan terrorist.
Fay Grim picks up where Hartley's 1997 Henry Fool left off. The difference is that years have passed, and the American Indie of the 1990s has had to take into account the changed political circumstances in the U.S. since September 11, 2001. Shot in New York, Paris, Berlin, and Istanbul, the film reimagines Fool's Queens-based characters as entangled in international espionage of the War-on-Terror kind. The witty dialogue, canted angles, and farcical tone of the film provide a cynical view of international politics. As U.S., Russian, French, and British intelligence hunt for Henry Fool's notebooks, reputedly written in code, the unwitting Fay (Parker Posey) finds herself in the center of Jallal Said Khan's (Anatole Taubman) jihad. Her schoolboy son and garbage-collector-poet brother join her efforts to foil the CIA agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) in pursuit of Khan insider Henry Fool, and the film ends with just enough openness to invite a sequel. If Hartley, who now resides in Berlin, does not know where U.S. politics will go in the next years, his film cleverly reminds us that we are all a part of a massive network of culpability.
It is too early to tell whether 2 Days in Paris and Fay Grim will play well in the U.S. But they certainly prove that English-language European co-productions can provide a space for critical American voices while marketing local scenery and feeding local industries. A mutually beneficial relationship...
Mattias Frey, February 14, 2007
Even hardcore film freaks need to take a break from the movies and enjoy the city. How lucky that during the Berlinale a certain German automaker offers the 'Volkswagen Film Location Tour.' The gratis two-hour excursion transports festival attendees (in VW vans and busses, naturally) by the shooting locales of 40 films, such as the James Bond flick Octopussy or Billy Wilder's classic One, Two, Three. The route follows where Run Lola Run ran and Nadja Uhl and Inka Freidrich spent their Sommer vorm Balkon. (I knew this already since I used to live next door. Which was, as a matter of fact, precisely the house door which Daniel Bruehl bursts through to visit galpal Julia Jentsch in Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei.) Thomas Duchnicki, location scout for Knallhart and Das Leben der Anderen, came up with the itinerary and highlights perhaps the most prominent Berlin film of the last quarter-century: Der Himmel ueber Berlin. This cinematic joyride reveals the Kreuzberg fast-food stand next to where Wenders spray-painted 'Waiting for Godard.' After seeing the writing on the wall the refreshed cineaste is bussed back to Potsdamer Platz and submerges into a theater for another screening.
Even hardcore film freaks need to take a break from the movies and enjoy the city. How lucky that during the Berlinale a certain German automaker offers the 'Volkswagen Film Location Tour.' The gratis two-hour excursion transports festival attendees (in VW vans and busses, naturally) by the shooting locales of 40 films, such as the James Bond flick Octopussy or Billy Wilder's classic One, Two, Three. The route follows where Run Lola Run ran and Nadja Uhl and Inka Freidrich spent their Sommer vorm Balkon. (I knew this already since I used to live next door. Which was, as a matter of fact, precisely the house door which Daniel Bruehl bursts through to visit galpal Julia Jentsch in Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei.) Thomas Duchnicki, location scout for Knallhart and Das Leben der Anderen, came up with the itinerary and highlights perhaps the most prominent Berlin film of the last quarter-century: Der Himmel ueber Berlin. This cinematic joyride reveals the Kreuzberg fast-food stand next to where Wenders spray-painted 'Waiting for Godard.' After seeing the writing on the wall the refreshed cineaste is bussed back to Potsdamer Platz and submerges into a theater for another screening.
Mattias Frey, February 12, 2007
A Counterfeit Holocaust.
Twenty-five years ago one still asked if dramatizing the Holocaust on celluloid was appropriate. This debate has been forgotten to a large extent in the shadow of box office figures for Schindler's List and La vita e bella (Life is Beautiful). World War II and Holocaust films have become de rigueur in Germany in the last 15 years. Indeed, only two German films which have been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar have not had what Germans call the 'Adolf-Bonus.'
This year's Berlinale also features a German-Austrian Holocaust film, Die Faelscher (The Counterfeiters) in competition. Austrian character actor Karl Markovics plays Salomon Sorowitsch, a Russian Jewish nightclub owner. Sorowitsch is deported to Mauthausen and later to Sachsenhausen after the Nazis discover he has been faking various currencies and passports. In Sachsenhausen the enterprising counterfeiter is employed to lead a team of internees to produce millions of pounds and dollars for the German war machine. The conformist Sorowitsch butts heads with Adolf Burger, a communist printer who sabotages the effort.
Director Stefan Ruzowitsky, best known for his indie pic Die Siebtelbauern (The Inheritors) and the Anatomie horror film franchise, delivers the concentration camp experience with a handheld camera, soft lighting, and zooms. The fine German actor August Diehl, who plays Burger, suffers from a script which plots the historical rebel as a vengeful ideologue without concern for his fellow prisoners. Indeed, the Burger character, on whose memoirs the story is based, is reduced to a supporting player as the film follows Sorowitsch to Monte Carlo, where he purposely loses thousands of (fake!) dollars at a casino. This scenario exemplifies the film's problem: its alchemy of melodrama, caricature, and faux-cumentary style ignores the absolute worth and weight of the subject matter.
It might be time to revive the debate on appropriate Holocaust films.
A Counterfeit Holocaust.
Twenty-five years ago one still asked if dramatizing the Holocaust on celluloid was appropriate. This debate has been forgotten to a large extent in the shadow of box office figures for Schindler's List and La vita e bella (Life is Beautiful). World War II and Holocaust films have become de rigueur in Germany in the last 15 years. Indeed, only two German films which have been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar have not had what Germans call the 'Adolf-Bonus.'
This year's Berlinale also features a German-Austrian Holocaust film, Die Faelscher (The Counterfeiters) in competition. Austrian character actor Karl Markovics plays Salomon Sorowitsch, a Russian Jewish nightclub owner. Sorowitsch is deported to Mauthausen and later to Sachsenhausen after the Nazis discover he has been faking various currencies and passports. In Sachsenhausen the enterprising counterfeiter is employed to lead a team of internees to produce millions of pounds and dollars for the German war machine. The conformist Sorowitsch butts heads with Adolf Burger, a communist printer who sabotages the effort.
Director Stefan Ruzowitsky, best known for his indie pic Die Siebtelbauern (The Inheritors) and the Anatomie horror film franchise, delivers the concentration camp experience with a handheld camera, soft lighting, and zooms. The fine German actor August Diehl, who plays Burger, suffers from a script which plots the historical rebel as a vengeful ideologue without concern for his fellow prisoners. Indeed, the Burger character, on whose memoirs the story is based, is reduced to a supporting player as the film follows Sorowitsch to Monte Carlo, where he purposely loses thousands of (fake!) dollars at a casino. This scenario exemplifies the film's problem: its alchemy of melodrama, caricature, and faux-cumentary style ignores the absolute worth and weight of the subject matter.
It might be time to revive the debate on appropriate Holocaust films.
Brigitta Wagner, February 12, 2007
Women Make Movies.
My annual drink with Monika Treut inevitably involves a discussion of festival films made by women, particularly new directors, young directors. This is a conversation that has been going on for 8 years and that seems to continue, as if uninterrupted, each time that we meet. Although we have different sensibilities as to what constitutes a significant cinematic representation of women, we learn from each other. Last year, I was blown away by a small US/Canadian/South Korean coproduction called In Between Days, about a girl living in Toronto's Korean immigrant community. A few years earlier, it was Valeska Griesbach's Mein Stern, a film about teenagers in Berlin made on the smallest of budgets with a cast of non-actors. This year's 'little film that could' is Prinzessinnenbad (Pool of Princesses), Bettina Bluemner's first feature, a documentary about three 15-year-old girls in North Kreuzberg, a predominantly Turkish neighborhood in Berlin. What is it about the limitation of resources and the subject of youth that produces works of such intensity? The three subjects--the Italian-German Mina, the Iranian-German Tanutscha, and the very blond Klara--are growing up in the midst of a postwall, 21st century multiethnic Berlin. In a sense it is they and not the progressive politicians who are at the forefront of German Multikulturalismus. Very comfortable with the camera, the girls discuss the pressures that surround them--tough school environments, lax parents, Turkish vs. German boyfriends, their dreams for the future. At times the film feels like a work of fiction as each subject becomes a more distinctive character, hardened by urban life yet full of Berliner Schnauze. While many of the recent German youth films, notably Lars Kraume's Guten morgen, Herr Grothe, suggest a bleak outlook for the troubled students of Berlin's inner-city schools, the princesses of Prinzessinnenbad are too smart, too aware, to go to waste. And Treut, the queen of feminists, is busy in pre-production on her new film--a Hamburg-Taipei mystery/love story. I am reminded by both filmmakers that the way to make a movie as a woman is to make a movie.
Women Make Movies.
My annual drink with Monika Treut inevitably involves a discussion of festival films made by women, particularly new directors, young directors. This is a conversation that has been going on for 8 years and that seems to continue, as if uninterrupted, each time that we meet. Although we have different sensibilities as to what constitutes a significant cinematic representation of women, we learn from each other. Last year, I was blown away by a small US/Canadian/South Korean coproduction called In Between Days, about a girl living in Toronto's Korean immigrant community. A few years earlier, it was Valeska Griesbach's Mein Stern, a film about teenagers in Berlin made on the smallest of budgets with a cast of non-actors. This year's 'little film that could' is Prinzessinnenbad (Pool of Princesses), Bettina Bluemner's first feature, a documentary about three 15-year-old girls in North Kreuzberg, a predominantly Turkish neighborhood in Berlin. What is it about the limitation of resources and the subject of youth that produces works of such intensity? The three subjects--the Italian-German Mina, the Iranian-German Tanutscha, and the very blond Klara--are growing up in the midst of a postwall, 21st century multiethnic Berlin. In a sense it is they and not the progressive politicians who are at the forefront of German Multikulturalismus. Very comfortable with the camera, the girls discuss the pressures that surround them--tough school environments, lax parents, Turkish vs. German boyfriends, their dreams for the future. At times the film feels like a work of fiction as each subject becomes a more distinctive character, hardened by urban life yet full of Berliner Schnauze. While many of the recent German youth films, notably Lars Kraume's Guten morgen, Herr Grothe, suggest a bleak outlook for the troubled students of Berlin's inner-city schools, the princesses of Prinzessinnenbad are too smart, too aware, to go to waste. And Treut, the queen of feminists, is busy in pre-production on her new film--a Hamburg-Taipei mystery/love story. I am reminded by both filmmakers that the way to make a movie as a woman is to make a movie.
Brigitta Wagner, February 10, 2007
Pordenone on the Spree.
In watching Asta Nielsen perform, one cannot help but recall Gloria Swanson's famous line in Sunset Boulevard, when the aging silent star reminisces, 'We didn't need dialogue. We had faces.' Added to that should be, 'and bodies. And early color processes. And live musical accompaniment.' For anyone not familiar with the particular pleasure of watching a newly discovered print on a large screen with a four-man orchestra, the special screenings of the Berlinale Retrospective are an essential cinephilic experience. In the packed Volksbuehne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, a landmark of Berlin's GDR history, the festival's most fanatic crowd gathered last night for the premiere of the restored 'color' version of Svend Gade and Heinz Schall's 1920/21 film Hamlet. What makes this film so special, not only in the eyes of film archivists and scholars, is its unique take on the Hamlet story. The real reason for the Danish prince's woes? He is a woman, of course! A Weimar film from German cinema's golden inter-war days, Hamlet introduces a gender-bending logic to a familiar chain of events. Nielsen's face and body register the subtlest of shifts as she suspects the rottenness of the state of Denmark. Beyond this, the gifted actress manages to convey a femininity beneath the masquerade, a princess trapped for political reasons in the garments of a prince. The situation, true to other Shakespeare works, such as Twelfth Night, indulges in the delights of mistaken gender identity particularly in Hamlet's relations with Horatio, Ophelia, and Gertrude. The real tragedy, then, is not Hamlet's death but the impossibility of revealing his/her truth. The film will play with last nightÕs beautiful score on German television this summer...
Pordenone on the Spree.
In watching Asta Nielsen perform, one cannot help but recall Gloria Swanson's famous line in Sunset Boulevard, when the aging silent star reminisces, 'We didn't need dialogue. We had faces.' Added to that should be, 'and bodies. And early color processes. And live musical accompaniment.' For anyone not familiar with the particular pleasure of watching a newly discovered print on a large screen with a four-man orchestra, the special screenings of the Berlinale Retrospective are an essential cinephilic experience. In the packed Volksbuehne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, a landmark of Berlin's GDR history, the festival's most fanatic crowd gathered last night for the premiere of the restored 'color' version of Svend Gade and Heinz Schall's 1920/21 film Hamlet. What makes this film so special, not only in the eyes of film archivists and scholars, is its unique take on the Hamlet story. The real reason for the Danish prince's woes? He is a woman, of course! A Weimar film from German cinema's golden inter-war days, Hamlet introduces a gender-bending logic to a familiar chain of events. Nielsen's face and body register the subtlest of shifts as she suspects the rottenness of the state of Denmark. Beyond this, the gifted actress manages to convey a femininity beneath the masquerade, a princess trapped for political reasons in the garments of a prince. The situation, true to other Shakespeare works, such as Twelfth Night, indulges in the delights of mistaken gender identity particularly in Hamlet's relations with Horatio, Ophelia, and Gertrude. The real tragedy, then, is not Hamlet's death but the impossibility of revealing his/her truth. The film will play with last nightÕs beautiful score on German television this summer...
Mattias Frey, February 10, 2007
It Happened Just Before.
Is it possible to relate the gruesome experiences of female sex and labor trafficking without tears and melodrama? Anja SalomonowitzÕs documentary Kurz davor ist es passiert (It Happened Just Before) responds to this dilemma with a provocative experiment. Instead of shrouding the real women in shadows or using actresses to retell the stories, Salomonowitz employs 'everyday people' (a customs officer, a provincial women, a bordello bartender, a diplomat, and a taxi driver) engaged in their everyday activities to recite real reports from trafficked foreign women in Austria. These narrators, who have relationships to the places or professions thematized in the stories, create a parallel narrative: they are the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the female trafficking problem. This distanciation effect might remind the cine-literate of Ulrich Seidl's documentaries, like Good News, Mit Verlust ist zu rechnen, or Jesus, du wei§t. His cinema explores both the borders between Austria and its neighboring countries as well as the boundaries between the documentary and fiction modes. Seidl's painterly compositions and long takes, however, allow his subjects to embarrass themselves unwittingly. In SalomonowitzÕs film even the term 'documentary subject' is made ambiguous. The most important border zone is the tension between the routine lives of the narrating characters (the bartender, the diplomat) and the perverse narrated information. The connection between narrator and narrated is not arbitrary, but rather an elective affinity: the customs officer, for example, recites the story in which a border crossing becomes a painful experience for a woman forced into prostitution. As these five Austrians play themselves they simultaneously give voice to the silenced women who go unnoticed to the nation's everyday unconscious.
It Happened Just Before.
Is it possible to relate the gruesome experiences of female sex and labor trafficking without tears and melodrama? Anja SalomonowitzÕs documentary Kurz davor ist es passiert (It Happened Just Before) responds to this dilemma with a provocative experiment. Instead of shrouding the real women in shadows or using actresses to retell the stories, Salomonowitz employs 'everyday people' (a customs officer, a provincial women, a bordello bartender, a diplomat, and a taxi driver) engaged in their everyday activities to recite real reports from trafficked foreign women in Austria. These narrators, who have relationships to the places or professions thematized in the stories, create a parallel narrative: they are the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the female trafficking problem. This distanciation effect might remind the cine-literate of Ulrich Seidl's documentaries, like Good News, Mit Verlust ist zu rechnen, or Jesus, du wei§t. His cinema explores both the borders between Austria and its neighboring countries as well as the boundaries between the documentary and fiction modes. Seidl's painterly compositions and long takes, however, allow his subjects to embarrass themselves unwittingly. In SalomonowitzÕs film even the term 'documentary subject' is made ambiguous. The most important border zone is the tension between the routine lives of the narrating characters (the bartender, the diplomat) and the perverse narrated information. The connection between narrator and narrated is not arbitrary, but rather an elective affinity: the customs officer, for example, recites the story in which a border crossing becomes a painful experience for a woman forced into prostitution. As these five Austrians play themselves they simultaneously give voice to the silenced women who go unnoticed to the nation's everyday unconscious.
Mattias Frey, February 9, 2007
The Berlinale begins.
In the first two days of a film festival even the most prophetic critic is better qualified to spot a stain on Willem Dafoe's gap-teeth than a trend among the festival offerings. (Yes, the films.) Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit has quipped that Berlin is 'poor, but sexy,' and at no time does the foreign press find Berlin more seductive than during the first days of the Berlinale.
Venture into the venerable Martin-Gropius-Bau on any other week of the year and you'll to see a collection of production designer Ken Adam's work or an exhibition by the feminist artist Rebecca Horn. This week the institution houses the European Film Market, which is like an EPCOT Center of film distributors. From the Australian Film Commission to Catalan Films & TV, everyone's here to deal their films for a choice price. Sure, it's the worst of what Germans call the Bussi-Gesellschaft (the 'kissy-kissy crowd'). But even the blue-eyed cinephile can enjoy inquiring at the Icelandic Film Centre booth whether the country will exceed ten feature films this year.
Any attempt to make sense of the five films I've seen in the first 24 hours of the Berlinale would be premature. But even a cursory comparison with the festival I've just flown in from the Gothenburg International Film Festival, is revealing. The Scandinavian premieres there were almost exclusively coming-of-age films from a pubescent girl's perspective. With immaculate compositions steeped in sepia tones, these movies narrated the end of innocence with a deep nostalgia. Berlin's festival is already dirtier, even in its more inoffensive contributions. These films revolve around male jealousy and sexual infidelity. Jagdhunde (Hounds) culminates in a deliciously awkward Christmas dinner scene where mother has brought a younger loverÉand father her sister. Didi Danquart motivates his Offset with a vicious conflict between a rich, older Romanian and a young, handsome German over a woman who wants neither suitor by the end. The German-Swedish co-production Naer moerkret faller (When Darkness Falls) cops Paul Haggis' Crash and criticizes domestic violence against women in both immigrant and native Swede households. Aufrecht stehen (Stand Straight) and Blindflug (Blind Flight), from the 'Perspective German Cinema' series, investigate male self-destruction vis a vis stronger women in the lower and upwardly mobile classes.
What does this all mean? Nothing, yet. At this point it's best I return to the cinema... or Willem Dafoe's incisors.
Brigitta Wagner, February 9, 2007
A Taste Test.
Attending the Berlinale has its little rituals: the hunt for friends' couches, the hunt for the festival bag, the hunt for coveted tickets at the press counter, the hunt for free food and drink, and, most importantly, the hunt for those films that will shape trends in international filmmaking.
The various hunts have begun, and I am beginning to reap the rewards: the couch is a room that is almost free; the festival bag is purple with red text; the good tickets were gone by 10 am; the free water bottles from last year are no longer free; and I saw five films today, one of which approaches the taste and texture of something I'd like to eat or drink again.
If you ask the Berlin Filmintellektuellen about the phenomenon known as the Berliner Schule or 'Berlin School' of filmmaking, you will meet with either great enthusiasm for the freshness of its approach or a long-winded critique of German cinema's return to aestheticism via asceticism. However, a look at Maria Speth's madonnen (2007) reveals the potential of this new style to reinvigorate character development.
So what are the goals of the Berlin School? If Angela Shenelac's Marseille (2004), Henner Winckler's Lucy (2006), and Ulrich Koehler's Montag kommen die Fenster (2006). all of which premiered at recent Berlinales, are any indication, the key factor is time. Time for the camera to observe, time for the character to unfold, time minimally edited. With this new sense of time comes a new intimacyÑthe faces and spaces of small lives, small stories. Character is more important than plotÑwhich similarly meanders and ends short of resolution, a little something like life.
In madonnen, Sandra Hueller, the star of last year's acclaimed Requium, plays a single mother of five children with a complicated relationship to her own mother (Susanne Lothar). Where another film of another 'school' might present a problem or a situation immediately, thus setting in motion a conflict and tying up loose ends by the third act, madonnen initiates us slowly into the characters' relationships.
When we meet Hueller's character Rita, she is hitchhiking in Belgium with her biracial baby. She is moving, and we don't know why. She ends up on the doorstep of a father she has never met, and we still don't know who she is. Even when she is sent to a minimal security women's prison in Germany, we do not yet understand that she has four additional children. Lothar's character Isabella first appears, refusing to look at her young grandson. In a further scene, it is clear that Isabella has been caring for Rita's other children. At a nightclub, Rita dances with one African American soldier. Later in the film, it is his sidekick Marc, a background figure in the club, who becomes her boyfriend. With time we understand more but not everything. Like Rita's oldest daughter Fanny, we learn to distrust the brief interludes of happiness.
The pace at which information is revealed allows us to speculate as if deciding what this particular glass of wine really tastes like. The characters are not types, explained by previous exposure, but works-in-progress, sketches of people who could exist, full of uncertainties, anxieties, 'dreams deferred,' and fluctuating percentages of love and pain. The film ends without ending because living does not end when the credits come up. As the elusive taste disappears from our mouths, we refill our glass, trying again to locate the particular qualities that just danced for a moment along our taste buds.
The Berlinale begins.
In the first two days of a film festival even the most prophetic critic is better qualified to spot a stain on Willem Dafoe's gap-teeth than a trend among the festival offerings. (Yes, the films.) Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit has quipped that Berlin is 'poor, but sexy,' and at no time does the foreign press find Berlin more seductive than during the first days of the Berlinale.
Venture into the venerable Martin-Gropius-Bau on any other week of the year and you'll to see a collection of production designer Ken Adam's work or an exhibition by the feminist artist Rebecca Horn. This week the institution houses the European Film Market, which is like an EPCOT Center of film distributors. From the Australian Film Commission to Catalan Films & TV, everyone's here to deal their films for a choice price. Sure, it's the worst of what Germans call the Bussi-Gesellschaft (the 'kissy-kissy crowd'). But even the blue-eyed cinephile can enjoy inquiring at the Icelandic Film Centre booth whether the country will exceed ten feature films this year.
Any attempt to make sense of the five films I've seen in the first 24 hours of the Berlinale would be premature. But even a cursory comparison with the festival I've just flown in from the Gothenburg International Film Festival, is revealing. The Scandinavian premieres there were almost exclusively coming-of-age films from a pubescent girl's perspective. With immaculate compositions steeped in sepia tones, these movies narrated the end of innocence with a deep nostalgia. Berlin's festival is already dirtier, even in its more inoffensive contributions. These films revolve around male jealousy and sexual infidelity. Jagdhunde (Hounds) culminates in a deliciously awkward Christmas dinner scene where mother has brought a younger loverÉand father her sister. Didi Danquart motivates his Offset with a vicious conflict between a rich, older Romanian and a young, handsome German over a woman who wants neither suitor by the end. The German-Swedish co-production Naer moerkret faller (When Darkness Falls) cops Paul Haggis' Crash and criticizes domestic violence against women in both immigrant and native Swede households. Aufrecht stehen (Stand Straight) and Blindflug (Blind Flight), from the 'Perspective German Cinema' series, investigate male self-destruction vis a vis stronger women in the lower and upwardly mobile classes.
What does this all mean? Nothing, yet. At this point it's best I return to the cinema... or Willem Dafoe's incisors.
Brigitta Wagner, February 9, 2007
A Taste Test.
Attending the Berlinale has its little rituals: the hunt for friends' couches, the hunt for the festival bag, the hunt for coveted tickets at the press counter, the hunt for free food and drink, and, most importantly, the hunt for those films that will shape trends in international filmmaking.
The various hunts have begun, and I am beginning to reap the rewards: the couch is a room that is almost free; the festival bag is purple with red text; the good tickets were gone by 10 am; the free water bottles from last year are no longer free; and I saw five films today, one of which approaches the taste and texture of something I'd like to eat or drink again.
If you ask the Berlin Filmintellektuellen about the phenomenon known as the Berliner Schule or 'Berlin School' of filmmaking, you will meet with either great enthusiasm for the freshness of its approach or a long-winded critique of German cinema's return to aestheticism via asceticism. However, a look at Maria Speth's madonnen (2007) reveals the potential of this new style to reinvigorate character development.
So what are the goals of the Berlin School? If Angela Shenelac's Marseille (2004), Henner Winckler's Lucy (2006), and Ulrich Koehler's Montag kommen die Fenster (2006). all of which premiered at recent Berlinales, are any indication, the key factor is time. Time for the camera to observe, time for the character to unfold, time minimally edited. With this new sense of time comes a new intimacyÑthe faces and spaces of small lives, small stories. Character is more important than plotÑwhich similarly meanders and ends short of resolution, a little something like life.
In madonnen, Sandra Hueller, the star of last year's acclaimed Requium, plays a single mother of five children with a complicated relationship to her own mother (Susanne Lothar). Where another film of another 'school' might present a problem or a situation immediately, thus setting in motion a conflict and tying up loose ends by the third act, madonnen initiates us slowly into the characters' relationships.
When we meet Hueller's character Rita, she is hitchhiking in Belgium with her biracial baby. She is moving, and we don't know why. She ends up on the doorstep of a father she has never met, and we still don't know who she is. Even when she is sent to a minimal security women's prison in Germany, we do not yet understand that she has four additional children. Lothar's character Isabella first appears, refusing to look at her young grandson. In a further scene, it is clear that Isabella has been caring for Rita's other children. At a nightclub, Rita dances with one African American soldier. Later in the film, it is his sidekick Marc, a background figure in the club, who becomes her boyfriend. With time we understand more but not everything. Like Rita's oldest daughter Fanny, we learn to distrust the brief interludes of happiness.
The pace at which information is revealed allows us to speculate as if deciding what this particular glass of wine really tastes like. The characters are not types, explained by previous exposure, but works-in-progress, sketches of people who could exist, full of uncertainties, anxieties, 'dreams deferred,' and fluctuating percentages of love and pain. The film ends without ending because living does not end when the credits come up. As the elusive taste disappears from our mouths, we refill our glass, trying again to locate the particular qualities that just danced for a moment along our taste buds.
February 8, 2007
The Harvard Center for European Studies in Berlin has invited film scholars Brigitta Wagner and Mattias Frey to write a regular column on German-American-German film relations. What does it take for a German feature to cross the Atlantic? Which American films generate the most buzz in Germany? As Germany and Europe continue to evolve in the post-Cold War era, Germany's film industrial landscape undergoes constant revision. What even counts as a German film in this period of transnational coproductions? How do German audiences respond to American blockbusters? To American independents? Wagner & Frey will explore these questions in a series of reviews and editorials beginning in February 2007 with extensive coverage of the 57th Berlin International Film Festival.
The 'Berlinale' is the European festival of the season; it can also be considered the festival of the season. With hundreds of new films, numerous categories and competitions, the European Film Market, and endless red carpet events, the festival is a paradise for film distributors, up-and-coming talent, established filmmakers, film journalists, cinephiles, and Berliners. What happens in Berlin in terms of the the deals and the awards, affects the next 12 months of film exhibition around the world. Wagner & Frey will be reporting daily from the festival on new trends in filmmaking, festival buzz, and their favorite German films.
The Harvard Center for European Studies in Berlin has invited film scholars Brigitta Wagner and Mattias Frey to write a regular column on German-American-German film relations. What does it take for a German feature to cross the Atlantic? Which American films generate the most buzz in Germany? As Germany and Europe continue to evolve in the post-Cold War era, Germany's film industrial landscape undergoes constant revision. What even counts as a German film in this period of transnational coproductions? How do German audiences respond to American blockbusters? To American independents? Wagner & Frey will explore these questions in a series of reviews and editorials beginning in February 2007 with extensive coverage of the 57th Berlin International Film Festival.
The 'Berlinale' is the European festival of the season; it can also be considered the festival of the season. With hundreds of new films, numerous categories and competitions, the European Film Market, and endless red carpet events, the festival is a paradise for film distributors, up-and-coming talent, established filmmakers, film journalists, cinephiles, and Berliners. What happens in Berlin in terms of the the deals and the awards, affects the next 12 months of film exhibition around the world. Wagner & Frey will be reporting daily from the festival on new trends in filmmaking, festival buzz, and their favorite German films.