Wim Wenders und Pina
By Dorothea Holloway | March 3, 2011
Known in film-buff circles as “a filmmakers filmmaker,” Wim Wenders never fails in his films to appear to a critic’s own cinematic sensibilities. His knowledge of film history, particularly American filmhistory, is profound and extensive – indeed, his movies give you definite readings of movies he himself likes. And most of them are in the “film noir” tradition. His first feature film, upon gratuating from the Munich Film and Television Academy ( HFF ) – where his diploma-film, Summer in the City (1970), was somewhat of a sensation – was packed with references to American pop-culture: Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) (1971). It was to establich his reputation almost immediately as the last member of the so-called Big three in New German Cinema, joining Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog in the magic circle.
Dies schrieb Ron Holloway in Kino-German Film No: 12 – “Boston Issue” – im Herbst 1983. In “A Word of Greeting” teilte Dr. Gerhard Kirchhoff, Director des Goethe Institutes Boston 1983 mit, dass eine Retrospektive von 23 Filmen des “New German Cinema” im Boston Museum of Fine Arts gezeigt werden wird “in collaboration with Deac Rossell, dem museum’s film curator. The Goethe Institute Boston is greatful for the help and cooperation provided by Dr. Ronald Holloway and Dorothea Holloway in their Kino German Film publication,” fügte Dr. Kirchhoff hinzu.
Und nun 28 Jahre später kommt von Wim Wnders die wunderbare Hommage für Pina Bausch Pina in die Kinos – das 3D-Meisterwerk lief im Wettbewerb (außer Konkurrenz) in der Berlinale. Das Publikum und die film-buffs waren begeistert und jubelten.
Wenders war schon lange von dem heißen Wunsch beseelt, über Pina und das einzigartige weltbekannte Wuppertaler Tanztheater einen Film zu machen. Aber wie bannt man den Zauber des Tanzes auf die Leinwand? Endlich kam 3D! Pina und Wim waren sich einig: jetzt konnte der Traum von einem Tanz-Film in Erfüllung gehen. Da starb im Sommer 2009 Pina Bausch. Danke Wim Wenders, danke Tanztheater Wuppertal, dass ihr für Pina Bausch jetzt erst recht ein so wunderbares filmisches Denkmal geschaffen habt. Aus Trauer wurde Tanz. Aus vier unvergesslichen Choreografien -“Sacre du Printemps”, “Kontakthof”, “Cafe Müller” und “Vollmond” – schenken uns die Künstler (Kamera: Hélène Louvart und Jörg Widmer) überwältigende Bilder in 3D-Technik, wie ich sie noch nie sah!
Was würde Ron jetzt wohl schreiben? Er starb auch 2009. Vielleicht sitzen Pina und Ron ja beisammen – sehen den Film und brauchen nicht mal 3D-Brillen.
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BERLINALE 2011 — Golden Bear goes to Iran for first time, German films among the winners
By Martin Blaney | February 21, 2011
The Berlinale’s Golden Bear went this year for the first time in the festival’s history to Iran with the International Jury’s choice of Asghar Farhadi’s Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (Nader And Simin: A Separation).
The family drama had been a hot favourite for the top honours from the moment of its international premiere in the Competition halfway through the Berlinale. It was warmly received by both critics and audiences alike as well as selling more than 70 territories for sales company Memento Films International. In addition, the distinction was also seen as having a highly political dimension which would be in keeping with the Berlinale’s tradition.
Farhadi’s film also picked up both Silver Bears for the male and female acting ensembles who returned to Berlin for the awards ceremony on February 19.
In his acceptance speech for the Golden Bear, Farhadi said that he had never thought that he would win and added: “I would like to take this opportunity to think of the people in my country, the country where I grew up, where I learned history. This is a great people, a patient people, a good people.” He also took a moment to think of his imprisoned colleague Jafar Panahi who had been prevented from coming to Berlin to serve on the International Jury. ”I really think his problems will soon be solved and I hope he will be standing here next year,” Farhadi declared.
Apart from winning the prizes of the Ecumenical Jury and the Berliner Morgenpost’s Readers’ Jury, A Separation had previously been nominated in 12 categories at this year’s Fajr International Film Festival in Teheran and took home five awards for Best Director, Best Screenwriter, Best Cinematographer, Best Sound Recordist and the Audience Prize.
Moreover, Asghar Farhadi, who previously won the Silver Bear for Best Direction for About Elly at the 2009 Berlinale, will be returning to Berlin later this year as a guest of the Berlin Artists Programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
There were several prize-winning German films or productions with German involvement across the festival’s various sections.
Another favourite among the critics, Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr’s Competition film The Turin Horse, which was co-produced by Berlin-based Zero Fiction Film, was awarded the Grand Prix of the Jury and the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, while Paula Markovich’s El Premio, a co-production with Nicole Gerhards’ Niko Film, took home the Silver Bear for an Outstanding Artistic Contribution for two collaborators on this film: El Premio’s cinematographer Wojciech Staron and production designer Barbara Enriquez.
The two German films in Competition were also given nods by the International Jury headed by Isabella Rossellini: Ulrich Köhler received the Silver Bear for Best Direction for his Africa-set Die Schlafkrankheit (Sleeping Sickness), while Andres Veiel’s first fiction film Wer wenn nicht wir (If Not Us, Who?) picked up the Alfred Bauer Prize which recognises new perspectives in the art of film, as well as the Prize of the Guild of German Arthouse Cinemas.
Meanwhile, the International Short Film Jury gave a Special Mention to Konrad Mühe’s Fragen an meinen Vater (Questions to my Father) about his late actor father Ulrich Mühe and the Europa Cinemas Label was awarded by a jury of European arthouse cinema-owners to Jan Schomburg’s Über uns das All (Above Us Only Sky) which had premiered in the Panorama section.
Dirk Lütter’s feature debut Die Ausbildung (The Education) was chosen by a jury of young cineastes from Germany, France and Bosnia presided over by the filmmaker Romuald Karmakar, for this year’s Dialogue en Perspective award given to a film screening in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino, while costume designer Julia Brandes was selected for the Femina Film Prize for her work on Ziska Riemann’s Lollipop Monster, which also premuered in the Perspektive sidebar.
At the same time, the PanoramaAudienceAward (PPP) in the documentary film category was presented to Britta Wauer’s Im Himmel, Unter der Erde. Der Jüdische Friedhof Weißensee (In Heaven Underground – The Weissensee Jewish Cemetery), and the Siegessäule Readers’ Award to Benjamin Cantu for his debut Stadt Land Fluss (Harvest).
Finally, young German composer Felix Rösch was the winner of this year’s Score Competition at the Berlinale Talent Campus and has been invited by Dolby for a week-long tour of Los Angeles sound studios.
A complete list of the prize-winners at the 61st Berlinale can be found at www.berlinale.de
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Bernd Eichinger – In Memoriam
By Martin Blaney | February 12, 2011
Bernd Eichinger (1949 – 2011), courtesy Deutsche Filmakademie
KINO – German Film was saddened to hear the news this week of the sudden and unexpected death of Germany’s leading film producer Bernd Eichinger at the age of 61 during a meal with family and friends in Los Angeles on January 24.
Eichinger, who had received the German Film Academy’s Honorary Award in April 2010, had been currently working on the screenplay for a film about the life of Natascha Kampusch. One of his latest productions, the German comedy Die Superbullen, was released in german cinemas at the beginning of January.
A graduate of Munich’s Television and Film Academy (HFF) in 1973, Eichinger founded his first production company, Solaris Film, in 1974 and began a career that was to change the course of the German film industry.
His early productions brought international attention to a wave of “new German filmmakers” such as Wim Wenders (Falsche Bewegung), Edgar Reitz (Stunde Null), Hans W. Geissendoerfer (Die gläserne Zelle) and Wolfgang Petersen (Die Konsequenz).
In 1979, he acquired a stake in the Munich-based company Constantin Film and built it up in the following decades into a leading player in the international film industry. Among his most successful international productions were: Wolfgang Petersen’s Die unendliche Geschichte (The Neverending Story), Uli Edel’s Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (Christiane F.) and Last Exit To Brooklyn, Jean Jacques Annaud’s The Name Of The Rose, Doris Doerrie’s Me & Him, Bille August’s The House of Spirits and Smilla’s Sense Of Snow.
He also co-produced Caroline Link’s Best Foreign Language Oscar-winning Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere In Africa) as well as producing Tom Tykwer’s Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer, the box-office hits Resident Evil and its sequel, Resident Evil: Apocalypse.
Moreover, Eichinger had Foreign Language Oscar Nominations for Der Untergang (Downfall), starring Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler, and Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex (The Baader Meinhof Complex) about the terror campaign of the Rote Armee Fraktion.
Our thoughts are with his widow Katja and his daughter, the 29-year-old TV presenter Nina Eichinger.
There has been an endless stream of tributes from the worlds of cinema and politics since the news broke on the evening of January 25.
“Our cinema loses with him not only the most successful producer of the last decades, but also its most passionate motivator and dreamer. Millions are grateful to him for moving film moments,” said Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel in words condolence, while State Minister for Culture and Media Bernd Neumann described the late producer as “the motor of the German cinema – his sure sense for subjects and stories impressed and enthused millions of cinema-goers.”
“The German film world and all of us will miss him a lot. Germany has lost its most successful filmmaker,” Neumann said.
Actor-producer-director Til Schweiger, whose latest film Kokowääh had its world premiere in Berlin as the news was made public, paid tribute to his friend and mentor.
“Without Bernd, I would not be where I am now. Bernd incredibly stuck up for me,” Schweiger recalled. “And Bernd gave me important tips when I said that I would like to produce myself.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Deutsche Welle, Wolfgang Petersen shared some personal insights into the man who worked with him on the 1984 film The Neverending Story – at the time the most expensive German film – as well as being the distributor of his international breakthrough hit The Boat in 1981.
“Bernd wasn’t just this ‘crazy guy’ who simply can’t be stopped, who is fanatical in his filmmaking. He had another obsession which not many people knew at all. He had an incredible sense for friendship,” Petersen explained. “People were important for him. Whoever he trusted or liked could rely on him 100%. He said very often said: If you have a problem somewhere on the other side of the world, wherever it may be, just call me and I’ll come. And I knew that this was true. And others who were close friends know this as well. He was that kind of guy.”
In memory of the late producer, the Berlinale was organizing a Special Screening for today, Saturday February 12, of Eichinger’s feature directorial debut Das Mädchen Rosemarie (A Girl Called Rosemarie) which he made in 1996 as one of a series of German Classics commissioned by private broadcaster SAT.1.
This remake of Rolf Thiele’s 1958 film of the same name starred Heiner Lauterbach and the young discovery Nina Hoss who is a member of this year’s International Jury at the Berlinale.
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Hanni & Nanni by Christine Hartmann
By Tanja Meding | February 12, 2011
The late British children’s author Enid Blyton wrote over 600 children books and sold more than 600 million copies worldwide. Her many works included a series of books about twin sisters and their adventures at the girls boarding school St. Clares. Originally entitled The Twins At St. Clares (1941), the German version of the books about the O’Sullivan twins was called Hanni und Nanni and first published in 1960s. Since then, Hanni und Nanni have become true classics and, apart from Blyton’s six original books, the German edition has grown to 20 volumes as well as a 33-part audio book series.
Following the successful Japanese TV animation series based on the books, German executive producers Hermann Florin and Emmo Lempert of newly established Feine Filme along with Nico Hofmann (an accomplished filmmaker in his own right) and his team at UFA Cinema decided that it was time to update the twins for today’s cinema audience.
And so Hanna »Hann« Sullivan and Marianne »Nanni« Sullivan (in the original version, the twins were called Patricia »Pat« O’Sullivan and Isabel O’Sullivan) use computers, listen to their iPods and have cell phones. However, once they arrive at Lindenhof boarding school, all these digital gadgets are no longer needed because true values like honesty and loyalty are far more important here than designer clothes or digital paraphernalia.
The producers are to be congratulated for picking a woman to direct this film. As Christine Hartmann recalls, she grew up with Hanni and Nanni and was fascinated by the twins’ adventures at Lindenhof. To her, the twins’ stories were exciting, witty, but also profound – as they conveyed true values such as friendship and individuality. Since Hartmann’s directorial debut in 2000 with the TV comedy Es geht nicht immer um Sex (Not Everything Revolves Around Sex, 2000), she has a long list of TV productions to her credit. Hanni & Nanni – which she also co-wrote with Kathrina Raschke and Jane Ainscough – is her first work for the cinema.
Hartmann, in turn, has to be saluted for her casting choices. Katharina Thalbach (known from such films as The Tin Drum and Strike) is a joy to behold as the warm and slightly wacky French tutor and music teacher Mademoiselle Bertoux. Susanne von Borsody (Run Lola Run), on the contrary, is slightly scary as the strict and stern Ms. Mägerlein, while Hannelore Elsner (Nowhere To Go) plays the elegant, enigmatic and slightly esoteric headmistress Ms. Theobald.
The strong cast is rounded off with Anja Kling ([T]raumschiff Surprise) and Heino Ferch (Vision) as the twins’ parents – and, of course, the identical twins Sophia and Jana Münster.
Filled to the brim with a fast moving soundtrack, Hanni & Nanni is a fun film for a young audience – primarily for girls and their mums – with the added bonus of an all-star ensemble. And as the film comes to a close, it seems to hint that one should stay tuned for the sequel, just like the books.
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Soul Boy by Hawa Essuman
By Tanja Meding | February 12, 2011
Last autumn’s Hamptons International Film Festival presented the US premiere of Ghanian-Kenyan first-time filmmaker Hawa Essuman’s Soul Boy which has been travelling the international festival circuit since the beginning of 2010. In fact, it turns out that the story behind the making of this film is just as interesting as the movie itself. In 2008, teacher and producer Marie Steinmann together with German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (see the reviews of his latest film Three in KINO 98 respectively 99) decided to start One Fine Day Films, a new production company with the aim of supporting new African cinema. The concept is to offer film production workshops to interested and emerging filmmakers in Kenya, teach them the fundamentals of filmmaking, pair them with film professionals, and then go out into the field to shoot a low-budget movie.
Together with the British NGO Anno’s Africa and the Kenyan production company Ginger Ink, Steinmann and Tykwer started the first film production workshop in October 2008 and, with a screenplay by Kenyan author and editor Billy Kahora, the team then went off to produce the feature film Soul Boy. Financial backing was provided by a number of European film funds and corporate sponsors such as ARRI Film & TV Services.
Directed by Ghanian-Kenyan female first time filmmaker Hawa Essuman, with some supervision by Tykwer, Soul Boy is the story of Abila (Samson Odhiambo) and his friend Shiku (Leila Dayan Opollo) and their quest to save Abila’s father’s soul. After gambling his soul away, Abila’s father needs all the help he can get. So, Abila and Shiku set off to solve a number of riddles to bring Abila’s father back to life. Soul Boy is a fast moving, mysterious journey through Kibera, the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Featuring a cast of talented young amateur actors from Kibera and Nairobi and geared towards a younger audience, the film is beautifully shot and clocking in at 60 minutes tells its story most economically.
The production celebrated its world premiere at the 2010 Gothenburg Film Festival, was then awarded the Dioraphte Audience Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and screened in the Generation Kplus section at the 2010 Berlinale. Cinepool are handling international sales and the film was released in German cinemas in December 2010. In addition, the film won three Kalasha, Kenya’s Film and Television Awards for Best Short Film, Best Script and Best Leading Actor. The immense success of Soul Boy – and the joy everyone involved got out of working collaboratively — made everyone want to continue the project.
At last year’s Berlinale Tykwer announced that One Day Films, Ginger Ink and Deutsche Welle Akademie had joined forces to launch the FilmAfrica! initiative which has received € 1m in support from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) over the next two years and additional backing from the Goethe Institut in Nairobi. The Filmstiftung NRW also awarded € 100,000 towards the production costs of the next film.
This past autumn, Steinmann, Tykwer and team were back in Kenya organizing workshops with emerging filmmakers and producing their second feature with the working title of Nairobi Half Life. Watch out for it at a film festival near you!
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Interview Marcin Wrona: »A special mission to change things in cinema«
By Alexandra Buzas | February 12, 2011
Polish director Marcin Wrona latest film The Christening – one of Warsaw’s competition films – is the first feature film to be co-produced by the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing. Here he talks with Alexandra Buzas about how he developed the project and the current state of Polish cinema.
Your movie is based on a real story. Did it happen to you, or had you just heard about it?
Marcin Wrona: Fortunately, it didn’t happen to me. But the story is real – I would say that 80-90% of the movie happened in real life ten years ago. When I first read about it, I thought it was a very universal story. This wasn’t just a gangster movie – there was more to it. The fact that he somehow became a victim of the whole situation that he had himself created was so surprising that it both shocked and impressed me strongly. I also saw a biblical motive, the story of Cain and Abel, that everyone knows. There is also some ancient tragedy in the structure of the film.
And the screenplay?
MW: There were three writers and one of them was a friend of the guy that was murdered, so he knew every detail of the story, but I changed this because I wanted to make it more universal. As part of my research, I talked to a few prisoners in a Warsaw jail; they found the script very interesting and helped me change some of the dialogue. After our talks, I decided to re-write the beginning and the end. One of them told me that friendships rarely happen in a criminal environment, so I had to connect the characters before they joined the mafia. So the film starts in water, and it finishes in water, a symbol of christening. I wanted to present the whole situation as a ritual.
Is your film representative of current Polish cinema?
MW: We see a lot of efforts to create a new language and identity in Polish cinema, both in commercial pictures and the more serious films I prefer. We are looking for artistic values, and we have to make something intelligent, ambitious, but sometimes with a kind of genre style. I am trying to make it a special mission to change things in cinema. We had a period of great films in the fifties up to the seventies, but today there is no continuity. There was a huge break in the nineties when our country changed and we are still looking for a new identity. We have neither big budgets nor huge stars, so I think that we have to look for other qualities like emotions.
Alexandra Buzas – A graduate of Sociology and Social Sciences, Alexandra works in the culture and media department of the Romanian news agency Mediafax. She has taken courses in News Editing at the Romanian Centre for Independent Journalism and Script writing at the Nisi Masa Association in Romania last year.
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Music documentaries at Warsaw Film Festival
By Klag David | February 12, 2011
The extensive selection of documentaries unspooling at last year’s Warsaw Film Festival included several features devoted to music, be it one specific genre, artist, band or music scene. Most of them, however, steered away from a traditional approach to offer glimpses into music history of the past, present or possible future.
The term of “taqwacore” seems like it is coined by desperate music journalists who want to categorise and justify a genre they have just discovered. The word, however, comes from the book The Taqwacores, by Michael Muhammad Knight, one of the characters at the centre of Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam. Knight, a devoted white Muslim with a troubled family background, published his novel about a fictious Islamic punk rock scene in 2003 that made young North American Muslims interested in punk music. The taqwacore scene was born, and Omar Majeed’s documentary follows several bands from it, as well as Knight’s visit to Pakistan. Unfortunately, Taqwacore: The Birth Of Punk Islam falters in its second part, losing some of the energy of its raw and funny first half that chronicles a tour undertaken by the bands in the US in a rundown schoolbus decorated with left-wing paraphenalia, and culminating in a rowdy and undeniable punk gig at the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America. A fictionalised version of Knight’s novel, titled The Taqwacores, by Eyad Zahra was also screened in Warsaw in the Discoveries section.
A more traditional approach is taken by Germany’s Silvia Beck in her documentary about one of the most well-known arthouse film score and modern composers in general, Michael Nyman. Nyman in Progress benefits from concert footage of the Nyman Band, but other scenes prove to be lackluster. Despite small vignettes about Nyman – such as playing on an untuned piano in a Berlin basement – his personality remains undefined and ultimately crushed under the weight of his work, which recently also includes video art. At best, Nyman in Progress resembles an uncut version of a television documentary – a sequence devoted to the composer seeking out his family’s past in Poland, à la BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? – only strengthens comparison.
Whereas Nyman in Progress seems unsure on how to chronicle its subject, Robert Patton-Spruill’s Do It Again gives the clear vision of its protagonist, Geoff Edgers, the music journalist of the financially troublesome Boston Globe. Edgers has set himself an impossible goal: he aims to reunite The Kinks. Edgers is also acting as the producer of the project and it may come as no surprise that this documentary is more about him than his favourite band.
Klág Dávid – A graduate of Film Studies and English at Budapest University, Dávid works for the Mozine and Filmvilág magazines, edits the film section of Time Out Budapest and occasionally writes for music and film websites.
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On The Edge with Uchitel
By Artavazd Yeghiazaryan | February 12, 2011
Opening last year’s Warsaw Film Festival, Alexei Uchitel’s new film Kray (The Edge) is an epic story centring on a war hero, brilliantly portrayed by one of the biggest stars of modern Russian cinema Vladimir Mashkov, who comes to a post-war labour camp in Siberia. His passions are trains and speed. The story then receives a new twist when he meets a German girl who has been living in a train which was built many years previously by someone very dear to her.
As the director explains, the story came about spontaneously: »I was talking with screenwriter Alexandr Gonorovsky who was sharing some of his thoughts. Two elements caught my eye: train races and a German girl who didn’t know there had been a war«.
Not surprisingly, The Edge is Uchitel’s biggest project to date and making it was much more difficult than any previous film. »We had an incredibly tough shoot«, he continues. »They were as close to reality as possible. We had problems with trains, Mashkov almost drowned, and we had a fire. I’m glad we finished it without any casualties.«
One of the two female leads – German actress Anjorka Strechel – was one of the discoveries Uchitel made for The Edge. He found her by accident while attending the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2008. »I was just looking through the catalogue and noticed her photograph,« he recalls. »I went to the screening, saw her wonderful performance (in Nana Neul’s Mein Freund aus Faro) and contacted her. She made a screen test and I could see that she was exactly what I needed.«
However, Uchitel has his own particular way of working with actors: »It is wrong when the actor just reads the script, comes to the film set, works and then goes away. It’s much more complicated work than that. Usually, I meet them before the shoot and discuss certain details. With the making of The Edge, I went even further. For almost three weeks, I was organizing meetings with all the main members of the cast and crew – the actors, sound engineer, director of photography, screenwriter, and so on. We sat together for the whole day and discussed the story, making remarks and suggestions.«
Artavazd Yeghiazaryan – Artavazd began writing about cinema during his university studies and works as a correspondent for Yerevan Magazine, an ethnic entertainment cultural magazine targeted at Armenians of the Diaspora, as well as writing short stories published in Armenian literary periodicals. He is currently preparing on a PhD thesis on Armenian Film Poster Art at the National Academy of Science.
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DOK Leipzig 2010 – Window on the World
By Dorothea Holloway | January 14, 2011
Festival director Claas Danielsen was able to welcome the master director Patricio Guzman from Chile to the opening of the 53rd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (18.-24.10.2010) with his astounding essay from the Atacama Desert , Nostalgia de la luz (Nostalgia For The Light), which was enthusiastically received by the audience. The history of his homeland is close to the heart of Guzman who was born in Santiago de Chile in 1941. The salt desert of Atacama is the location for an impressive modern observatory which can pick up signals from outer space that have perhaps been travelling for thousands of years through the universe. The Atacama Desert is also the place where relatives of people, who were tortured and murdered by Pinochet’s thugs, search with their bare hands for the remains of their dead. The breathtaking exploration of the vast universe and the search in the desert sand for the remains of the dead, who should still be with us, are presented by Guzman as an “eternal quest”. He takes us to the observatory where scientists from all over the world are researching distant galaxies and accompanies a former prisoner as he looks for the remains of barracks from one of Pinochet’s death camps. A great moment in cinematic art. Nostalgia For The Light – with camerawork by Katell Dijan – was presented with the European Film Academy Documentary 2010 – Prix ARTE in Tallinn last December.
The animation programme in Leipzig is a festival within a festival. It was a kind of “break” for me from the powerful documentaries which address political issues and problems of our age. DOK 53 opened with such a film from Italy – Big Bang Big Boom by Andrea Martignoni (animation, screenplay, cinematography, editing), entertaining and highly imaginative. Meanwhile, the band Calaveras, whose enthusiasm was a delight to behold, provided a live accompaniment to an image film on DOK Leipzig.
Of course, there were speeches: Leipzig’s Lord Mayor Burkhard Jung will continue supporting the festival and Saxony’s Culture Minister Sabine Freifrau von Schorlemer “conjured up the power of documentary images”. Both of them are sure to be pleased that festival director Danielsen was able to post an attendance record – 35,000 admissions – for the 53rd edition of DOK Leipzig. All the new elements which have enriched the festival in recent years – such as cross media, crowdfunding, and social media marketing – were avidly followed. And I have always thought that there was a particularly nice atmosphere for the events in the Polish Institute. A list of the prize-winners can be found at www.dok-leipzig.de. I was very pleased that the award for Best Documentary in the German Competition went to How To Make a Book With Steidl by Gereon Wetzel and Jörg Adolph, a wonderful film on the ethics of work. And another wonderful thing was that Leipzig had A Tribute to Klaus Wildenhahn.
German language version following hereafter.
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Weihnachtsfeier mit Tanja und Regina
By Dorothea Holloway | January 1, 2011
Es ist eine herzerwärmende Tradition: die alljährlich Ziegler-Film-Weihnachtsfeier in einem vorzüglichen Restaurant. Dieses Jahr war die Cucina Casareccia der Treffpunkt, und die Menüs waren delikat.
Wolf Gremm drehte auf Thailand; er schickte eine Video-Botschaft. Wir sahen Ausschnitte aus dem Film Der Mann mit dem Fagott von Udo Jürgens und Michaela Moritz. Das Drehbuch stammt von Harald Göckeritz und Miguel Alexandre, der auch Regie führt. Es ist eine Familiengeschichte, und Udo Jürgens selbst steht vor der Kamera. Die Produzenten sind Regina Ziegler (Ziegler Film) und Klaus Graf (Graf Film). Die ausstrahlenden Sender sind ARD Degeto und ORF. Und eine freudige Überraschung: Udo Jürgens kam ebenfalls zur Feier.
In ihrer “weihnachtlichen” Rede konnte Regina Ziegler dann bestätigen, dass sie mit Tanja Ziegler zusammen vom 1. Januar 2011 an das renommierte Programmkino Filmkunst 66 von den Stadlers übernehmen wird. Franz Stadler hat für seine Verdienste um Kino und Kinokultur das Bundesverdienstkreuz erhalten. Rosemarie und Franz Stadler haben sich um den Film – national und international – sehr verdient gemacht. BRAVO!
Und eben kommt von Ziegler Film eine sehr herzliche Einladung zur Preview von 2030 – Aufstand der Jungen (Buch und Regie: Jörg Lühdorff) für den 6. Januar 2011 um 20:00 Uhr im neuen, alten Filmkunst 66.
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