Panorama Documentaries – Berlinale 2009
By Tanja Meding | April 14, 2009
Documentaries are an important part of the Berlinale – and the track record of the last 10 Panorama Audience Awards further confirms this: André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer’s Im toten Winkel – Hitlers Sekretärin (Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary) (Austria) won in 2002, Andres Veiel’s Die Spielwütigen (Addicted to Acting) (Germany) in 2004, Tomer Heymann’s Bubot Niyar (Paper Dolls) (Israel/Switzerland) in 2006, Lucy Walker’s Blindsight (UK) in 2007, and, this year, the Panorama Audience Award went to Mike Bonanno, Andy Bichlbaum and Kurt Engfehr’s The Yes Men Fix the World (USA). Read the rest of this entry »
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Florian Gallenberger’s John Rabe
By Kirill Galetski | April 8, 2009
Thirtysomething filmmaker Florian Gallenberger’s John Rabe, a biopic of a card carrying member of the Nazi party who saved around 250,000 lives in Nanking, China during the Sino-Japanese War, is a nuanced and skillfully crafted narrative. It features fine performances, multifaceted realism and dramatic ironies that make this particular true story truly worth telling. Despite having a story vaguely similar to Schindler’s List and the feel of a big-budget Hollywood wartime biopic, John Rabe manages to do without the solemnity saturation and maudlin sentimentality of the Spielberg film and has enough idiosyncrasies to make it a few cuts above many pedestrian period pieces. Read the rest of this entry »
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Deutschland ’09 – 13 short films about the state of the nation
By Tanja Meding | March 31, 2009
One of the highly anticipated films in the main section of the Berlinale was the German Anthology Collection Deutschland ’09 – 13 kurze Filme zur Lage der Nation (Germany ’09 – 13 Short Films about the State of the Nation) (Germany, 2009). Initiated and produced by Tom Tykwer and Dirk Wilutzky’s production company Herbstfilm, the film was produced by Dirk Wilutzky and Verena Rahmig. Using fact, fiction, and a few hybrids, some of Germany’s top emerging and established filmmakers offer interesting and inspiring snippets of subjects that they themselves and the German people struggle with these days. Read the rest of this entry »
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Kai Wessel’s Hilde
By Tanja Meding | March 31, 2009
Hildegard Knef – German actress, singer and writer – was an icon of postwar Germany. Born in 1925, she studied acting at the UFA film studios during the Second World War, became a theater and film actress, then a celebrated Broadway star, chansonnier, and later on in life a best selling author. Kai Wessel’s feature film titled Hilde chronicles the first 40 years of Knef’s life, from her early training as an actress during the war to the triumphal chanson evening at the Berlin Philharmonie in the late 1960’s. Arriving back in Berlin, preparing for the concert, and performing her seminal chanson Red Roses at the Philharmonie mark the bookends of this feature, that covers her rich and rampant life in between. Read the rest of this entry »
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59th Berlin International Film Festival – Berlinale 2009
By Ron Holloway | March 29, 2009
Asked whether the Berlinale has fostered an image as a “political” film festival, Christoph Schlingensief, the German jury member at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival (5-15 February 2009), blurted out: “A competition entry here scarcely stands a chance otherwise.” Schlingensief, a highly motivated political filmmaker in his own right, hit the nail right on the head. You only have to look back at the past Golden Bear winners. Read the rest of this entry »
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40th Hungarian Film Week – Budapest 2009
By Ron Holloway | March 29, 2009
Hardly a coincidence – just days before the opening of the 40th Hungarian Film Week in Budapest (27 January to 3 February 2009), the Hungarian Parliament voted to amend its film law and bring it in line with European Union regulations. Previously, the Hungarian film law had offered hefty tax rebates to international film productions. Now, state subsidies and tax allowances for films are limited to productions with “appropriate cultural content” – meaning that the focus should be on projects that reflect Hungarian and European customs and values. Preferences, however, are given to producers and directors who had won awards at international film festivals. Also, 20 % of the national film subsidies are open to filmmakers from other EU countries. How this will play out economically in the future was debated at a press conference held by the Motion Picture Public Foundation of Hungary (MMK) shortly after the festival opened. Read the rest of this entry »
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Neele Leana Vollmer’s Friedliche Zeiten – Peaceful Times
By Tanja Meding | January 15, 2009
The new year kicked off with another successful German Premiere screening at the Tribeca Cinemas. This time, German Films Service + Marketing’s NY representative Oliver Mahrdt presented Friedliche Zeiten (Peaceful Times) (2008) by emerging filmmaker Neele Leana Vollmer to a NY audience. Based on Birgit Vanderbeke’s book by the same title, this charming drama was adapted by to the screen by critically acclaimed screen writer Ruth Thoma (amongst many others, Rolf Schuebel’s Gloomy Sunday – Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod) (1999), Faith Akin’s Solino (2002), and co-author with Claudia Schreiber on Sven Taddicken’s Emmas Glück (Emma’s Bliss) (2006) – which won best screenplay at the 2006 Hamptons International Film Festival. Peaceful Times was theatrically released in Germany last October and celebrated its North Americana premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival – an annual hot spot for German films. Read the rest of this entry »
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5th Dubai International Film Festival 2008
By Liza Foreman | January 9, 2009
DUBAI- Those who did not have the pleasure of attending the 5th Dubai International Film Festival (December 11-18 2008), may be surprised to learn that the Vegas of the East has put together one of the most fascinating and politically relevant festivals on the crowded annual calendar. Forget Hollywood romcoms, with its mandate to bridge a gap through culture in our post 9/11 world, the festival program has at its heart a stimulating mix of films and filmmakers from regions of the world that are front and center in world news. (It makes Cannes look dull by comparison.) Read the rest of this entry »
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nordmedia 150 Prizes and Citations since 2001
By Ron Holloway | January 7, 2009
Since 2001, and as of autumn 2007, 55 nordmedia film productions were awarded 150 prizes. These included: six Lolas in Gold – German Film Awards (the highest subsidized German Cultural Award), a Golden Bear at the Berlinale (the first German production thus honored over the past 18 years) and a Silver Bear for Best Actress, two Golden Cameras, four Adolf Grimme Prizes (the German TV “Oscar”), two German Short Film Prizes in Gold and Silver, the German Camera Prize, the Max Ophüls Prize, the Prize for Best Screenplay at Cannes, two Silver Leopards at Locarno, and a Gold Plaque at Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »
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nordmedia Talk – Film Location Bremen
By Ron Holloway | January 7, 2009
From Peter Zadek’s Ich bin ein Elefant, Madame (1968), the first feature-length fiction film shot in Bremen, over Sommer in Lesmona filmed in the 1980s, up to such recent productions as Neele Leana Vollmer’s Urlaub vom Leben (2005) or Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite (2007) – the nordmedia-Talk Bremen on 4 September 2007 showed just how versatile Film Location Bremen was and is. Read the rest of this entry »
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