Films in Post-Taliban Afghanistan – An Overview 2008
By Ron Holloway | December 3, 2008
When the giant Buddhas on the Silk Road at Bamyan were destroyed by radical Taliban clerics in March of 2001 in accordance with a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, even the Afghan populace was stunned by the disrespect for their own cultural heritage. For in July of 1999 the leading Sharia cleric, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had issued an order for the preservation of the Bamyan Buddhas on the grounds that the Afghanistan Buddhist population scarcely existed, thus removing the possibility of the statues being worshipped. But when 400 radical Taliban clerics launched a ban on all forms of imagery – including music, sports, and television – they reached a questionable consensus that the statues were an affront to Islam. So Mullah Mohammed Omar changed his mind. Read the rest of this entry »
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KINO! 2008 – German Films at MoMA New York
By Tanja Meding | November 29, 2008
Each autumn, for the past 29 years, the Museum of Modern Art – together with the Goethe Institute New York, the German Consulate General, and German Films – presents an annual slate of new noteworthy films from emerging and established German filmmakers. This year’s opening film at KINO! 2008 (5-13 November 2008) was Doris Dörrie’s Kirschblüten – Hanami (Cherry Blossoms). Dörrie and her leading actress Hannelore Elsner were present to introduce this heart-warming film to a packed auditorium. Berlin-based director Andreas Dresen was also in New York to present Wolke 9 (Cloud 9), a film about love, lust, and longing in later life. As he explained to the audience after the screening, the story of the film was set before he started working with the actors, but the dialogue was generated during rehearsals and improvisations. Read the rest of this entry »
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Manfred Schmidt Interview – MDM Leipzig
By Ron Holloway | November 24, 2008
From 1998 to the present, Manfred Schmidt is the Executive Director of the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung GmbH (MDM). From 1969 to 1981 he was a member of the Berlin Maxim Gorki Theater. This followed a seven-year period of freelance work as author and dramatic adviser. In 1988, he started working as script analyst and author at DEFA Studio for Documentary Film; and from 1990 to 1992 he was the Deputy Chief Script Doctor at this studio. Before being appointed to CEO of MDM he worked from 1992 to 1998 as Deputy Program Director of the Culture and Research Department at the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) broadcasting station. Manfred Schmidt is member of the European Film Academy, FFA Verwaltungsrat (dep.), Board of Directors Moonstone International, Kuratorium Förderverein Deutscher Kinderfilm e.V., Kuratorium junger deutscher Film and President of the Stiftung Goldener Spatz. Read the rest of this entry »
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Auge in Auge – eine deutsche Filmgeschichte
By Ron Holloway | November 23, 2008
In Auge in Auge – eine deutsche Filmgeschichte (Eye to Eye – All About German Film), a compilation documentary by film historians Michael Althen and Hans Helmut Prinzler, the “eyes” belong to ten prominent German film personalities who talk with unbounded enthusiasm about their favorite German films. The viewer is also treated to a tour of Berlin venues, a cinematic quest of “what is German” in German cinema, and insights into those milestone periods of film production that continue to intrigue us up to the present day – like: German Expressionism in the Weimar Republic, Nazi films under the Third Reich, DEFA film production in the German Democratic Republic, and New German Cinema (NGC) in the Federal Republic of Germany. Read the rest of this entry »
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10th CINEMANILA International Film Festival 2008
By Tanja Meding | November 21, 2008
DEKADA – celebrating a decade of CINEMANILA International Film Festival. The Philippines of Southeast Asia are an archipelago of 7107 islands with around 91 million inhabitants. Its capital, Manila, is located on the island of Luzon and with 15 million citizens is one of the world’s largest and most densely populated cities. From 16 to 29 October 2008, CINEMANILA celebrated its 10th anniversary in this exciting city. Named after legendary Filipino filmmaker Lino Brocka’s production company, the festival’s mission is to bring the best of world cinema to the Filipino audiences and the best of Filipino filmmaking to the world. The festival does well in fulfilling its mission – with the majority of this year’s festival awards going to Filipino productions and talent. Read the rest of this entry »
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51st DOK Leipzig Festival 2008
By Ron Holloway | November 21, 2008
One glance at the portfolio of this year’s 51st Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animation Films (27 October to 2 November 2008)– aka DOK Leipzig – is mind-boggling! Even the most experienced festivalier would find it difficult to assimilate more than 320 films from 50 countries, all programmed within the short span of six days! The 2008 festival catalogue, running over 300 pages, offers not just synopses but also perceptive critiques of competing documentary entries in both German and English. Also, on the monetary side, purses totaling €56,500 were offered to the winners in four official Competitions: International Documentary, German Documentary, Animation, and the brand new Generation DOK (Young Talent Competition). Further, should a documentary enthusiast miss a key film due to overlaps in the programming schedule, he need only visit the Digital DOK Market in the DOK Industry section to view on a couple dozen computer monitors any of the festival’s official entries, in addition to 150 new documentaries not included in the program for various reasons. Read the rest of this entry »
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Michael Klier’s Alter und Schönheit – Age and Beauty
By Ron Holloway | November 8, 2008
Lonely people, desolate urban landscapes, and moral dilemmas are at the core of Michael Klier’s Alter und Schönheit (Age and Beauty) – as found in all films of his self-styled Berlin cycle, a collection of simple stories with penetrating observations by a genuine auteur with a style and vision to match, each lensed by the same French cinematographer, Sophie Maintigneaux. To some extent, these tales reflect the director’s own wanderlust ways. Born in Karlovy Vary in 1943, Klier was driven out of Czechoslovakia with his family, settled later in the German Democratic Republic, where he once served a prison sentence for “smuggling foreign currency,” which in turn got him expelled to West Berlin. Once there, he studied History and Philosophy, enrolled at the Berlin Film Academy (DFFB), and played midfield for an amateur soccer team. An autodidact, he made some short films along the way, found studies at the DFFB not to his liking, then departed for Paris to assist François Truffaut on La peau douce (France, 1964), before finally settling again in West Berlin to make films about himself and the city he adopted. Read the rest of this entry »
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Christian Petzold’s Jerichow – James M. Cain Remake
By Ron Holloway | November 8, 2008
One of the highlights of the 2008 Hof Film Festival, Christian Petzold’s Jerichow arrived fresh from the Venice film festival. The title refers to an East German town located not far from Wittenberge on the Elbe River, where Petzold’s previous film Yella (2007) had been shot. From the standpoint of the director’s auteur credentials, Jerichow is a reprise of Petzold’s Wolfsburg (2003), the title of that film referring to a West German city. Both films starred Nina Höss and Benno Fürmann in similar tales of unrequited love against a fatal background of death and betrayal. Petzold confirms that Jerichow was inspired by Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (Obsession) (Italy, 1943), which in turn leaned heavily on James M. Cain’s 120-page novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (published in 1934). In fact, save for a few adjustments (a dull-witted Turkish-German husband instead of Cain’s Greek American), Jerichow never drifts very far from the original crime tale. Read the rest of this entry »
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Der Baader Meinhof Komplex vs RAF Film Chronicle
By Ron Holloway | November 8, 2008
More than a dozen German productions (film, TV, stage) have been made about the Baader-Meinhof RAF phenomenon long before Uli Edel filmed Stefan Aust’s bestseller on Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008), the official German entry for this year’s foreign-laguage Oscar. Producer Bernd Eichinger, who also wrote the screenplay, has insisted that his and Edel’s fast-moving, action-packed, bang-bang chronicle of RAF terrorist activities of 1960s and 1970s is an accurate and factual screen interpretation of Aust’s minutely documented The Baader Meinhof Complex. To assure audience acceptance for the fiction-documentary, however, some top names in the current German cinema portfolio were assigned key roles: Moritz Bleibtreu as Andreas Baader, Martina Gedeck as Ulrike Meinhof, Johanna Wokolek as Gudrun Ensslin, and so forth all the way down the list. But given that even the most informed viewer would have trouble collating the historical events with the real-life personalities, one wonders how foreign audiences – particularly the American public and Academy members – will fare when the film is released abroad. Many critics, too, are questioning how an isolated German Oscar Nomination Committe could reach its decision before the film was even released. Read the rest of this entry »
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46th New York Film Festival 2008
By Tanja Meding | November 8, 2008
For the 46th outing, from 26 September to 12 October 2008, The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New York Film Festival offered the crème de la crème of world cinema to New York audiences. It was a real treat and a great preview of the upcoming slated art-house films. “Reality meets Fiction” seemed to be the subtitle for a large number of this year’s festival’s films. The selected works were either based on true events, portraits of real people, or conceived and filmed with the goal to be as authentic as possible. Another subtitle, “Family Rules,” might best describe works focusing on family issues throughout different parts of the world. Many of them resonated long after their onscreen conclusions. The following are highlights that fit the above categories. Read the rest of this entry »
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