Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf in goEast-DVD-Edition
By Eva-Marie Lenz | August 21, 2008
Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf was honored at the 8th goEast Festival of Central and Eastern European Film in Wiesbaden with goEast-DVD-Edition. Benedek Fliegauf likes to observe colleagues of his own generation: young people, whose teenager years in Budapest had been changed by the political Wende.
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Sergei Parajanov Retrospective at goEast Festival 2008
By Felix Lenz | August 21, 2008
The 8th goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Films in Wiesbaden (9-15 April 2008) focused as usual on questions of current national sensibility and historical status. The complementary sidebar paid homage to the Armenian Sergei Parajanov: his masterful Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (USSR, 1964), Sayat Nova (USSR, 1969), The Legend of Suram Fortress (USSR, 1984), and Ashik-Kerib (USSR, 1988), plus two documentaries and an exhibition of Parajanov collages that offered further perspectives to his reality surmounting oeuvre.
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18th Tromsö International Film Festival 2008
By Katharina Dockhorn | August 21, 2008
Wacken is known the world over – thanks to Sung-Hyung Cho’s oft-awarded documentary Full Metal Village (Germany, 2007) about down-home inhabitants of a Schleswig-Holstein village that annually transforms itself for an August weekend into the capital of the Heavy Metal Scene. At the 18th Tromsö International Film Festival (15-20 January 2008), the world’s northern-most festival beyond the Arctic Circle., this affectionate and heart-warming chronicle of rural life also captured the hearts of the Norwegian public.
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Die Gustloff – Greatest Ship Catastrophe in History
By Dorothea Holloway | August 21, 2008
Die Gustloff (Germany, 2008), a UFA Filmproduktion aired as a two-part ZDF telefeature, chronicled the greatest ship catastrophe in history. It happened in the winter of 1945. Thousands of refugees from eastern Germany – women, children, old people, wounded soldiers – are fleeing westward in the bitter cold. Their rescue: to get on board the famous ocean liner Wilhelm Gustloff.
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Volker Hassemer on Dieter Kosslick and Berlinale 2008
By Ron Holloway | August 21, 2008
Under Dieter Kosslick Berlin and Berlinale become ever more similar: Dieter Kosslick copied the youth of Berlin, and the Talent Campus was launched. And for Berlin the Talent Campus became one of its grand youth projects. Already, at the very beginning, the Berliners had elevated the Berlinale to a great festival for the public. And ever more the Berlinale prepares Berliners to kickoff each year with a great folk festival.
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Ziegler Film celebrates 35 Years – 1973-2008
By Ron Holloway | August 21, 2008
Back in the early 1970s, when I was asked by my Variety editor if I could pen a couple reviews on German cinema, I looked around to see what was available. Fortunately, I had seen Wolf Gremm’s Ich dachte, ich wäre tot (I Had a Feeling I Was Dead) (Germany, 1973) and Meine Sorgen möcht’ ich haben (I’d Like to Have My Troubles) (Germany, 1975), the first films produced independently by Regina Ziegler.
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58th Berlin International Film Festival – Berlinale 2008
By Ron Holloway | August 20, 2008
Will it ever end? During his seven years as Berlinale director, Dieter Kosslick’s festival tenure is annually boosted by success at the box office. Following the close of the 58th Berlin International Film Festival (7-17 February 2008), bonanza statistics were promptly released to the press. The 58th Berlinale recorded an overall audience of 430,000, of which some 230,000 purchased tickets, thus exceeding last year’s record by more than 6,000.
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39th Hungarian Film Week – Budapest 2008
By Ron Holloway | August 20, 2008
Budapest celebrated far more than just the internationally popular 39th Hungarian Film Week (29 January to 5 February 2008), attended this year by circa 100 journalists and guests from around the globe, the majority of whom then leapfrogged from Budapest to Berlin to attend the Berlinale. Just a week before the opening of the Hungarian festival, on January 22, a year-long celebration was launched to commemorate the 550th anniversary of the coronation in 1458 of King Matthias Corvinus (1443-1490).
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12th Sofia International Film Festival 2008
By Ron Holloway | August 19, 2008
Ask Stefan Kitanov, director of the 12th Sofia International Film Festival (6 16 March 2008), if he feels that “New Bulgarian Cinema” had now officially come of age, he will cite the premiere screening of Stefan Komandarev’s Svetat e golyam i spasenie debne otvsyakad (The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner). “We had to open the upper balcony of the big hall in the National Palace of Culture (NDK) to accommodate an audience upwards of 4,000,” he stated with a note of pride from the NDK stage. “That’s never happened before in the history of our festival!
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27th Istanbul International Film Festival 2008
By Ron Holloway | August 19, 2008
Ask festival director Azize Tan why she was using every opportunity available to celebrate the current revival of Turkish cinema at the 27th Istanbul International Film Festival (5-20 April 2008), and she would tick off any number of reasons. Last year, for instance, Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature, served on the international jury at Cannes. Further, the Palm for Best Screenplay was awarded to Turkey-born, Germany-based Fatih Akin’s Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven), a German-Turkish coproduction. Also, before this year’s IIFF even began, the city was alive with the rumor that Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Üç maymun (Three Monkeys) was likely headed for the Cannes competition – as, indeed, it was.
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