A Look Back ­ German Cinema 2002

It wasn’t a very good film year. The season had just one standout: Halbe Treppe (Grill Point). This comedy of manners about two married couples in the provincial city of Frankfurt/Oder was awarded Best Feature Film of the Year by the German critics. And among the armful of citations the film and the director collected over the past year was the prestigious Andrzej Wajda Prize awarded by the American Cinema Foundation on a Sunday evening at the Berlin Rathaus during the 2002 Berlinale. Congratulations, Andreas Dresen! It also proved that a film to be successful doesn’t require a bounteous outlay of production funding, particularly in these days of required digital shooting. Some filmmakers spend months, even years, waiting for funds from diverse sources to pour into the golden pot to realize a big film ... but they never get beyond the dreaming stage! That old rule still applies: to embark on an uncalculated movie adventure requires some courage and a lot of guts.

        There was, however, a dominant TV winner of the 2001/2002 season: Heinrich Breloer’s multi-awarded Die Manns ­ Ein Jahrhundertroman (The Mann Family ­ Novel of a Century), the mini-tv series about the extraordinary literary heritage of the prolific Mann family: Thomas and his brother Heinrich ­ left, Armin Mueller-Stahl as Thomas, right, Jürgen Hentsch as Heinrich (photo courtesy NDR Hamburg) ­ the children Golo, Erika, Klaus, Michael, Monika, and Elisabeth ­ as relived through the recollections of Elisabeth Mann, the youngest daughter of Thomas and Katia Mann. Researched over four years by Heinrich Breloer, penned by Horst Königstein at NDR Hamburg, and filmed with a budget of circa Euro 10 million, the three-part fiction-documentary (produced by Bavaria Film in coproduction with WDR Cologne, BR München, and NDR Hamburg) press previewed at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, then was aired on ARTE in December of 2001 together with literary adaptations of Heinrich Mann’s Der Blaue Engel and Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg. Later, following the ARD broadcast, the series was honored with an armful of German awards (»TV Event of the Year«) and, towards the close of 2002, was lauded once more with an American EMMY TV Award in the category telefeatures/mini-series.

        Although the three-part fiction-documentary was fascinating to watch for the deft acting performances by the entire ensemble, the accompanying three-part documentation on the making of Die Manns was just as good and even more informative: Unterwegs zur Familie Mann (On the Way to the Mann Family). For Breloer was accompanied by Elisabeth Mann-Borghese to original locations that provided both the background and the inspiration of Thomas Mann’s novels. Not only is his dominant theme of love and death explored, but also the moral uncertainties of the times that prompted a stylistic literary response ­ his distinctive taste for ironic parody that served as well to portray the troubled soul of the writer. Best of all, we begin to fathom the tensions in his own life: family bliss versus repressed homosexuality, the erotic-esoteric relationship between the siblings Erika and Klaus, the psychological disorders that apparently prompted the suicides of Klaus and Michael, to mention just a few of the riddles unraveled and reinterpreted in conversations with 80-year-old Elisabeth Mann, the family chronicler and an esteemed Canadian ocean-researcher in her own right. »Breloer has collected enough material to make ten films,« she once stated in an interview with her own touch of ironic wit. Unfortunately, we will never know the full family story. Elisabeth Mann (1918-2002) died shortly after the series was aired on ARD/First German Television.
        So far as determining the best German feature film of the season, one index might well be the Lola Awards, bestowed in Berlin on 14 June 2002. Here Caroline Link’s Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa) was the hands-down winner: Best Film, Best Director, Best Camera (Gernot Roll), Best Music (Niki Reiser), and Best Supporting Actor (Matthias Habich). Based on Stefanie Zweig’s autobiographical novel, this poignant tale of a Jewish family fleeing Nazi Germany to take refuge in Kenya is remarkable for its location shooting and the subtle performances of a girl (Lea Kurka as the little girl and Karoline Eckertz as the teenager) awakening to the mysteries of Black Africa. It went on to win the Special Jury Prize and the International Critics (FIPRESCI) Award at Karlovy Vary, received an armful of festival invitations, and was honored at the end of 2002 with a Golden Globe Nomination.

        The Lola Jury won plaudits for its acting awards. Martina Gedeck was voted Best Actress for her winsome performance in Sandra Nettelbeck’s Bella Martha (Mostly Martha), a German-Austrian-Swiss-Italian coproduction set in the kitchen of a posh hotel. And Daniel Brühl, awarded Best Actor, was singled out for solid performances in three films: Benjamin Quabeck’s Nichts bereuen (No Regrets), Hans Weingartner’s Das weisse Rauschen (The White Noise), and Zoltan Spirandelli’s Vaya con Dios. Not by coincidence, all four films owe their success in the media and at the box office to actors who evidently prefer to explore the labyrinth of character roles and shun the embellished cliches of the television screen.

        The box-office »Hit List« is often cited as a reliable though nebulous index of commercial quality. Looking back at the 2001/2002 season, Michael »Bully« Herbig’s Der Schuh des Manitu (Manitou’s Shoe) (see review in KINO 77) was the runaway champion, drawing an estimated attendance of 12 million in Germany plus an extra 2 million in Austria ­ indeed, nothing short of phenomenal! By contrast, without the presence in 2002 alone of another champion like Manitou’s Shoe, German cinema dropped to just 11.7% of its home box office share, down from 18.4% in 2001. Worse for the image of German cinema, this hilarious spoof of Karl May »Winnetou« Westerns ­ produced, scripted, and directed by Michael Herbig, with »Bully« himself starring in a double role ­ was unjustly slighted by the Lola jury for nomination consideration in any of the main categories. The best that Manitou’s Shoe could garner from the jury was a consolation Film Band in Gold for Outstanding Achievement award ­ the »booby prize«, as one film professional viewed the slight on the awards night.
        Still, Herbig was in good company. For the runnerup leader on the Hit List was also bypassed for a Lola Nomination: Der kleine Eisbär (The Little Polar Bear). Directed by Theo Rothkirch and Piet de Rycker, the cartoon feature drew an estimated 2.8 million attendance in Germany plus another 200,000 in Austria, in addition to a well-earned release in the United States via its Warner Bros partner. It thus appears that if and when a German production happens to strike it rich at the box office, then maybe it doesn’t really need to be recognized too by a national jury that’s primarily concerned with dispensing lucrative purse prizes. This said, it’s not at all surprising to hear some film journalists arguing for an »academy« to vote the prizes from among its membership ­ along the lines of the Oscars in America, the Césars in France, and the Davids in Italy.
        Christina Weiss, the new Cultural State Minister, has voiced interest in backing such a German Film Academy (GFA): »We need a forum for the artistic interests of the film branch,« she stated in an interview with Peter von Becker and Christiane Peitz (Der Tagesspiegel, 2 January 2003). »But I don’t want to hand over the awards completely to the film academy. I still favor an independent jury.« Should a GFA be founded in 2003, one of the dilemmas its voting members could resolve is the puzzling impasse between a legitimately released »cinema film« and a »tv movie« slated only for television airing ­ or, as the case may be, at key international film festivals. Last year, Christian Petzold’s splendid psycho-thriller Toter Mann (Dead Man), a telefeature coproduced by ZDF, ARTE, and teamWorx, received four nominations for the German Television Prizes ­ including Best Director, which Petzold eventually was awarded. Moreover, the »film« was also invited to festivals in Hof, Saarbrücken, Rotterdam, Göteborg, Biarritz, Los Angeles, Sydney, Warsaw, and Berlinale. Some film journalists touted it as one of the critical hits of season. Still, because Dead Man had not been released commercially in Germany, it could not qualify for the Lola Awards.

        Perhaps the surest index of filmmaking excellence is the flurry of Critics’ Polls that appear in newspapers and journals at the end of each year, particularly those by responsible critics who faithfully follow the German releases from January to December. Critics, by the very nature of the job, provide the best barometer to the artistic achievements of talented directors and promising newcomers. Further, some members of the corps offer intriguing insights into what is fitting and foul in German cinema. This year, for instance, Berlin critics singled out for recommendation Andreas Dresen’s Halbe Treppe, Tom Tykwer’s Heaven, Zoltan Spirandelli’s Vaya con Dios, and Dominik Graf’s Der Felsen (A Map of the Heart) ­ all reviewed in KINO 77. Julian Hanich, a critic at Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin, hit the nail on the head when he praised Graf’s A Map of the Heart for being »experimental, raw, and quite daring 6shy; and the same goes for (Philip Gröning’s) L’amour, (Andreas Dresen’s) Halbe Treppe, (Chris Kraus’s) Scherbentanz.«
        Reviewed in this issue of KINO 78 are films seen at festivals at home and abroad. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Mein letzter Film (My Last Film) is remarkable for a sustained monologue by actress Hannelore Elsner. Ulrich Köhler’s Bungalow and Maria von Heland’s Grosse Mädchen weinen nicht (Big Girls Don’t Cry) are the polished work of promising young talent. At Locarno Iain Dilthey’s Das Verlangen (The Longing) was awarded the Golden Leopard, while Michael Hofmann’s Sophiiie! was also enthusiastically applauded by critics. Standouts in the competition at San Sebastian were Chris Kraus’s Scherbentanz (Shambles) in the debut directors section and Eoin Moore’s Pigs Will Fly in the international program. Dani Levy’s Väter (I’m the Father), selected to compete at the Montreal World Film Festival, was critically acclaimed for its honesty. And see the Saarbrücken festival report in KINO 76 for two discoveries in the Max-Ophüls-Prize competition at Saarbrücken: Almut Getto’s Fickende Fische (Do Fish Do It?), awarded the Prize of the Saarland Minister President, and Sven Taddicken’s Mein Bruder der Vampir (Getting My Brother Laid), voted the Audience Prize.

        It was a good year for German documentaries. When Douglas Wolfsperger’s Bellaria ­ so lange wir leben! (Bellaria ­ As Long As We Live!) premiered in January at the 2002 Max Ophüls Festival in Saarbrücken, the word-of-mouth on this documentary about a quaint venue in Vienna programming German and Austrian classics to a faithful audience of oldtimers spread like wildfire. Further, Belaria was awarded the prestigious Ernst-Lubitsch-Preis, received the Bavaria Film Prize for Best Documentary, and opened the 29. Internationales Filmwochenende Würzburg. Judith Keil and Antje Kruska’s Der Glanz von Berlin (Queens of Dust), a dignified portrait of three Berlin cleaning women programmed at the new launched Perspektive Deutsches Kino at the Berlinale, proved again that autodidactic filmmakers can hold their own in the festival circus when a simple theme is handled with wit and elegance. Stanislaw Mucha’s Absolut Warhola, an hilarious visit to the Slovak homeland of the Andy Warhol family, was the laugh hit at the Leipzig DOKfestival and is still making the rounds of international festivals. And Gerd Conradt’s Starbuck ­ Holger Meins, a sensitive documentary about the graduate of the Berlin Film Academy who went on to become a member of the Baader-Meinhof group, was programmed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
        This MoMa Gramercy Theatre Series, booked by Larry Kardish, opened with Heinrich Breloer’s Die Manns and featured five documentaries in its lineup: Conradt’s Starbuck, Mucha’s Absolut Warhola, Robert Fischer’s Fassbinder in Hollywood, Walther Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) and Thomas Schadt’s Berlin Symphony (2002). The features were: Dresen’s Grill Point, Herbig’s Manitou’s Shoe, Link’s Nowhere in Africa, Graf’s A Map of the Heart, Köhler’s Bungalow, Taddicken’s Getting My Brother Laid, Maria Speth’s In den Tage hinein (The Days Between), Iain Dilthey’s Ich werde dich auf Händen tragen (I’ll Wait on You Hand and Foot), and Urs Egger’s Epsteins Nacht (Epstein’s Night), a German-Swiss-Austrian coproduction.

        The most important »German documentary« of the season came from Austria: André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer’s Im toten Winkel: Hitlers Sekretärin (Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary). Programmed in the Panorama at the 2002 Berlinale, this extraordinary 90-minute portrait of 82-year-old Traudl Junge, filmed just weeks before her death by cancer, recounts her experiences as the personal secretary of Adolf Hitler from 1942 right up to the Führer’s last days in the bunker. Using the video-camera as a kind of »confessional«, Traudl Junge recounts political events in a straightforward manner with a clear memory. Well aware of her personal failings, she does not offer excuses ­ other than to say: »I was too young, too naive, too unpolitical in my thinking ...« And she concludes the interview on a note of regret: One day, she came to the pained realization that both she and Sophie Scholl, the courageous young university resistance martyr, were born in the same year.
        Last, but not least, we call your attention once more to the longest running documentary series in the history of cinema: Die Kinder von Golzow, codirected by Barbara and Winfried Junge. Their Jochen ­ A Golzower from Philadelphia, the 17th feature-length documentary in the series, chronicled the life span of a first-grade student in the village of Golzow in eastern Germany over 40 years ­ from the erection of the Berlin wall up to the present day. At this writing, the Junge team are putting the finishing touches on the 18th documentary in this unique, renown, extraordinary series: Eigentlich wollte ich immer Förster werden ­ Bernd aus Golzow (Actually I Wanted to Be a Forester 6shy; Bernd from Golzow).
        Last year, the editors of KINO voted Andres Veiel’s documentary Black Box BRD its »German Film of the Year« award. This year, we are pleased to announce that Veiel has published a comprehensive book under the same title: »Black Box BRD« (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Euro 19.90). This double-portrait ­ first on film, now in print ­ of Alfred Herrhausen, the murdered Deutsche Bank spokesman, and Wolfgang Grams, the RAF terrorist who met a tragic end, is more than just a chronicle of the times ­ it updates history.

Dorothea and Ron Holloway