A Talk with Professor Jürgen Haase, Progress Film-Verleih

The Fifth Anniversary

The Progress Film-Verleih, founded in October of 1997, celebrated last year its fifth anniversary as a private enterprise. We were pleased in 2002 to be singled out by the German Ministry of the Interior for a cinema programming award. As you know, Progress is not just a film distributor. We regularly program series of DEFA film classics in our own Börse cinema. We organize children film programs and tour them in Berlin-Brandenburg. We collaborate on cultural and historical TV programming with ORB Potsdam and MDR Leipzig in the ARD First Channel network, as well as with ZDF Mainz (Second German Television) and ARTE Strasbourg (German-French cultural channel). You might say it’s a »given« to program on television the German-German past using the DEFA film legacy. In 2002 Progress has initiated circa 4,000 bookings for cinema release ­ in addition to 220 television broadcasts, or a Progress broadcast daily from January to August. Berliners can follow regularly our 40-minute program on the local FAB (Fernsehen Aus Berlin) channel ­ the monthly Kinozeit (Time for Cinema) program, in which we present the latest films, introduce directors, or discuss classics from new points of view.

Film Series und Theme Evenings

First of all, the Progress Film Series pays tribute to well known DEFA directors. Last year, when Frank Beyer’s autobiography »Wenn der Wind sich dreht« (When the Wind Changes Direction) appeared in print, bookings poured in for his DEFA films. The same thing happened in the United States: the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts booked the director and his key films for a tour of American universities. Recently, Günter Reisch, a popular DEFA personality with a hand for comedy and satire, celebrated his 75th birthday with a retrospective tribute at the Babylon cinema Berlin. (Kino Toni Berlin and Filmmuseum Potsdam also honored this renown German director - Ed). Several young directors credit their success to the teaching of Günter Reisch at the Konrad Wolf Film Academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg.
       I might add that the open-ended discussions with DEFA film professionals at these Theme Evenings ­ for instance, on the theme of »Art and State« ­ are both revealing and productive. Linked to these film programs is a poster exhibit. At last year’s Berlinale we initiated an exhibit of 80 posters under the title »Filmplakate in Ost und West: Kampf um die Köpfe, Treffer ins Herz« (Film Posters in East and West: Fight to Win Heads, Go Straight to the Heart). Our poster exhibit has toured Halle and Münster and will go to Hamburg this year. Further information is on the Internet ­ www.progress-film.de ­ under six separate categories: Träume und Sehnsüchte (Dreams and Longings), Machtergreifung und Widerstand (Dictatorship and Resistance), Liebe und andere Ursachen (Love and Other Reasons), Kurioses und Satirisches (Peculiar and Satirical), Russische Filme (Russian Films), and Kinderfilme (Children’s Films).

Polish and Vietnamese Film Weeks

After collaborating last year with Slovak directors on a Slovak Film Week, we are planning this year to do the same with Krzysztof Zanussi and Polish directors. It will open with Wojciech Marczewski’s Weiser, a Provobis coproduction that competed at the 2001 Berlinale. And after the success of the Vietnamese Film Week last year, it will now tour Germany in 2003, beginning with cities in Baden-Württemburg. A return trip to Vietnam for a German Film Week there is scheduled in 2003. Also, an Hungarian Film Week and Chilean Film Days are planned in 2003.

Progress Film-Verleih at the Berlinale

Once again, the International Forum of Young Cinema is programming the 18th (!) documentary in Barbara and Winfried Junge’s ongoing series Die Kinder von Golzow (The Children of Golzow). This longest running documentation in film history dates back to 1961, just after the erection of the Berlin wall, when Winfried Junge visited with a camera team a first-grade school class in the village of Golzow near the Oder River on the border to Poland. The very pulse of history has been taken in this remarkable collection of films that now covers 40 years and three generations of the families depicted. In Eigentlich wollte ich Förster werden ­ Bernd aus Golzow (Actually I Wanted to Be a Forester ­ Bernd from Golzow) we meet Bernhard (»Bernd«) Oestreich, who still resides today on the Oder River not far from Golzow. In photo right above (courtesy DEFA Stiftung/Progress): Bernd, 6 years old, in first grade, 1961. In photo right below (courtesy Winfried Junge): Bernd, 40 years old, with wife Petra, taken in 1995. Although he originally wanted to become a forester, Bernd now works as a foreman in a factory at Schwedt on the Oder.

New and Recent Film Releases

Topping the list is Bernd Neuburger’s children’s film Der Sommer mit den Burggespenstern (The Summer with the Ghosts), an Austrian-Canadian coproduction shot in Austria at an ancient castle. When Caroline, the 10-year-old daughter of a Canadian film director, reluctantly accompanies her father on location to Austria, she is befriended by Otto, a special-effects handy-man, and young Jakob, who claims that he communicates regularly with the ghosts in the old castle. On the international festival scene, Stefan Lukschy’s delightful children’s film, Pinky und die MillionenMOPS (see KINO 74 for review), was voted the Audience Award at Shanghai. In Jens Becker and Gunnar Dedio’s Henker ­ Der Tod hat ein Gesicht (Hangman ­ Death Has a Face), a fascinating documentary that took five years to complete, the directors interview six official hangmen from France, Germany, ex-Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, and the USA. In Olaf Kaiser’s feature film Drei Stern Rot (Three Star Red), a tense psycho-thriller mirroring the German-German past, an actor loses control of himself while playing a film role as a GDR border guard and beats up another actor for reasons known only to himself. Three Star Red was nominated »Best Debut Feature Film« for the Prize of the German Critics in 2002. In Fritz Lehner’s Jedermanns Fest, a German-Swiss Austrian coproduction starring Klaus Maria Brandauer, the schizophrenic world of fashion designers is satirized. In Geza Beremenyi’s A Hidember (The Bridgeman) (Hungary), an historical epic set between 1820 and 1860 during the Habsburg period, Count Istvan Szechenyi, a wealthy aristocrat, dreams of building a bridge across the Danube at Budapest to spur the country to independence.

Focus on Africa

We’ve just released Fritz Baumann’s Anansi ­ Der Traum vom Europa (Anansi ­ The Dream of Europe) (Germany), awarded the One-Future-Prize at the Filmfest München. Shot in Ghana about the perils experienced by West Africans to emigrate illegally to Germany via Morocco and Spain, it’s a roadmovie with a twist: »Anansi« in the title refers to a fabled trickster who can turn hopeless situations to his advantage ­ and thus survive. We’re planning to link Anansi to three other films and program them together as an »African quartet«. In Bernard Giraudeau’s Launen eines Flusses (The Whims of a River) (1996), a French-German coproduction, a French count has been exiled to a French-African colony in the 18th century because of a duel. In Egon Günther’s Morenga (FRG, 1985), a Tellux production based on a novel of the same title by Uwe Timm and set in 1904 in South Africa, German and British colonialists intrigue to provoke a war with the Hottentots. The film was an official entry at the 1985 Berlinale. And in Rainer Simon’s Fernes Land Pa-isch (Faraway Country »Pa-isch«) (1996) a lad of 16 runs away from home with his mulatto half-sister to escape to »Pa-isch« (Portuguese colloquial meaning »country«), where the girl’s Angolan father has returned. (See review in KINO 73.)

­ Ed.

The Progress-Berlinale-Brunch takes place on February 9 at 11 am in the Palais am Festungsgraben next to the Humboldt University in Berlin-Mitte. We will announce new films for Progress Film-Verleih. Check our homepage ­ www.progress-film.de ­ for information.