NESWS & VIEWS

»Scenes / Perspectives ­ Views of a City« was emblazoned on my invitation to attend (February 2) a film-photo-exhibit at the Hamburger Landesvertretung on Jägerstrasse in Berlin-Mitte. The brain child of Eva Hubert at Filmförderung Hamburg (Hamburg Film Fund), the exhibit by portrait photographer Simon Puschmann features 21 resident Hamburg actors and filmmakers against backdrops where they feel the most comfortable: in their living rooms or office lofts, on street corners or at a restaurant, one hanging around the harbor, another on the shooting set, of course , and a third on the back of a horse! For the cinéaste and German film buff, most of these faces are familiar ­ to wit: Barbara Auer, Nina Petri, Peter Lohmeyer, Jürgen Vogel, Hark Bohm, Rolf Schübel, and Fatih Akin, whose Gegen die Wand (Head On) is competing for the Golden Bear (Berlinale Palast, February 12). Their comments about the Hansestadt ­ some saucy, others philosophical ­ also catch your eye. Fatih Akin, for instance, one of German cinema’s prominent Turkish directors, feels that every corner of this cosmopolitan city is a universe of its own. Many would agree with him.

On hand for the occasion was Hamburg Cultural Senator Dr. Dana Horakova, FFH’s Eva Hubert, Albert Wiederspiel of Filmfest Hamburg (where the exhibit had been officially launched last September), actor Peter Lohmeyer (Das Wunder von Bern), and several key personalities of the German film scene: Jürgen Schau (Global Entertainment), Martin Wiebel (WDR Cologne), Ronald Trisch (GoEast Film Festival), and Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick, whose career as a top-drawer promoter of German filmmaking talent had begun in Hamburg a couple decades ago. His personal reminiscences as a légère Swabian speech-writer for the Mayor of Hamburg were typical rib-ticklers. This writer, too, was the butt of one of his passing jokes: »I see you’re toting a Cannes bag,« he mused. »Be sure you’re carrying a Berlinale one by the middle of the festival!»

Ron Holloway