Venice Film Festival, 1 - 11 September 2010

The 67. Venice Film Festival opens tomorrow.

What follows is a listing of the films showing in the International Competition:


DARREN ARONOFSKY - BLACK SWAN [OPENING FILM]
USA, 103'
Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

ASCANIO CELESTINI - LA PECORA NERA
Italy, 93'
Ascanio Celestini, Giorgio Tirabassi, Maya Sansa

SOFIA COPPOLA - SOMEWHERE
USA, 98'
Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Benicio Del Toro, Michelle Monaghan, Laura Chiatti, Simona Ventura

ANTONY CORDIER - HAPPY FEW
France, 103'
Marina Fois, Elodie Bouchez, Roschdy Zem, Nicolas Duvauchelle

SAVERIO COSTANZO - LA SOLITUDINE DEI NUMERI PRIMI
Italy, Germany, France, 118'
Alba Rohrwacher, Luca Marinelli, Filippo Timi, Isabella Rossellini, Maurizio Donadoni

ALEKSEI FEDORCHENKO - OVSYANKI (SILENT SOULS)
Russia, 75'
Igor Sergeyev, Yuriy Tsurilo, Yuliya Aug, Victor Sukhorukov

VINCENT GALLO - PROMISES WRITTEN IN WATER
USA, 75'
Vincent Gallo, Delfine Bafort, Sage Stallone, Lisa Love

MONTE HELLMAN - ROAD TO NOWHERE
USA, 121'
Shannyn Sossamon, Dominique Swain, John Diehl, Fabio Testi

ÁLEX DE LA IGLESIA - BALADA TRISTE DE TROMPETA
Spain, France, 107'
Carolina Bang, Santiago Segura, Antonio de la Torre, Fernando Guillen-Cuervo

ABDELLATIF KECHICHE - VENUS NOIRE
France, 166'
Yahima Torres, Olivier Gourmet, André Jacobs

PABLO LARRAÍN - POST MORTEM
Chile, Mexico, Germany, 98'
Alfredo Castro, Antonia Zegers

RICHARD J. LEWIS - BARNEY'S VERSION
Canada, Italy, 132'
Dustin Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver

MARIO MARTONE - NOI CREDEVAMO
Italy, France, 204'
Luigi Lo Cascio, Valerio Binasco, Toni Servillo, Luca Zingaretti, Michele Riondino, Francesca Inaudi, Anna Bonaiuto

CARLO MAZZACURATI - LA PASSIONE
Italy, 106'
Silvio Orlando, Giuseppe Battiston, Corrado Guzzanti, Cristiana Capotondi, Stefania Sandrelli, Kasia Smutniak

TAKASHI MIIKE - JÛSAN-NIN NO SHIKAKU (13 ASSASSINS)
Japan, 126'
Kôji Yakusho, Takayuki Yamada, Yusuke Iseya, Goro Inagaki

FRANÇOIS OZON - POTICHE
France, 103'
Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini, Karin Viard, Judith Godrèche, Jérémie Régnier


KELLY REICHARDT - MEEK'S CUTOFF
USA, 104'
Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson

JULIAN SCHNABEL - MIRAL
Usa, France, Italy, Israel, 112'
Freida Pinto, Hiam Abbass, Willem Dafoe, Yasmine Al Masri, Vanessa Redgrave

JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI - ESSENTIAL KILLING
Poland, Norway, Hungary, Ireland, 83'
Vincent Gallo, Emmanuelle Seigner

ANH HUNG TRAN - NORUWEI NO MORI (NORWEGIAN WOOD)
Japan, 133'
Kenichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi, Kiko Mizuhara, Kengo Kora, Reika Kirishima

ATHINA RACHEL TSANGARI - ATTENBERG
Greece, 95'
Ariane Labed, Vangelis Mourikis, Evangelia Randou, Yorgos Lanthimos

HARK TSUI - DI RENJIE ZHI TONGTIAN DIGUO (DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF PHANTOM FLAME)
China, 122'
Andy Lau, Carina Lau, Li Bingbing, Tony Leung Ka Fai

TOM TYKWER - DREI
Germany, 120'
Sophie Rois, Sebastian Schipper, Devid Striesow

For more information, please log on to the website of the Venice Biennale by clicking here!

Heat and Dust, James Ivory, UK 1983

Having recently watched James Ivory's Heat and Dust again, it occurred to me that much as the 1980s was the decade when the Holocaust started to become a topic in German films, it was a trend that had its equivalent in British - and to some extent also US - cinema in a look back to the colonial age: Heat and Dust (1983), Passage to India (1984), White Mischief (1987), and Out of Africa (1985) are probably the most prominent examples of films produced with UK or US coin that are set in a an erstwhile British colony, usually India or Kenya. What all four films have in common is that they mock the arrogance and ignorance of the British towards the countries they had claimed. Perhaps, occupied would be a better word. But more interestingly, three of the above examples - Heat and Dust, Passage to India, and Out of Africa - follow a similar pattern inasmuch as a number of central characters are identical in all three films.

Judy Davies as Adela Quested in David Lean's A Passage to India (UK/ US 1984)

For starters, in all three examples the main protagonist is female: Olivia in Heat and Dust, Adela in Passage to India, and Karen in Out of Africa. Moreover, Olivia, Adela, and Karen all arrive with an indifferent, if not superior, attitude towards their new country but gradually come to appreciate it, perhaps even prefer it to the country of their birth, much to the distress of the emigre community, which, as a result, increasingly shuns them. However, in all three cases, one renegade member of this emigre community stands by them when literally all other members of this community have turned against them: Fielding's support for Adela has its parallel in Harry's for Olivia in Heat and Dust and Berkeley Cole's for Karen in Out of Africa.

Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen and Robert as Denys Finchatton in Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (US 1985)

Additionally, Adela and Karen also have a native male sage as their confidante - Godbole and Farah respectively - whom they go to for guidance and advise. But most importantly, the marriages of Adela, Karen and Olivia all fall apart as a result of the impact their adopted country has on them. Much to the outrage of their fellow countrymen and women, Adela and Olivia even fall for a native - Aziz and The Nawab respectively - while Karen's choice of Denys is equally frowned upon for although he's not a native he might as well be. Denys makes no bones about preferring the company of the natives to that of his compatriots whom he considers inferior and arrogant, an attitude Karen is to adopt over the course of the film.

Greta Scacchi as Olivia and Christopher Cazenove as Douglas in James Ivory's Heat and Dust (UK 1983)

Adela and Karen both return to their homeland after things had come to a head. Olivia, however, chooses to remain in her adopted country, though by deserting the emigre community, opting for a life in solitude in a remote place up in the mountains. While Karen wants to settle in Kenya out of curiosity ("At least we'll have been somewhere"), Adela and Olivia are indifferent upon their arrival in India as their main reason for going is to join their husbands. However, the experiences and the people they encounter in their new home leave their marks on them and at the end Adela, Olivia and Karen are no longer the same person they were upon their arrival. Like a rite of passage, living abroad has changed them, made them stronger, and they've become all the more interesting and fascinating for it.

What I don't know is, if these similarities in the narratives of those three films are merely a coincidence or if, for instance, one screenwriter took their cue from another. From my own research on German-Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, I do know, however, that women found it far easier to settle and integrate themselves into their adopted country than did men. While of course, Adela's, Olivia's and Karen's experience can hardly be compared to that of the Jews being driven out of their home country, the ability to adapt to a new one can. Hence, it may not be a coincidence after all, to find women at the heart of these colonial narratives which are, in their essence, about migrating from one country to another, for that's where they historically belong.

Portrait: Hannelore Elsner

German actress Hannelore Elsner was born in 1942 in Munich.

She is probably little known beyond the German borders, despite the fact that she's been making films since the age of 17 and continues to have a strong presence in German cinema and television while quite a few of her films have also been released abroad.


Hannelore Elsner: A class act

To audiences outside Germany, Elsner might be best known for her collaboration with Oskar Roehler in Die Unberuehrbare (Nowhere to Go, Germany, 2000) and, more recently, her leading part in Doris Doerrie's Cherry Blossoms (Germany 2008).


Hannelore Elsner and her co-star, Elmar Wepper, in Doris Doerrie's homage to the films of Japanese director Yasuhiro Ozu, Cherry Blossoms (Germany 2008)


Hannelore Elsner in Roehler's Die Unberuehrbare. Roehler's film is based on the life of his mother, Gisela Elsner who, it should be added, was not related to Hannelore. Roehler's mother committed suicide in 1992.

But Hannelore Elsner also starred in Dani Levy's acclaimed Alles auf Zucker (Go for Zucker, Germany 2005), a comedy about Jewish identity, which was hailed by the German press as the first Jewish-themed comedy since 1933 and became an instant success in and outside Germany.


Hannelore Elsner with Doris Doerrie and Patti Smith at the dinner following the opening of the Berlin Film Festival in 2008


Hannelore Elsner in March 2007, outside the Jewish Cultural Centre in Munich. Hannelore participated in an evening to commemorate the life and work of Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, a German-Jewish poetess who perished in December 1942 in the Michailowska concentration camp.


Hannelore Elsner walking the red carpet at the opening of the Berlin Film Festival 2009

Hannelore's most recent role was playing the mother to German rapper Bushido in a biopic about his life, Zeiten aendern sich (Times Change, Germany 2010).


Hannelore Elsner, seen here with Bushido at the Munich Film Ball in 2010


A picture from what is, perhaps, my own personal favourite Hannelore Elsner film: Vivere (Germany 2006), by Angelina Maccarone. Like Go for Zucker, Vivere also revolves around identity. Set in Cologne, which is Maccarone's home town, Elsner plays Gerlinde von Haberman, a homosexual woman of a certain age who's been deserted by her lover. Aimlessly wandering through Cologne, Elsner comes across Francesca Conchiglia, a cab driver, trying to come to terms with both her sexuality and her identity as the daughter of first generation Italian immigrants.

Das Leben Ist Zu Lang (Life Is Too Long), Dani Levy, Germany 2010

Today, Dani Levy's new film Das Leben Ist Zu Lang (Life Is Too Long) opens nationwide across Germany.

More than one critic has already compared Levy's new film to the comedies of Woody Allen. Like Allen, Levy, too is Jewish, and so is alter ego in his new film, Alfi Seliger, played by Markus Hering. More than this, Seliger, like Allen, wears glasses.

Any questions?

In Life Is Too Long, Seliger is on a downwards spiral, professionally and personally. Levy obviously has a field day poking fun at Seliger's many mishaps while along the way, these cause Seliger to reflect on his life and its meaning.

I don't think it's presumptuous to assume that Levy's new film - besides being inspired by Allen's work - also contains some autobiographical clues about Levy's own life, although Levy's rather successful career can in no way be compared to that of the unfortunate Seliger. Levy's film, Alles auf Zucker (Go For Zucker, Germany 2005) swept the Germen Film Awards in 2006, garnering no less than six major awards. Levy's last, Mein Fuehrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler (Germany 2007), was a succes de scandale (or would calling it a succes d'estime be more to the point ...?) for being the first - German - film to treat the subject of Hitler comically rather than in a critical and serious context, although it was later widely agreed that Levy's film was way too tame and lacked, in fact, a dash of irreverence. So as if he hadn't dared to go were no one - in his home turf, at least - had gone before.



For Life Is Too Long Levy has assembled an impressive cast, including Meret Becker, Veronica Ferres - who plays a Russian ding-dong willing to do everything for a part - Heino Ferch, and, of all people: Elke Sommer, who came out of her retirement in Beverly Hills to participate in Levy's film.

For a trailer (in German) of Life Is Too Long, please click here!

Remembered: Lilli Palmer

Lilli Palmer was born Lillie Marie Preiser in 1914 in Posen in what was then Germany. Her father was a surgeon at Berlin's Jewish hospital, her mother an actress. Against her father's wishes, Lilli would soon follow her mother's footsteps and study drama with Ilka Gruening and Lucie Hoeflich in Berlin.

As Lilli wrote in her autobiography, by the time she received her first engagement at the theatre in Darmstadt, the Nazis had already risen to power, forcing her to leave her native country. Lilli first settled in Paris, but soon after went to London where she received her first big break in Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent (UK 1936), in which the leading role was played by another refugee from Nazi Germany, Peter Lorre. While in London, Lilli met fellow actor Rex Harrison, whom she later married.


Lilli Palmer and Rex Harrison in a photo by Tony Frissell from 1950

Surviving the German Blitz in their house outside London, in 1945 Lilli and Rex accepted an offer from Warner Bros. to go to Hollywood. Lilli's first two American films are among her best: Cloak and Dagger, from 1946, which was directed by fellow German Fritz Lang, and Body and Soul, by Abraham Polonsky, released in 1947, in which her co-star was John Garfield.


Lilli Palmer with co-star Gary Cooper in Fritz Lang's Cloak and Dagger (USA 1946)

Although Lilli made a number of films in the US and eventually even had her own TV show, in 1954 she accepted an offer from Erik Charell to return to her native Germany to star in his film Feuerwerk (Fireworks, W-Germany 1954). Like Lilli, Charell had fled the Nazis in 1933 but unlike Lilli, he returned to Germany after the war. The film became a major success and for the first time introduced Lilli to German audiences. Following the release of Feuerwerk, Lilli turned into one of Germany's biggest stars of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. One of her most memorable films from that period is the Arthur Brauner produced remake of Leontine Sagan's lesbian-themed drama, Maedchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform, W-Germany 1958), in which Lilli plays Miss von Bernburg, the object of Romy Schneider's Manuela von Meinhardis' attraction. German feminist Alice Schwartzer famously called the screen kiss of Palmer and Schneider the "sexiest in post-war German film".


Romy Schneider and Lilli Palmer in Girls in Geza von Radvanyi's Girls in Uniform (W-Germany 1958)

It is perhaps less of an irony than an atonement of sorts that the country she was forced to leave in 1933 now turned Lilli into one of its biggest stars. Over the years, she was the recipient of numerous awards and became a regular in German talk shows. And although Lilli continued to make films in the US as well as several other countries - she was, after all, fluent in English, French and Italian - at least to German audiences Lilli is best remembered today for her work in post-war Germany where her films are still frequently shown on television.

After Lilli's painful divorce from Rex Harrison, in 1957 Lilli married the Argentinian actor Carlos Thompson. Together, they settled in Switzerland, and besides her career as an actress, Lilli took increasingly to writing and painting. Her memoirs, Change Lobsters and Dance, became an international success, but particularly so in its German translation, Dicke Lilli, gutes Kind.


Lilli seen here in 1974 talking to Helmut Schmidt, the German chancellor between 1974 and 1982

Lilli died in 1986 in Los Angeles and is buried there in the Glendale branch of the Forest Lawn Cemetery (> for more on Forest Lawn Glendale, go to the blog archives in the sidebar and search for 'City of Angeles, Final Resting Places, Forest Lawn/ Glendale). Carlos Thompson, unable to cope with the loss of his wife, killed himself in 1990 by gunshot.


Memorial plaque for Lilli Palmer on the building of Hoelderlinstrasse 11 in the Westend District of Berlin, where Lilli lived with her parents between 1917 and 1932

A Private Function, Richard Mowbray, UK 1984

Calling A Private Function a romp would not do it justice for despite its fair share of bathroom humour, far too clever and subtle in its observations is the screenplay by Alan Bennett to be dismissed as being merely a romp. However, A Private Function is indeed hilarious, but it is also full of wicked little comments and allusions to post-war misery, the British class system and its upshot, snobbery.

A Private Function is set in 1947 in rural Yorkshire at the time of the royal wedding of the future Queen Elizabeth to Prince Phillip. Michael Palin plays Gilbert Chilvers, the town's chiropodist married to Joyce - portrayed by Maggie Smith - a piano teacher who also plays the Wurlitzer at the local cinema on the side. I admit being a huge - I mean HUGE! - fan of Maggie Smith's. She probably is the only actress with the ability to make me laugh uproariously even if she was just reading out the phone book. However, Maggie Smith really is hysterical in her role as Joyce since much of A Private Function's humour derives from Joyce's social ambitions. Joyce, unlike her husband, who passively gets on with his life, intends "to take this town". As we learn somewhere along the line, Joyce's father used to own a chain of dry-cleaners and so Joyce "wants a future that lives up to her past". Never mind that looking at Joyce's mother - whose dottiness and social ineptness can't just be a result of her age - it is hard to believe that Joyce's past is little more than a product of her fantasy. But this discrepancy between Joyce's social aspirations and the Chilvers' reality gives rise to A Private Function's funniest lines, and Maggie Smith the opportunity to be at her camp best! With post-war rationing still in full swing, Gilbert, egged on by Joyce, steals a pig. With a private function to commemorate the royal wedding coming up - to which, of course, neither Joyce nor Gilbert are invited - possessing said pig, which would provide plenty of meat to feed the dinner guests, Joyce senses her opportunity to schmooze their way into the town's upper crust from which they have thus far been so blatantly excluded. Once the pig is in the Chilvers' house, that's when A Private Function is at its riotous best, although what follows may not be for the faint-hearted. Unbeknownst to the unsuspecting Joyce, who hopes that "the pig will be a clean one", the poor animal suffers from a severe case of diarrhoea for having previously been fed a rat!

But the ensuing mess in the Chilvers' house notwithstanding, in the end Joyce emerges victorious. Finding out that the pig is unlicensed, she knows she has the upper hand and that there's little the pig's rightful owners can do. These are none other than the members of the town's upper crust, among them the town doctor who so staunchly tries to prevent the Chilvers' ascent into society. But having them by the tail, Joyce rolls in the cocktail trolley, herself dressed up to the nines, and nips on a glass of sherry while proposing a deal.

And so Joyce gets her invitation to the private function after all. Never mind that they are seated next to the toilets. Though when, in the very last scene, we see Joyce dancing with the doctor, whose hand wanders slowly from her back down to her bottom, we know that come the next such function Joyce will be seated at the very front - be that with Gilbert or someone else.

Christoph Schlingensief 1960 - 2010

It has just been reported that German film and theatre director Christoph Schlingensief has died. Schlingensief had been battling lung-cancer for some time.

Besides directing numerous - often controversial - films in Germany and Africa, Schlingensief also directed operas for the Bayreuth Wagner Festival as well as the Opera Festival in Manaus, Brazil. He was also involved in an opera project in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, where he intended to build an opera house.

He was an uncompromising artist who didn't shrink from taboo violations and whose work usually contained strong political messages which, it must be said, weren't always understood, nor did they sit well with the establishment.


Schlingensief and Tilda Swinton, seen here at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009, where Schlingensief was a member of the jury while Swinton was the jury president

In the 1980s Schlingensief dated actress Tilda Swinton. In recent years, he collaborated with countless national and international artists, Udo Kier, Margit Carstensen, and Patti Smith among them. Not that long ago Schlingensief married his long-time collaborator, costume designer Aino Laberenz, in a private ceremony in Hoppenrade Castle in Brandenburg.


Schlingensief at work in Burkina Faso