Almanya, Yasemin & Nesrin Samdereli, Germany 2011

"Islam is part of Germany, and I am the President of all Germans, Muslims included", thus spoke German President Christian Wulff in his speech to commemorate the 20th anniversary of German reunification last October. Though long overdue, Wulff's words were greeted by a collective sigh of relief by the country's well-nigh 5 million Muslims. However, in a climate where much of Europe is gripped by Islamophobia, Wulff's speech was not equally welcomed by all parts of German society. To underline his point of view, Wulff made it a point to attend the world premiere of Almanya along with his wife Bettina. Not exactly known to be a cineaste, his appearance was therefore rightly read as a (political) statement, and again, one that didn't come a minute too soon.


The team of Almanya at the film's world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival three weeks ago. On the right is German President Christian Wulff and his wife Bettina.

Not dissimilar to Wulff, Almanya, too, can be seen as political statement, or rather, an outstretched hand by Germany's Turkish community whose relationship with its host country - which has long become home to many - has been a choppy one, to put it mildly. Almanya is worth seeing for a whole number of reasons. Not only does it offer those Germans whose contact with their Turkish neighbours have been, shall we say, infrequent, a rare glimpse into the world of Germany's primary immigrant community. By so doing, the film makes clear that the lives of the Turkish family next door isn't that different from their own. Almanya shows how - usually - unfounded prejudices on both sides have characterised, if not marred, the relationship between Germans and Turks from the first. What's more, more Turks have made ample efforts to assimilate, including partaking in annual Christmas celebrations and so forth, than one is led to believe by reading the daily press.

What else is new?, you might understandably ask, but bearing in mind that misconceptions about Islam have reached fever pitch, never mind that most of it is based on ignorance, Almanya is a crucial contribution regarding the understanding between both, Germans and Turks. I realise as I'm writing this that this sounds like a text written by a human rights activist some 50 years ago. And yet, such is the debate and the anti-Muslim sentiment here in Europe that a film such as Almanya comes as much needed comic relief, not to mention that its educational role cannot be overestimated as it shows, for instance, that religion plays as little a role in the average Turkish family as it does in its German counterpart. But for all its merit and good intentions, Almanya's messages are easy to digest since they come with a twinkle in the eye rather than wrapped in bitterness or with a wagging finger.

Given its very positive reception at the Berlin Film Festival, the film's nominations for the German Film Awards, not to mention the considerable editorial coverage Almanya has received in the German media, I sincerely hope that the film will be seen by a multitude of people as it's not only interesting and often hilariously funny, but also beautiful to look at and highly entertaining.


Yasemin and Nesrin Samdereli, the writer-directors of Almanya

Unknown, Jaume Collet-Serra, Germany/ France/ UK 2011

As a Berlin resident, I awaited the opening of Collet-Serra's film with high anticipation. Tickets for its world premiere during the Berlin Film Festival two weeks were sold out within minutes. Finally, yesterday Unknown opened nation-wide across Germany, one week after its US release, whose more than respectable box-office figures exceeded all expectations while it sent my own soaring. But to come straight to the point, these were in no way met. In fact, Unknown disappointed on almost every level. Notably the screenplay and the dialogues were completely lacking in logic and imagination as every opportunity to add some much needed suspense was wasted. For the basic plot-line of Unknown is not without promise. Quite the opposite. A skilled screenwriter may have turned this story of a scientist whose identity gets stolen into a tightly woven psycho-thriller a la Hitchcock, full of suspense and nerve-racking story-twists. As it is, the nerve-racking parts were entirely left to the special effects department which, along with the cinematographer, injected the film with some much needed drama. Though these skilfully staged car races through Berlin are of limited consequence for the film's narrative and come across disjointed as their sole function seems to be to fill the voids in between.

The biggest disappointment to me, though, is how little the screenwriter and the director made of the location, the city of Berlin, whose many mysterious, eerie and iconic places, areas and buildings are pregnant with possibilities and would have lent themselves perfectly for this kind of film. Instead, they opted for locations which did little to further the plot and which bear nor surprises for the viewer. Worse yet, in the - it seems mandatory club scene (the film is, after all, set in Berlin!) - instead of using, for instance, the fabulous BergHain club as a set, the scene takes place in an interchangeable location which, for all we know, could be anywhere in the world.

Which brings me to the next point. Berlin is full of DJ's from all over the world who work in the city's many clubs. And if there's one thing today's Berlin is most famous for - besides its art scene - it's the music. So why didn't it occur to Collet-Serra to use a more inspired, less overused, tune than Blue Monday? The result being that the club scene, too, offered plenty of opportunities to lift his film above the ordinary, but Collet-Serra wasted it yet again.

On the bottom-line, the only reason that kept me from leaving the cinema were Sebastian Koch, Bruno Ganz and especially Diane Kruger, who gets better with every film. Playing an illegal immigrant, Diane Kruger excels at assuming a Bosnian accent and she has a presence which a few years ago I would have never thought was in her.

Pina, Wim Wenders, Germany/ France 2011

Wim Wenders' homage to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch is nothing short of a masterpiece. Calling it a documentary is not quite doing it justice. It really is an homage to her life, her work, her vision. Focussing on a small number of her choreographies - Cafe Mueller, Kontakthof, Sacre du Printemps and Vollmond among them - Wenders takes Pina's creations out of the theatre and into and around the city Pina was born in and which she loved - Wuppertal. The dance sequences alternate with statements from some of her dancers who come from all around the world. In short comments and observations they talk about their collaboration with Pina Bausch, her influence on them, and Pina's own particular way of inspiring them.

In several interviews Wenders gave in the last few weeks, he has stated that he'd long pondered over how to tackle the difficult task of adequately capturing dance on film - until it came to him that the new developments in 3D technology would be able to do justice to Pina's work and legacy. And having seen his film twice, I couldn't agree more with Wenders. Never before has dance on film looked so beautiful, so mesmerising, and so evocative. Pina is highly recommended and highly addictive viewing!

Pina's world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival was attended by the German chancellor Angela Merkel as well as by the German president, Christian Wulff. Neither of them are film aficionados in any way. However, this goes to show to what extent Pina Bausch and her creations have become an integral and crucial part of German culture and identity.

See a trailer of Pina here:

Ingmar Bergman Exhibition at the Film Museum, Berlin

Ingmar Bergman was born on July 14, 1918 in Uppsala, Sweden, the son of a Lutheran pastor, Erik Bergman and his wife Karin, née Åkerblom. His strict, Protestant parental home lastingly influenced him and Bergman made reference to childhood memories many times in his oeuvre. The sensitive, imaginative boy frequently protected himself from hurt and humiliation by fibbing. Later, the fine line between truth and lies – becoming slander, deceit and self-deception – would run through Bergman’s work as leitmotifs.

Throughout his career Ingmar Bergman produced 130 stage productions, 42 radio productions, 23 television plays and 39 movies. His work has received numerous international awards, including three Academy Awards (Oscars) for Best Foreign Language Film. Directors, such as Woody Allen, Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick and Billy Wilder, have shown admiration for Bergman. In 1997, at the Cannes Film Festival, he was the first person in the history of the festival to be awarded its highest prize, the “Palme des Palmes,” for his life’s work. Bergman’s films, spanning from dramas to comedies and intimate plays to opulent costume films, are strongly inspired by the landscape and literature of Scandinavia, yet they are universal.

The exhibition includes select items from Bergman's personal correspondence, costumes and props from Bergman's films, stills, screenplays and film clips. Below are some examples:


Costumes by Marik Vos-Lundh for Virgin Spring (1960)


Costumes by Mark Vos-Lundh for Bergman's film Fanny and Alexander (1960)


Letter by Ingmar Bergman to Lotte Eisner in which he calls the Cannes Festival "a meat market and mental humiliation".


Altar Piece designed for Winter Light (1960) by P.A. Lundgren

The exhibition runs from January 27 to May 29, 2011

Sources:

Text - Museum fuer Film und Fernsehen
Fotos - Martin Sauter

The King's Speech, Tom Hooper, UK/ Australia 2011

I'm not quite sure I'm prepared to also jump on the bandwagon and heap praise after praise on Hooper's film. It's not that The King's Speech is a bad film - no! - but it simply isn't as brilliant or as special as it's made out to be. In actual fact, The King's Speech pretty much follows all the conventions of the traditional narrative, with very little surprises, let alone innovations on a cinematic level which may have involved anything from lighting, sound, cinematography or a deviation of the, in my opinion, way too traditional and predictable, narrative. The screenplay of The King's Speech could be the screenplay of any old love story that comes out of Hollywood inasmuch as it generally starts with the girl rejecting the boy, followed by the two eventually coming together, but somewhere around the middle of the film the girl has second thoughts and dumps the boy only for both of them to finally commit to each other for good at long last during the film's climactic moments - usually in the final 20 minutes - at the expense of the bad guy . Now replace the girl with King George VI and the bad guy with the archbishop of Canterbury and there you have it: the screenplay of The King's Speech!

Next, throw in a decent dose of the Brits favourite topic - Nazi-Germany and WWII - and you've got the recipe for the most successful film ever to come out of the UK (that's referring to the box-office grosses, of course, - but what else counts nowadays ...?) Anyone could have thought of that, right? Well, fact is nobody has, until David Seidler, this film's screenwriter, came along. Although it says in the credits that it's based on actual events, I'm of course unable to verify every single detail in the script for their historical accuracy besides the - easily verifiable - fact that Lionel Logue was King George VI's speech therapist. But one thing I do know, life seldom plays out like a movie - and the twists and turns in this film's screenplay simply have 'story development' written all over them. Which is fine by me. But don't try to sell me this film as the masterpiece it's claimed to be because it ain't.

In fact, the greatness of Hooper's film lies not so much in the writing, but - you guessed it! - in the acting. Both Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are outstanding and a pleasure to watch. And so is Helena Bonham-Carter, never mind that she's playing her usual flippant, witty, self. Thing is, she does it well. It's this trio, their interactions, that makes Hooper's film exceptional.

The King's Speech is a nostalgic if not sentimental, look back in history. Heritage film-making at top-level. Conventional, yes - but also very entertaining and beautiful to look at, too.

Berlinale 2011, Day 10, Awards Ceremony

Alfred Bauer Award, named after the founder of the Berlin Film Festival, bestowed to a film that's opening new perspectives in film making:

Who If Not Us (Wer wenn nicht wir), Andres Veiel, Germany 2011

Silver Bear for Best Screenplay:

Joshua Marston for The Forgiveness of Blood, Joshua Marston, US 2011

Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement:

- Wojciech Staron, Cinematography and Barbara Enriques, Production Design, both for The Prize (El Premio), Mexico/ France/ Poland/ Germany 2011

Silver Bear for Best Actress:

- the female ensemble of A Separation, Asghar Farhadi, Iran 2011: Leila Hatami, Sarina Farhadi, Sareh Bayat

Silver Bear for Best Actor:

- the male ensemble of A Separation, Asghar Farhadi, Iran 2011: Peyman Moaadi, Babak Karimi, Ali-Asghar Shahbazi

Silver Bear for Best Director:

Ulrich Koehler for Sleeping Sickness (Schlafkrankheit), Germany/ France 2011

Grand Prix of the Jury:

The Turin Horse, Bela Tarr, Hungary/ France/ Switzerland/ Germany 2011

Golden Bear for Best Film:

A Separation, Asghar Farhadi, Iran 2011

Berlinale 2011, Day 8, Panorama: Light-Flight, Annette Frick, Germany 2010

The rather poetic - original German - title of Annette Frick's film Leicht muss man sein, fliegen muss man koennen - which loosely translates into Light-Flight - refers to a quote by the late German photographer Herbert Tobias who died in 1982 as one of the early victims of AIDS. But AIDS is not the subject of Frick's documentary. Her film homes in on the life and work of Tobias who, though all but forgotten today, was not only ahead of his time but also quite influential, anticipating as he did, for instance, the work of Robert Mapplethorpe.

By way of numerous interviews Frick conducted over the years, she traces Tobias' life and work. Born in 1924, Herbert Tobias was drafted towards the end of WWII and spent time as a Russian prisoner of war until he managed to escape. He took to photography in the early 1950s while living in Berlin. Equally fascinated by masculinity as he was of haute couture, Tobias earned his living as a fashion photographer while at the same time photographing leather-clad men in images which Mapplethorpe would later become famous for. Tobias was as flamboyant as he was creative, getting up at noon with his models arriving in the late afternoon. Work was seldom finished before midnight, followed by long nights out on the town. Annette Frick searched all available archives to unearth as much material on Tobias as well as of him as possible. Her admiration for her subject is evident. Given its topic, it is shameful that Frick had to shoot her film on a shoestring budget. That it was made at all is thanks to Annette Frick's determination and the generosity of her friends, many of whom contributed either by working for free or by donating money. Why in a country like Germany, which often subsidises the most insignificant films through government funds, it proved impossible to get public funding for an important film like Frick's which, after all, revolves around a neglected part of Germany's cultural heritage, will forever remain a mystery to me. It seems to me, there's a project the guys from WikiLeaks may want to sink their teeth into ... I have a feeling that with regard to the disbursement of the much coveted German government film funds we'd all be in for a few surprises!


Annette Frick on stage after the screening of her film last night in Berlin


Annette Frick, next to her the painter and photographer Juergen Draeger, a friend of Tobias whom Frick interviewed for her film


Annette Frick and her collaborators