German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

Dagie Brundert taking a picture from her Berlin window before getting on the plane to Toronto.


Berlin super 8 artist Dagie Brundert is the inaugural Goethe-LIFT Filmmaker-in-Residence 2012 and will guest photo blog here over the month of May.

Berlin super 8 filmmaker Dagie Brundert is packing her bags as I write this:
She is about to arrive in Toronto as the inaugural Goethe-LIFT Filmmaker-in-Residence. She will engage in workshops, super 8-based city explorations and two presentations of her work, as well as a trip to Windsor's Media City Film Festival. Details on our web site next week.

Asked “When I think of Toronto/Canada I imagine….“, Dagie answered expectantly (& still from Berlin)...

".... a high and wide sky, the flavour of maple syrup lingering in the air, a dynamic variety of alternative and funky culture and lots of lovely quirky people!!!"

We'll see how we live up to this excited expectation in a post-residency Q&A in this spot in June. In the meantime, Dagie Brundert will guest blog right here over the next few weeks with visual impressions of her Toronto adventures and endeavours.

A special thanks to Ben Donoghue and LIFT for their dedication & much appreciated partnership in this new international film residency.



by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

Actor, director, writer, producer – Dominik Graf, who turns 60 later this year, is as versatile as few German filmmakers. The innovative trilogy Dreileben by Graf, Christoph Hochhäusler, and Christian Petzold was the event of last year’s Berlinale (and was subsequently shown at TIFF 2011).In the Face of Crime, which he wrote and directed and which premiered at the Berlinale 2010, will be continue our focus on “Berlin on Film” in our ongoing series GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Bell Lightbox in May.

The son of two actors started out at the top: He received the Bavarian Film Award for his 1979 graduation film Der kostbare Gast at Academy for Television & Film and has amassed nine Grimme awards throughout the highs (Die Katze) and lows (Der Sieger) of his career. “I wasn’t happy with my own films. The Bavarian Film Award though was a huge –and unexpected—acknowledgment. After that I thought for the first time: Oh, perhaps you will be a director after all!? And still it took years before I liked to watch my own films,” he commented on the early years.

Graf’s thriller The Cat (1987) won him the German Film Award for Best Director. In the genre, he found his greatest successes. “I only like police thrillers. Okay, I can live with a private detective – but a thriller without an investigator leaves me cold. My hero is the one who searches for the truth. The darker the mirror he has to look into, the better the story. The detective has to find his own way out of the darkness.” is Graf’s recipe for success.

His influences came from the industry’s misfits and mavericks – directors such as Arthur Penn, Claude Sautet or Nick Roeg, about who he wrote a book ("Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen”, 2010). When asked what is good cinema, he replied: deviant, subversive, vicious, funny, lively, and please never dignified.

Recently, he has contributed to the celebrated collage Deutschland '09 - 13 kurze Filme zur Lage der Nation alongside Tykwer, Akin and others. For his contribution (Der Weg, den wir nicht zusammen gehen) Graf chose an intriguing and thoughtful mix of documentary and essay film to broach the issue of the disappearance and displacement of history through architectural examples. Already with his TV movie Bei Thea (1986), Graf had established himself as a sensitive director of films around German-Jewish issues. At this year’s Berlinale, he premiered his documentary Lawinen der Erinnerung about the late TV author Oliver Storz’s life from the last days of the Second World War to his recent death.

His next project as writer-director looks like a departure: The romantic history drama Die geliebten Schwestern about a pair of sisters who both fell in love with dramatist Friedrich Schiller in 1788 will start shooting this summer.


GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Bell Lightbox: In the Face of Crime
Monday, May 7 (Part 1)
Thursday, May 10 (Part 2)
Thursday, May 14 (Part 3)

Written and directed by Dominik Graf. World premiere at the Berlinale 2010.

6:30pm each (doors open 6:10pm); Cinema 5, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto
Tickets $10 per night; day-of sales at the TIFF Box Office
With English subtitles
Open to audiences 18+


by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

A bit of time travel this week: Silent Toronto brings Murnau's 1924 The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann) with live piano accompaniment this Sunday.

Legendary German director F.W. Murnau’s masterpiece offers us a peep-hole view into the life of an aging hotel porter (star actor Emil Jannings), too enfeebled to carry out his tasks, who is demoted to the role of bathroom attendant. The film explores integrity, pride, and the importance of rank and uniform in post-World War I Germany,

With one exception, the film’s lack of inter-titles offers the audience a more immersive, purely visual experience, courtesy of master cinematographer Karl Freund. The portly actor, who later starred alongside Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, was the first German film star to prosper in the United States. And whereas flappers like Louise Brooks or Clara Bow could convey their intentions using a coy smile or the batting of an eye-lash, Jannings expresses his fall from grace using his entire body.

Only twenty-nine at the time, Jannings’ performance is one of the most lauded in silent film history. As Matthew Josephson wrote in the contemporary Masters of the Motion Picture: “The idiotic old creature is interpreted with as much eclat, sympathy, intimacy, and frankness, as let us say, Chaplin interprets Chaplin.”

Featuring live piano accompaniment by Laura Silberberg.
Introduced by Charlie Keil, associate professor of Cinema Studies, University of Toronto.
Preceded by Glimpses of Toronto, a late 1920s silent travelogue showing Toronto at the time of the film’s Ontario premiere in 1928.

Directed by F.W. Murnau
Written by Carl Mayer
Starring Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft
75 mins | 16mm

Sunday, April 29, 4pm. Revue Cinema, 400 Roncesvalles, Toronto. Admission $12 non-members / $10 members

@imagesfestival's "Talk to the Pie": #KerenCytter says about her performance work "I'm between failure and 'well received'".

#KerenCytter @imagesfestival about set design: "I don't like big sets, I don't want the actors have to justify the set."

#KerenCytter @imagesfestival about creating performances: "I give the actors the script - and then it's a nightmare."

#KerenCytter @imagesfestival projects subtitles mirrored. Excellent left-right brain exercise.

#KerenCytter @imagesfestival: "The stage is the reality."



by Jutta Brendemuehl, Goethe-Institut

From today's German Films' press release:



Festival director Thierry Frémaux announced the highly anticipated program for the 65th Cannes International Film Festival (16 – 27 May 2012) today.

For the second time, after MY JOY in 2010, Sergei Loznitsa has been invited into the Official Competition with his new film IN THE FOG (IM NEBEL, DE/LV/NL/BY). ma.ja.de. fiction/Leipzig is the German producer. The film tells the story of two partisans who receive the order during the Second World War to kill a presumed traitor in their ranks. The accused is in a hopeless situation, he cannot prove his innocence and finally passes judgement on himself. A film about the attempt to make a moral decision in an immoral situation.

An old friend in Cannes is Michael Haneke – his new film AMOUR (LIEBE, FR/DE/AT), German producer is X Filme Creative Pool/Berlin, will also be featured in the Competition. An elderly retired couple have to prove the strength of their love for one another when the wife suffers a stroke.

POST TENEBRAS LUX by Carlos Reygadas, the German producer is The Match Factory/Cologne (MX/FR/NL/DE), is the observation of a Mexican couple who cannot cope with the harsh life in the countryside.

Also in Competition are HOLY MOTORS by Leos Carax (FR/DE), who is following 24 hours in the life a being traveling between multiple parallel lives, German producers Pandora Film Produktion/Cologne and Pola Pandora Film/Berlin; and Ulrich Seidl‘s PARADISE: LOVE (AT/DE/FR), produced on the German side by Tatfilm/Cologne, which tells three stories of three women and of three loves.

Fatih Akin will be in Cannes now for the third time. This year, he will be in Special Screenings with a documentation entitled GARBAGE IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN (DER MÜLL IM GARTEN EDEN), produced by corazón international/Hamburg, which accompanies the 10-year struggle of a Turkish mountain village against the Turkish state about a garbage dump which directly affects the village.

The literary adaptation CONFESSIONS OF A CHILD OF THE CENTURY by Sylvie Verheyde (FR/DE/GB) has been invited to screen in Un Certain Regard. The German producer is Integral Film/Berg. In his autobiographical Confessions, the writer Alfred de Musset elaborated on a passionate affair with the writer George Sand who was six years older than him.

Another film in Un Certain Regard, LA PIROGUE by Moussa Touré (FR/SN/DE), German producer Royal Pony Film/Munich, tells the story of Baye Laye, who was supposed to bring 30 men from Africa to Spain with his pirogue. Nobody knows how it will turn out.

Eicke Bettinga will be a guest on the Côte d’Azur again with a new short film, this time with an invitation to the Short Film Competition. GASP tells a story about a seventeen-year-old boy. All he wants is to feel something. Anything. Until one day he pushes his longing to the limit.


The programs of Quinzaine des Réalisateurs and Semaine de la Critique will be announced on 23 April.

Tomorrow's the big night: Images & Goethe are co-presenting Keren Cytter, whose influences are the masters such as Alfred Hitchcock or John Cassavetes, and who is (in)famous for doing everything herself: write, direct, camera, sound.

Get tickets to her performance here:

"I Eat Pickles At Your Funeral”
Thursday + Friday 19 + 20 Apr 2012 7:00pm - 8:30pm
@ AL GREEN THEATRE Toronto
A co-production of A.P.E. Rotterdam, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, and The Images Festival Toronto.


And here’s our Keren Cytter 101:

You explicitly said that you wanted to attract attention…
But otherwise I am wasting my time, aren’t I?
Ok, so what are you doing besides shocking?
Trying to confuse the audience, and confuse them with a set of rules.
(on Selfselector.co.uk)

Keren Cytter on Berlin:
It’s cheap and the people are nice. It is easiest place to live outside Israel. (on Selfselektor)

Keren Cytter on her career:
I was a cook for four years, a waitress for a month, a copywriter for one day, a producer in a magazine, a runner on a set of a soap opera, and a journalist…. I think the combination of them all influenced my work. (on Rhizome.org) And she spent eight months in the Israeli army (as a secretary).

Keren Cytter on her style of work:
Have you collaborated with anyone in the art community on a project? With whom, and on what?
No. I don’t like collaborations. I think it’s a compromise.
Do you actively study art history?
No.
Do you read art criticism, philosophy, or critical theory? If so, which authors inspire you?
No. I can’t read essays. Beyond me.
Are there any issues around the production of, or the display/exhibition of new media art that you are concerned about?
I think I’m not really interested in art and exhibitions displays. It’s really not my thing.
(on Rhizome)

Keren Cytter on communication:
Bank transfers might be the only non-manipulative form of communication. (on Artnet.de)

Keren Cytter on Social Media:
When asked (by Artnet) whether she uses Facebook or Twitter she responded that she left Facebook (because she became addicted) but registered her cat. Her name is Tina Fenomena and she only befriends people she has seen – 10 people currently.


Just keep in mind --as she said with regard to her performance History in the Making-- that "everything is a bit of a lie". Can’t think of a more exciting way to spend my Thursday than with Keren & pickles.


by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

After Berlin + Rotterdam, Keren Cytter takes Toronto @imagesfestival

Why did #KerenCytter rename her performance “Anke is Gone“ to “I eat pickles at your funeral”? ... @imagesfestival

Ask her @ImagesFestival premiere Thurs at 7 at Al Green. Second show Friday! Guaranteed fun from Berlin-based Video + performance artist.


@ImagesFestival 204 Spadina pop-up gallery: Duncan Campbell's video "Arbeit", a collage of stills ... http://www.guardian.co.uk...... on the man behind the Euro: Hans Tietmeyer, former head of Deutsche Bundesbank, going up in smoke. So timely:
"Currency is a reflection of what a nation desires." @imagesfestival 204 gallery
(Remember Campbell last year @ImagesFestival? Quirky DeLorean biopic dissected the decline of the auto empire, + sports car in front of AGO.)

"Arbeit" @imagesfestival reminds me of James Benning's "Ruhr" in tackling (post-)industrial Western Germany and its values ...
Speaking of Benning: My perfect night @ImagesFestival tomorrow--James Benning and Elke Marhöfer…Who can resist comparison of Thoreau's and unabomber’s cabins plus a piece called “No, I am not a toad, I am a turtle!” @ImagesFestival.


More on the crisis, the euro, debt & trust issues in our series GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Box this fall!

P.S.:
If @ImagesFestival is not enough video for u, @vtape shows 2 new pieces by Daniel Kötter, Goethe guest 2011. 19th at 5pm, 401 Richmond.


by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

At the #images festival opening party. @imagesfestival turns 25, @GoetheToronto turns 50--lots of celebrating ahead. #images25



Welcome Ruth Noack, curator of documenta 12 and @imagesfestival 2012 jury member. #images25

Scott miller berry just announces: @imagesfestival shortlisted for Premier's Award! Congrats team #images25!

#JohnAkomfrah 's eligiac Odyssey @imagesfestival -- reminiscent of #Atwood 's Penelopiad.

#JohnAkomfrah 's Nine Muses @imagesfestival -- astounding, curious, mesmerizing, haunting soundtrack.

#JohnAkomfrah 's @imagesfestival makes you, achingly and longingly, part of the human race.

#JohnAkomfrah @imagesfestival talks to @cameron_tiff about his memorial for the arrival generation of immigrants. Whether London or TO.

#JohnAkomfrah @imagesfestival talks to @cameron_tiff about identity in transit, in flight, becoming.

#JohnAkomfrah @imagesfestival talks to @cameron_tiff about his visual imagery: the primal loneliness, coloured-ness, cold of Alaska.
... Alaska as an allegory for the Terrible Beauty of the immigrant experience. #JohnAkomfrah @imagesfestival


by Jutta Brendemuehl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

Hot Docs, North America's largest doc fest, is soon upon us. Courtesy of our friends at Hot Docs, we have a slew of tickets to give away each for the first 6 to answer the question which German arthouse master won the Hot Docs 2006 Outstanding Achievement Award. First come, first served! Please indicate which pair of tickets you'd prefer (and make sure you can attend the date & time!):


++ 2 pairs of tickets for Meanwhile in Mamelodi, April 27 @ 9.30pm

++ 2 pairs of tickets for My Freedom is Your Freedom, April 29 @ 9.30pm

++ 2 pairs of tickets for Revision, May 2 @ 3.30pm


Email Jutta at arts@toronto.goethe.org to win.



by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto