Film festival 2009

That's it - over for another year.

While the festival adminsitration is is still collating the final figures, this has clearly been a great success with audiences, with increased attendances compared to 2008 - Melbourne ticket sales were up 8% on last year's result and Sydney posted similar results.

Festival director Kaus Krischk observes that this was despite more serious content, ie with more dramas and fewer comedies, which are usually easier to sell to audiences.

He adds that the GDR (East Germany) retrospective picked up in popularity through the festival and was a great hit with the media. Clara and 12 Means: I Love You were the surprise hits, with Hilde having the strongest attendances.

"I am very happy about this as we thought 2008 with Juergen Vogel and the comedies was exceptional," says Krishok. "In 2009 we increased the total of films from 23 to 30, screenings from approx 120 to 154 and have expanded on attendance and GPO: This means, that we have grown the festival sustainably and improved on overall quality both in terms of content and customer orientation."

The festival is nearly over already, with only a few extra screenings left to run.

In Sydney the powerful Connie Walther-directed telefilm, 12 Means: I Love You, screens from 7pm tomorrow night (Tuesday). It fits into what has been clearly established as a pattern of powerful German women's stories and strong female roles embodied by powerful, often virtuosic actors.

The tradition dates at least as far back as the work of Fassbinder in the 1970s amd '80s (The Marriage of Maria Brown; The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, et al) - further back to the career of Marlene Dietrich, who had an established German film career before working in Hollywood, and to Leni Riefenstahl, a revered star of films such as the 1926 silent The Holy Mountain before becoming the favourite director of Hitler and Goebbels.

But this tendency has found renewed strength... Continue reading "From Dietrich to Schygulla - ... »

After the remarkable run of strong women in the festival, writer-director Hannes Stöhr's Berlin Calling focusses strongly on a male character.

Martin, played by real-life DJ Paul Kalkbrenner, is an internationally popular DJ on the Berlin electronic music rave scene who calls himself ,with fairly obvious symbolism, DJ Ickarus. Martin/ Ickarus is working towards completing a new album when he collapses from extreme drug abuse... Continue reading "Ickarus flies over the ... »

A panel on Tuesday night at Sydney's Chauvel discussed issues arising from the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall as they affect the world of film. On the panel were online film critic for Der Spiegel, Christian Buss, Variety reviewer and festival adviser Richard Kuipers, and Sydney Morning Herald and Variety critic Eddie Cockrell.

As announced to the world by the commercial success of Goodbye Lenin! and The Lives of Others, German writers and directors have been addressing the issue and this year's festival confirms the trend with the inclusion of dramas such as November Child, Peaceful Times and 12 Means: I Love You.

The latter is about a political prisoner falling in love with her Stasi interrogator (a subject sensitive enough to draw protests from victims groups before it had even been made) and is one of the impressive dramas the German TV industry has been turning out, as is Border of Despair, which screened in the 2008 festival... Continue reading "East vs West -the issue that ... »

There's some excellent material out there on the web about the festival and some of the films on the program so this post gives tasters and links for those who want to follow up.

First up, (1) an excellent, informative overview of German cinema and this year's festival by film writer Mary Colbert can be found here on SBS TV's new film website. Extract: "German film schools are turning out record numbers of market-savvy graduates, including more female directors. The 2009 German Film Festival program reveals the vibrancy of their contributions. And as Klaus Eder, Secretary General of the International Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Association points out on the phone from Munich, the next new wave is driven by young filmmakers, eager to explore the minefield of German history... Continue reading "You're seeing the films and ... »

This has rapidly turned into the Festival of German Films Featuring Strong Roles Embodied by Outstanding Actresses, though I doubt that would have fitted on the posters.

Last night I saw two more features to fit that description: Clara, the story of Clara Schumann, the wife of composer Robert Schumann and a leading concert pianist and capable conductor in her own right, and A Year in Winter, director Caroline Link's long awaited follow-up to her Oscar-winning drama, Nowhere In Africa...

Continue reading "The Festival of Great Female ... »

Hilde, a lavishly filmed biography of the actress and singer Hildegard Knef, drew a near-sell-out crowd to Sydney's Chauvel on Friday.

The Kai Wessell-directed film seems to have been inspired by the success of the Oscar-winning French biopic La Vie en Rose, the story of cabaret icon Edith Piaf. Both careers followed the classic rags-to-riches trajectory so commonly found in this genre (Knef, a teenager during WW2, was arrested by the Russians near the war's end and once freed had to survive amidst the squalor of post-war Berlin). Both performers struggled with personal demons, professional set-backs and tumultuous love lives yet managed to survive professionally for several decades. Both stories climax with a moment of triumph on stage. Continue reading "Hilde - a lively biography ... »

The contemporary film noir, Jerichow, screened last night at Sydney's Chauvel and is also showing this evening at the festival's second Sydney venue, The Palace Norton Street cinema.

The film's writer-director Christian Petzold has been held in high regard for a number of years by both German and international critics and festival programmers who see him as one of the most consistently interesting of the new wave of German filmmakers to have emerged this decade... Continue reading "Christian Petzold - one of ... »

What are the high spots of this year's program?

So far I've seen a half a dozen or so films on the festival's largest program to date. This means I'm still looking forward to discovering some of the program highlights, though I can offer a few pointers. Continue reading "Don't know where to start? A ... »

The Audi Festival of German Films got off to a vigorous start last night at Sydney’s Chauvel Cinema with drinks, speeches, a screening of the dynamic feature The Baader Meinhof Complex (foreign film Oscar nominee and a box office success last year in Germany), followed by more drinks and frantic partying.

Festival organiser and Goethe-Institut Sydney director Klaus Krischok was his usual good-humoured self as MC and kept the speeches moving along quickly. (Note to self: whatever that man is sprinkling on his breakfast, get hold of some.)

Hugely ambitious in scope, the film is directed by Uli Edel (Christiane F; Last Exit to Brooklyn), written and produced by Bernd Eichinger (Downfall) and tells the story of the most notorious ultra-leftist terrorist gang operating in the former West Germany during the 1970s. Continue reading "Festival gets off to a ... »