German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

Half a dozen German films in Toronto theatres right now, for your Easter enjoyment in case we get snowed in:




++ Sleeping Sickness at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, see below.
++ PINA, in its incredible 5th month of screenings at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
++ Gerhard Richter Painting at the TIFF Bell Lightbox – go see it and then fly to Berlin to visit his absolutely stellar show at the Neue Nationalgalerie.
++ Thomas Wallner’s enlightening (and still scarily topical) The Guantanamo Trap at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema
++ And at the exquisite Toronto Silent Film Festival: Murnau’s final Tabu (a 1931 US production) and Dupont’s 1925 Variete.


by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

”Many development workers of my parents‘ generation had as their main motivation a romantic longing for a more existential, a more adventurous life. I think this has changed and I tried to address that in my film,” says director Ulrich Köhler about his 2011 Berlinale screening film Schlafkrankheit.


Sleeping Sickness echoes Jan Zabeil’s The River Used to be a Man (see September 2011 blog entries) that came out around the same time, or vice versa – about a man, a visitor, literally losing himself in Africa. And in both films, the theme of metamorphoses looms large. Not a film about Africa but about Europeans in Africa, between rapprochement and alienation.

Playing at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox in a one-week engagement until Friday.

by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

The latest spring 2012 edition of Canada's premiere magazine for documentaries and independent films, Point of View, features a major in-depth interview by editor-in-chief Marc Glassman with Wim Wenders (whose PINA is showing in its 12th week at the TIFF Bell Lightbox) titled "The Compleat Filmmaker".

Sneak preview (and a pdf version on the Goethe-Institut website):

WW on interesting films:
„In my own experience, those films where you really stood in front of a mountain of problems and had to overcome huge difficulties, where you were heartbroken that you couldn’t do things and had to come up with ideas in order to cover up for something -- those are the interesting films.”

WW on watching Pina Bausch:
“I didn’t think that dance could move me, or could even concern me. And I was sitting on the edge of my seat in tears for the entire thing. It just blew me away. Especially Café Müller.”

WW on documentaries:
“In a time where television has basically lost both its function of informant of news and the informant of opinions, I think documentaries have regained the position they had in the very beginning.”

Plus additional video content from the taped interview on POV's YouTube Channel.

by Jutta Brendemühl

++ 3 years in the making ++ 20 years after the fall of the Wall ++ E2.8m budget ++ over 500 people in the casting process ++ more than 50 protagonists from different backgrounds, religions, professions ++ 69 directors ++ 83 cinematographers ++ 10 editors ++ 316 staff on the project ++ 750 hours of HD film material ++ 18 terabytes of data ++ running time: 1140 minutes ++ 3 major TV awards ++ screenings in Germany, USA, France, the Netherlands, Finland


GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Bell Lightbox:
24 Hours Berlin

People, stories, reality: Excerpt from the real-time documentary of a day in the life of the German capital.

Monday, March 12, 6:30pm:
Berlin at night

Wednesday, March 14, 6:30pm:
Berlin wakes up

6:30pm (doors open 6:10pm); Cinema 5, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto
Tickets $10 per night, day-of-sales at the TIFF Box Office
Open to audiences 18+
German with English subtitles; by Volker Heise et al.; DVD; D 2009

Watch the (German) Making of 24 Hours Berlin trailer. And another (German) trailer and one more.


Produced by Zero One Films.


by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

What makes our next GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Bell Lightbox series "24 Hours Berlin" great is the unique access to --and participation of-- famous and not-so-famous Berliners and their honesty. Get ready to meet the good, the bad and a lot of surprises...

Berlin wakes up

7am
++ Leonie Lehmann enters the world ++ TV correspondent Sonne and Defense Minister zu Guttenberg analyze the US election campaign ++
7.20am
++ Breakfast at the Turan’s, father Murat is dressing up for a meeting with the Chancellor ++
7.40am
++ Morning sports at the Singer’s ++
8.20am
++ Dieter Eichert is being prepared for his bypass surgery++ Marina Schneider is running late for her training at the Job Centre ++
8.40am
++ Dieter Eichert's chest is being opened++ At the zoo, the elephants are scrubbed and the baby tiger is weighed ++
9am
++ Kai Diekmann reviews yesterday’s issue of his "BILD” tabloid and reads today's agency reports ++
9.30am
++ Sven Frohn-Langnick prepares the crematorium chapel ++ ...

Berlin at night

7pm
++ Ricardo Villalobos puts together the program for his club night at "Berghain" ++ At the dinner table, Nicolas talks about what he learned in school about WWII and the Wall ++
7.20pm
++ Mayor Wowereit comments on Berlin's poor performance in the global city ranking++
7.40pm
++ The Kirci family awaits the sunset and fast-breaking ++
8pm
++ Chef Hoffmann personally welcomes his guests to the “Margaux“ ++ Inmate Kurt Lummert feels lonely ++
8.30pm
++ Müller-Spreer complains about bad manners in Berlin ++
9pm
++ Maestro Daniel Barenboim conducts the opera "The Gambler" ++ Sasha Waltz's dance ensemble performs "noBody" ++
9.30pm
++ Anne Wenzel came out of the closet – now she only needs to tell her family ++
10pm
++ Sleep research at the Charité lab ++

GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Bell Lightbox:
24 Hours Berlin

People, stories, reality: Excerpt from the real-time documentary of a day in the life of the German capital.

Monday, March 12, 6:30pm:
Berlin at night

Wednesday, March 14, 6:30pm:
Berlin wakes up

6:30pm (doors open 6:10pm); Cinema 5, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto
Tickets $10 per night, day-of-sales at the TIFF Box Office
Open to audiences 18+
German with English subtitles; by Volker Heise et al.; DVD; D 2009


German sneak peek from 8-9pm 24 Hours Berlin (with Daniel Barenboim).


French sneak peek of DJ Paul van Dyk in 24 Hours Berlin.



Produced by Zero One Films.


by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

Volker Heise, the director of our upcoming two documentary nights "24 Hours Berlin" that screened at the Berlinale 2010, talked with Lavinia Reinke and Oliver Bernau of Barbarella Entertainment about the challenge of narrating a city, among other things:

Why make the film go on for 24 hours?

A city can’t be told in a sentence, it defies description. Its basic nature is that of extreme diversity in a very condensed space. That’s why I felt that the appropriate narrative for a city is not a film but a TV broadcast. I stole the basic structure from CNN: news all the time, except that in our case it’s not world news, it’s Mrs. Bullack who goes shopping. And instead of commercials you get video clips from viewers. I also wanted to stay true to the original idea: narrating a city’s many layers, its milieus and the many groups that constitute it. I wanted to avoid some kind of boring lecture. That’s why we decided early on to narrate the city through its people. We follow them all day. From the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. And then we tie these stories together. They comment on each other, they rub against each other, they contradict each other, or they are in perfect harmony. In the end, they create echoes and result in a new sound.

What do you expect will happen on broadcasting day?

I have no expectations but hope that the viewers will see themselves reflected in what we have done. And I would hope that they will approach 24 hours of television like they watch TV. I don’t expect anyone to see everything. They can turn it on and off: half an hour in the morning, half an hour at lunchtime, and a little longer at night. You will always only see a slice of the city, never everything because an entire city is impossible to capture. We tried, of course, but with the intention of failing in cheerful, entertaining and exciting ways (laughs).


Volker Heise is a director, author and editor for documentaries and documentary series. His first directorial work Schwarzwaldhaus 1902 won him the 2003 Grimme Prize. For more than ten years, he has been working with producer Thomas Kufus, developing new documentary formats.


See two 3-hour Passages from the much lauded 24-hr real-time documentary of everyday life in the German capital March 12 +14 in our series GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Bell Lightbox. Email arts@toronto.goethe.org to win a pair of tickets to either night.



by Jutta Brendemuehl, Goethe-Institut Toronto