German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

We're lucky here in Toronto. I would have travelled to New York or Chicago or Boston or Washington to see the seminal Werner Schroeter retrospective "Magnificent Obsession" --the title captures a lot of Schroeter's spirit-- but won't have to: TIFF Cinematheque together with the Goethe-Institut and Filmmuseum München are showing over a dozen of the New German Cinema master's lush and provocative works November 8-December 9, 2012.


I took the occasion to interview German film historian Stefan Drößler, who is the head of the Munich Film Museum and the man with whom the idea for a Schroeter retro began:

Jutta Brendemühl: Stefan Drößler, you were instrumental in curating this very comprehensive show. Briefly describe how the idea for a Werner Schroeter retro formed and how the international partners came together.

Stefan Drößler: In 1999, I met Werner Schroeter for the first time. We talked about the difficulties to show his films because of legal problems or missing negatives. At this time, nobody was able to do a complete retrospective. It needed several years of research, rights clearances, looking for funding and meticulous restoration work until all the films became available. Fortunately the Goethe-Institutes are committed and industrious, and so the Schroeter films are traveling around the world. We started in December 2010 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

JB: Werner Schroeter died 2 years ago, you started the curation as he was terminally ill. Is it too soon for a look back?

SD: I regret very much that Werner died before all of his films were restored. A few months before he died he came to Munich and viewed the first digital restorations. It was a very moving moment when he saw his early films again, which he hadn't seen for decades. Schroeter had a lot of reservations against digital technology but he changed his mind when he realized that now for the first time it was possible to save all the visual beauty of his 8mm and 16mm originals. The digital copies are much superior to the duplication prints, but they keep the film character. He would have loved to attend the retrospectives. In my opinion, it is not too soon but rather too late.

JB: How would you describe the appeal and importance of Werner Schroeter today, especially to North American filmmakers and audiences?

SD: Werner Schroeter is one of the key figures of the New German Cinema. But he is also one of the least known because he refused to follow narrative conventions. Most of his films were financed by German television and didn't get theatrical distribution. Schroeter's work is very unique and highly groundbreaking, its influence on filmmakers like Syberberg, Ottinger, Fassbinder, Herzog and Achternbusch is obvious. Schroeter's films are visual and acoustic experiences which are very difficult to describe, timeless pieces of art which don't age. In September there was a big Schroeter conference at the Goethe-Institut Boston and Boston University. It showed the complexity of Schroeter's work with all the references to literature, music, philosophy, theater, opera, history, media, avantgarde, performing and fine arts. It was not the first Schroeter conference, and I am convinced that there will be many more in the future.

JB: If you could watch only one Schroeter film from this retro again, which one would it be and why? And which work of his would you have loved to add?

SD: Many critics claim PALERMO ODER WOLFSBURG or DER ROSENKÖNIG or MALINA. I prefer his early films which are more radical, playful, experimental. The beautiful double projection ARGILA, DER BOMBERPILOT with his superstars Magdalena Montezuma, Carla Aulaula and Mascha Rabben, the improvised American melodrama WILLOW SPRINGS, the beautiful episode movie FLOCONS D'OR and the Italian chronicle NEL REGNO DI NAPOLI are my favorites. And I love Werner's documentaries, very personal essays about artists, politics and society. The program at the Toronto Cinematheque includes most of Werner's films; I miss only his early 8mm films, which show so well how he discovered film and explored the medium.


Luckily, we won't have to choose one film. Go see the entire retro and immerse yourself in the strange and beautiful world of Werner Schroeter. If you need an intro, start with his cinematographer's documentray Mondo Lux, which premiered at the Berlinale two years ago (at TIFF November 11).

More here next week on the retrospective's programming...

by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

In case you do not trust the programmer to invite you to Christoph Hochhäusler's The City Below tomorrow night, take the word of the international critics, who raved about the film when it showed at Cannes two years ago (or take the film still as a teaser):


"The last Tango in Frankfurt … financial thriller, love affair, the portrait of a city: Hochhäusler offers all of these topics and merges the narratives skillfully. Rarely has Frankfurt, a city between megalomania and neglect, been captured so incisively. The real art, however, is the staging of a love affair in this rather cool story that evokes The last Tango of Paris. The City Below subtly develops a strong pull that intensifies until the very last scene." (Die Zeit online)

"A film that hurts, an extraordinary and impressing piece, beautifully staged. It is like listening to a symphony of the great city in which the protagonists get completely lost." (Cahiers du Cinéma)

"The power of the film does not only come from the narration of this passionate but devastating love affair. Hochhäusler creates his scenario between power and reality. It is this setting and the precise description of the situations and spaces that prompt references to Hitchcock’s later works." (Le Monde)

"The tension is palpable: It is the tension of a boundlessly rich world on the brink of total disaster." (Télèrama)


by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

We've talked a lot about the financial universe reflected in The City Below and the other films in our series Culture+Economy. But at the end of the day, all three features and the short we're showing you are about human interaction and surprising relationships. As one critic remarked: “The City Below merges banking crisis and romantic drama into a brilliant atmospheric masterpiece."

Hochhäusler describes how power affects love in his story: "The film is inspired by the biblical story of David and Bathsheba in its basic outline, but with a capitalist aspect. Someone uses his power for his love and at the same time destroys his love with it. This is what I found interesting: How power affects the longing for what we call love. Power transcends (or corrupts) ideology, beliefs, bonds. Power is all about action. Not unlike children destroying sand castles."

The cinematic and human drama is created in the longing for the opposite: "Roland is part of corporate aristocracy, and he married into old money for a reason. His whole life is dedicated to the game and its rules. He loves deals and deals love him. Svenja’s game is life. She could not care less for the game of big finance. There is this famous phrase by artist Maurizio Nannucci: 'You can imagine the opposite.' For me, it means that the opposite follows us, like a shadow, like a nihilistic desire to break up with the comfort we have surrounded us with. We want to get real, to wake up. It’s a confrontational thing. We have the hope to be awakened by someone, an opposite force. This is perhaps the heart of the film. It’s really about losing touch with reality, and about the counter reaction, attaining reality in love, in the body."


That this contradictory relationship works so brilliantly on screen is not just due to Hochhäusler's precise direction and DOP Bernhard Keller's luminous capture of a passionate affair, but mainly the intense chemistry and power play between the two disparate protagonists as portrayed by two fine actors.

Robert Hunger-Bühler is the quintessential (theatre) character actor and perfect as the in-control financier. After attending Schauspielakademie Zürich and studying Theatre and Philosophy in Vienna, he has been working as an actor and director at Volksbühne Berlin, Brecht's Berliner Ensemble and the Burgtheater Wien to name a few. He has collaborated with Germany's master stage directors from Frank Castorf to Claus Peymann, Peter Zadek to Christoph Marthaler. In Peter Stein’s legendary production of “Faust”, Hunger-Bühler played the role of Mephisto.

Nicolette Krebitz, born in Berlin in 1972, has been in front of the camera since the age of ten. She is well-known from film, TV and theatre (and had her own band). By the age of 25, she had received her second Adolf Grimme Award, a Golden Record, the Bavarian Film Award and her second Golden Camera. Apart from her work as an actress, Krebitz has produced and directed her own films. Her short THE UNFINISHED was part of the compilation GERMANY 09 that premiered at the Berlinale.

The film stills (above and below) give you an idea of what kind of emotional tour de force you --and Roland and Svenja-- are in for.


Tuesday, October 30 6:30 pm
The City Below (Unter dir die Stadt), dir. C. Hochhäusler, D 2010, 35mm
Cannes 2010 Un Certain Regard, Toronto premiere
with English subtitles
at TIFF Bell Lightbox, King & John Street
Tickets $10 per night — day-of sales at the TIFF Box Office
Open to audiences 18+


by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

Starting our new GOETHE FILMS series next Tuesday with the celebrated filmThe City Below, I wanted to set the mood with director Christoph Hochhäusler's insights into the key themes he is tackling with his Cannes entry -- and we are pursuing with this 3-part series on the equically topical as complex interplay of Culture+Economy:

ON THE BANKING WORLD During our screenplay research, we read books on the banking world – and this was long before the crisis. Then we met and interviewed middle and executive bankers, all the way up to the CEO. The biggest surprise was to see how irrationally this “cutting edge of capitalism” functions, how unpredictable it is also for those who are allegedly steering it. The crisis finally seemed almost logical… in terms of a correction of an unreliable narrative, a world of numbers that simply couldn’t care less for reality.

ON FIERCE COMPETITIVENESS At one point, a board member says that Oliver’s CV is "AAA+". That’s what it’s all about: everything is rated and evaluated… Because everyone is working against everyone else, also within their own companies, departments can be systematically provided with one-sided reports, and the result is an unreliable narrative. These are the so-called “meeting report wars”. Competition as a narrative system does not promote the truth, but rather many stories with happy endings. If you project this distortion onto the overall market, and given that accountants and rating agencies fail as correctives because they are hopelessly dependent on the firms they are supposed to evaluate, one can imagine very well how the crisis emerged.

FRANKFURT, where the story is set, also plays a role in the film: money, art, drugs… Frankfurt is Germany’s banking centre, and as a banking location the number two in Europe. And it’s a “global city”, a place just big enough that anything could happen there. Like our story. What I like about this town is contrast. It’s both very small and very international, it tries so hard to be an American city. In many ways, what makes it modern is that it is a fantasy, a simulation. The banking world in the film is basically living and working in glass cases. Transparency always sounds so promising, but in effect, it often only means control. In a glass building, you can no longer hide a short well-deserved office nap. And this control is what triggers the longing for a greedy, dirty life. A major theme in our production design was “reflection”. Glass creates an illusionary effect – because the world seems close, but it is out of reach, out of touch.

ON ART & CULTURE There is a lot of money in Frankfurt – which is why there are a lot of fine art museums and galleries. Culture seems to be not the antidote, but the cover for big business there. The banks want to show off their wealth. At Deutsche Bank, the heavyweight player of German banking, every floor has its distinct art program – the higher you go, the more expensive the art works. You can tell by the artist in your office the level you have reached, career-wise. In Roland’s office in the film, we see works by German artist Günther Förg – the market prices for these paintings equal our production budget. We were able to borrow them thanks to the artist. And all the works of art seen in the film are originals.

THE CRISIS WILL EVENTUALLY ARRIVE ON THE STREETSOne of the reasons investment bankers think of themselves so highly (and so lowly of others) lies in the fact that competition is so fierce that battlefield analogies are somewhat justified. They are warriors, or, to be more precise, merceneries, fully aware of the fact that their actions can kill bonds, companies, countries. What is disturbing are the increasing repercussions on everyday life. A phrase that played a role for the film’s ending was: The crisis will eventually arrive on the streets. This is both a threat and a hope. What is happening does matter, and things have consequences that no one can permanently escape.


Our guest speaker Prof. Dirk Matten of York U's Schulich School of Business will expand on the above ideas and more in his introduction to the film.

We have 2 pairs of tickets to give away to this screening. To enter, please email us at arts@toronto.goethe.org. Only the winners will be notified. See you at the movies!

by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

“God willing, I will do it.” At a press conference in Berlin this week, German director Werner Herzog surprisingly announced that he will bring to the screen late star producer Bernd Eichinger’s (see photo) unfinished project “Vernon God Little”, based on the debut novel by Australian author DBC Pierre, the 2003 Booker prize winner. The 70-year-old Herzog reflected: “I am working harder than ever before, and without cinema I wouldn’t want to be in the world as much as I do.” Asked about his oeuvre --he was at the Deutsche Kinemathek to celebrate their Herzog collection, which includes an online archive of 600 photos from 42 of his films-- he commented: "The past is unimportant. I am only plowing forward."

Critics call his latest plan a radical undertaking: the filming of a lunatic book that merges massacre, reality-TV and the death penalty (Herzog's main theme over the past few years and documentaries). Set in small town Texas, the story revolves around fifteen-year-old Vernon, a troubled teenager whose friend Jesus commits suicide after having killed sixteen schoolmates. After being pinned as an accomplice and fearing the death penalty, Vernon flees to Mexico. Katja Eichinger, the director’s widow, (see photo) will be on Herzog's production team. Rumoured script writer: British author-director Andrew Birkin.


by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto

Arbitrage, Capital, Wall Street 2, Margin Call, Inside Job, Chasing Madoff, The Robber – the genre of financial crisis movies has clearly taken off (and taken on Hollywood), from docs to thrillers.

Sitting on the subway on my way to work earlier this year, a quote by Mark Carney in a free commuter paper made me stop in my tracks: "Europe is the biggest external threat to Canada, without question." Being the Bank of Canada's governor, Carney was referring to the most powerful Weapon of Mass Destruction: the interdependent global economic system.

Picking up the threads of our first film program on the interplay of Culture+Economy last fall, GOETHE FILMS presents a new cluster on crisis, greed and debt with four German films that add a European perspective to a globally hot topic. We're looking at bankers & robbers, we're looking at pensioners, we’re looking at ourselves.

Our opening film is the Toronto premiere of Christoph Hochhäusler's 2010 Cannes entry The City Below, delving right into the intrigue and plotting of the (literally) cut-throat international business of high finance. And into the heart of what we want to investigate with Culture+Economy: The financial crisis as a general crisis of trust and confidence, one that corrupts and erodes relationships and affects all of its players. The film and the circumstances it arose from will be contextualised by one of the world’s 'Top 100 Corporate Social Responsibility Leaders', Prof. Dirk Matten, who has taught on responsible business practice in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Turkey, and the USA.

While The City Below focuses on the “perpetrators” (although a black-and-white view is debatable in this arena), another Toronto premiere we are happy to present follows a banker-robber couple, perpetrators and victims at the same time: Gravity, a fast-paced comedy-crime drama , Maximilian Erlenwein's debut feature, was made in 2008 –with the worst still to come– and won several prestigious Max Ophuels Prizes, for Best Film, Best Script, along with two acting awards. "The film basks its stories in an absurd, dark humour while telling them with warmth and geniality. A delicate genre mix and a difficult balancing act for the director and the actors, mastered brilliantly", the jury enthused. For your amusement -and to show that this is not entirely new territory- the screening will be preceded by the 1999 short film Small Change that won the Student Academy Award, the German Short Film Award in Silver and an Oscar nomination.

I am especially glad about the last film in this series, brand-new and a North American premiere: While at the Berlinale earlier this year, the head of the German Film and Television Academy at Potsdamer Platz recommended a film by one of his recent graduates that had just come out and was already getting attention at German film festivals: Anika Wangard's Crash Course, based on a true story, has two affluent pensioners finding themselves penniless after a US investment company has gambled away their nest egg. It's The Queen of Versailles (Siegel’s celebrated riches-to-rags recession doc) for the rest of us 99%. But instead of resigning themselves to their fate or trying to continue to play within the system, they join the protest movement against the unchecked power of the banks. In Crash Course, we have arrived with the victims. Who leave their comfort zone, bourgeois belief system --and legality-- in order not to be victimized but to empower themselves.

All of the films are holding up a mirror: How far will any of us, on either side of the bank counter, go for personal gain, monetary or otherwise? How do we decide to act in a volatile (financial) world? What are our values in our personal and professional systems, and how strong are they when challenged or attacked?

GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Bell Lightbox: Culture+Economy runs Oct 30, Nov 6, Nov 7 (see links above).


by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut