German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

The most exciting German film news (again) comes out of Canada. Legendary German actors Bruno Ganz (“Wings of Desire”, Hitler in “Downfall”), Gunter Lamprecht (“Berlin Alexanderplatz”) and Heinz Lieven (most recently in Sorrentino’s Cannes entry “Cheyenne”) will all star in Atom Egoyan’s new thriller “Remember”, alongside the film’s lead, no less legendary hometown boy Christopher Plummer, fresh from his 2012 Oscar for “Beginners”.

The film, about to start shooting in Toronto, follows a man’s hunt for a Nazi war criminal who killed his family.

Staying on subject with German 20th century history --ample fodder for German and international films--, Berlin auteur Christian Petzold is working on “Phoenix” for a potential fall release as writer-director with his outstanding "Barbara" cast Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld, plus one of my new favourite actors, Nina Kunzendorf. (If you want to revisit “Barbara”, we’ll show it again this fall). Here Hoss is a Holocaust survivor who returns home to find her husband with another woman.
Continue reading "New German Films: Akin, Petzold, Herzog, more" »

To mark the biggest event of the year --no, not Cannes--, let's look at the other big F. Football fan Wim Wenders recently gave his analysis and prediction: He'd be happy to see Brazil win, believes in the power of the young German team, and even thinks Belgium has a chance. Asked which players he'll be keeping an eye on (from the roof-top big screen of his Berlin apartment), he noted Messi, Götze, and Özil.

Count on Berlin, site of the historic 2006 World Cup, to bring culture into play in the International Soccer Film Festival: "Football and film have discovered that they have a lot in common. Football films depict the social and cultural background of the sport all over the world, its unique ability to simultaneously signify norms and rebellion, riches and poverty, solidarity and fanaticism. It's an ideal métier for storytelling. The sport is full of wonderful images, sympathy and antipathy with protagonists, bitter defeats, tragic heroes. Football contains the sort of archetypes and figures of identification needed to tell cinematic stories."
Let's travel back in cinematic and athletic time & space for a moment...

Continue reading "Football & Film, Wenders & Wortmann" »

Happy Pride everyone! While planning our celebration at the Goethe-Institut Toronto (see details below), I started talking to Maxime Desmons about what influence gay films in general --and the German coming-of-age film "Summer Storm" which we will show in particular-- had and have on his work as a filmmaker and gay man.


"Growing up in France I was learning German as a second language in Grade 8. After the war, France & Germany worked hard on rehabilitating a friendship – many French towns would be twinned to a West German city.

I am so thankful to this Great Governmental Program for arousing & shaping my homosexuality. I was 13 years old when I was sent to Frankfurt Am Main, and the family that welcomed me were nudists. When Rolf, the 6-foot 14-year-old blond karate kid who I was paired with, showed me his parents naked in the family album, my blood started to flow like a river covered in rose petals and my heart danced to Nena’s 99 Luft Balloons that summer. I was born to be me. Well sort of…

The film 'Summer Storm' unfolds at a rowing championship in a German campground, and there are a great moments showing the awkwardness of youthful sexual awakening. Continue reading "How movies shaped me (& Happy World Pride)" »

On 7 November 2008 Tanztheater Wuppertal celebrated a special premiere: Teenagers perform "Kontakthof", a piece by near-mythical dancer-choreographer Pina Bausch. For nearly a year, 40 local high school students had worked towards that day, practicising every week. Writers-directors Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann accompanied these rehearsals as well as the premiere with their camera.

Their moving documentary "Dancing Dreams", which screened at Berlinale and won the Special Jury Prize at New York's Festival Dance on Camera as well as Best Documentary at the Cinedans Festival Amsterdam, delves into the lifes of these young people and their first encounter with the world of dance --and shows some of the last footage of and last taped interview with Pina before her untimely death.

On the occasion of Tanztheater Wuppertal's guest performances of "Kontakthof" at the Luminato Festival this June and the company's 40th anniversary, we bring arts journalist Anne Linsel to Toronto to screen and discuss her film and collaboration with Pina Bausch:

“Dancing Dreams” (2010) by Anne Linsel & Rainer Hoffmann
June 13, 4pm DVD screening, followed at 5.30pm by a conversation between Linsel and Christopher House, AD of Toronto Dance Theatre
Free admission at the Goethe-Institut Toronto

In the accompanying book, Anne Linsel engaged Pina Bausch and the young students about their process and goals: Continue reading "Pina Bausch's "Dancing Dreams" -..." »