Entries by Goethe-Institut Toronto

Germany has a body that, through independent juries, recommends outstanding films for their cultural and artistic achievements: The FBM or German Film and Media Assessment board. David Narwath's debut feature The Mover, part of our Canada-wide May 15-23 GOETHE FILMS @ digital TIFF Lightbox series "Loneliness and the City," was assigned the rating "highly recommended:"

A strong feature film debut that tells the dramatic story of a man who finds his son by chance after many years and then does all he can to protect him from a criminal real estate clan. 

Walter is a moving man for evictions. As a former weightlifter, he can still lift more heavy furniture than all of his younger colleagues put together. Although even his strength is gradually waning, Walter doesn’t want to quit; his work is all he has. When he discovers one day during a planned eviction that the tenant is his son Jan, Walter decides that he has to find his way back to Jan, whom he left when he was little. Jan, though, has different problems. A real estate clan wants to get him out of his apartment, by force if necessary. Walter wants to do everything possible to help Jan but when he realizes the danger he’s putting himself in, it’s almost too late. Continue reading "Goethe Films: The Mover - "highly..." »

Our GOETHE FILMS @ digital TIFF Lightbox series "Loneliness and the City" runs Canada-wide May 15-23 and opens with David Narwath's critically acclaimed debut feature The Mover: Continue reading "GOETHE FILMS: The Mover in images" »

Scott Miller Berry, lead programmer of Toronto's Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival and a long-time collaborator of Goethe-Instituts from Toronto to Jakarta to Bangalore, attended to Oberhausen 2021 --virtually of course (see his head floating on the right of the Oberhausen Festival Space). We asked him to report back on his best-of-show and critical takeaways.

My first visit to the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, the world's oldest and largest short film extravaganza, was in 2008 if I remember correctly. After the requisite overnight flight with lovely Images Festival colleagues we piled into a shiny new Volkswagen and the festival driver proceeded at a modest 180km/h clip from Düsseldorf north into the Ruhr valley's post-industrial pocket. At that speed I felt like my face was melting off, which became an inspired metaphor for the entire Oberhausen festival experience --face- and all senses-melting over concentrated days stacked with upwards of 7 slots of short film programs followed by very late nights at the festival lounge. As a film festival worker and lover, I've been incredibly inspired by Oberhausen over the years, its mammoth program and their smooth ability to host hundreds and hundreds of guests from festivals, galleries, distributors, broadcasters and artists. Continue reading "Reflections on the 67th Oberhausen Short Film..." »

Hot Docs 2021 is hosting a slew of German documentaries on pressing socio-political issues across the globe, one film a Goethe co-presentation we have a special relationship to: Berlin filmmaker Daniel Kötter, who was our guest in 2011 in our Intermedia Artist Residency Toronto, is celebrating the North American premiere of Rift Finfinnee at North America's largest documentary festival. I spoke to him about returning to Africa as a European filmmaker in the current moment, global urban peripheries, and the human impact of rapid growth, part of our ongoing conversation on cities, communities, and solidarity under the heading "compliCITY":
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Berlin indie filmmaker Malte Wirtz, after finishing his one-shot film City Lights just before Covid hit, first told me about his upcoming 2021 feature Digital Life on Zoom --aptly so, because his latest project is a German-American digital love story developed, performed and shot on Zoom. I teased that he was inventing a new school called Zogma, a Zoom Dogma, and he took up the challenge:

GOETHE FILMS @ digital TIFF Lightbox Canada-wide! Full program now online, tickets on sale May 5 at digital TIFF.
Continue reading "GOETHE FILMS: Loneliness in the City (win tix!)" »

The biggest international documentary film festivals follow one another in swift succession in April and May: Visions du Réel is held in Nyon from 15 to 25 April, followed by CPH:DOX in Copenhagen (21 April to 12 May) and Toronto's Hot Docs rounding off from 29 April to 9 May. German films are strongly represented in all three line-ups.

COURAGE by Aliaksei Paluyan will be screened in Competition at Nyon, in the Artscapes sidebar in Toronto, and the Change Makers section in Copenhagen. The film, which recently had its world premiere at the 2021 Berlinale, focuses on a dissident theatre group in Belarus and its courageous struggle for democracy and freedom. Continue reading "Strong German presence at Hot Docs 2021" »

With technical improvements, cameraman Jost Vacano takes us on exciting cinematic journeys. Now he is fighting for a higher fee.

The film “Das Boot” by Wolfgang Petersen (1981) had grossed millions, but the cameraman was to be fobbed off with around 100,000 euros? Jost Vacano, who has long been a champion of appropriate compensation for creators, went to court and fought tenaciously for his rights for over a decade. Just now the German Federal Court of Justice, which had already issued a landmark ruling in Vacano’s favour in 2020, ruled again in the case: Continue reading ""Das Boot" cameraman fights for fair..." »

Protest movements have been crucially responsible for social change in Germany for centuries. The new #GoetheOnDemand film series "Signs of Resistance" takes a look back at 40 years of political documentary filmmaking from Germany. 14 films on important social issues of the past decades look at reunification, environmental movements, cultures of feminism, and coming to terms with the Nazi era.

"The Subjective Factor" deals with the beginnings of a new women's movement that sprang from the student movement of the late 1960s. "Keine Startbahn West" shows how a protest against the expansion of Frankfurt Airport gave rise to the largest regional citizens' initiative in the early 1980s, and "Leipzig im Herbst" documents the social upheaval shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Continue reading "Goethe on Demand: 14 Signs of Resistance" »

Uli Hanisch (53) is the man who gives series and films a home. “Babylon Berlin” and “The Queen’s Gambit” are only some of the shows, in addition to feature films, whose production designs he has created. In an interview with the German Press Agency, he explains where all the objects go after shooting and whether noticing a good film set is a compliment.

Mr. Hanisch, what does a production designer’s house look like? Do you have lots of chess pieces from the “Queen’s Gambit” lying around?
No, I actually have surprisingly few souvenirs from the films I’ve worked on the past two decades. Sometimes little things get lost. But I think it’s actually quite beneficial for someone who’s interested in furniture and all sorts of stuff to be able to develop that passion for collecting at work and not have to lug it all home. We borrow a lot.

How exactly does it work?
Continue reading ""The Queen's Gambit" &..." »