German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

With cinemas and film festivals in Canada, Germany and across the world currently closed or postponing their live programming, we are discovering the virtues of streaming. Among the offerings, one of the best is Kanopy. The platform is an award-winning video streaming service providing access to more than 30,000 independent and documentary films ─ titles of unique social and cultural value from The Criterion Collection, The Great Courses, Media Education Foundation, and thousands of independent filmmakers.

You can use it for free for example through the Toronto Public Library. Download the Kanopy app, log in with your (also free) library account, and a portal of high-quality global content awaits.

To sift through the catalogue, I will curate a little series of my personal film recommendations here and on social media‬⁩ #MyKanopyKanon. #Docs #features #shorts #femalefilmmakers #arthouse #mainstream ... Let me know your favourites and film viewing experiences and let's turn social distancing into social connecting.

☆ A contemporary classic Continue reading "#MyKanopyKanon bespoke streaming tips 1" »

During the TIFF19 world premiere of Ina Weisse’s THE AUDITION, I was sitting next to Canadian playwright-mathematician John Mighton, the author of The Myth of Ability, who argues that we are all born capable of learning anything. Throughout this family drama, I kept thinking about what that looks like here, especially when Nina Hoss in her role as a driven music teacher fights with her student about the relationship between quantity of practice and the intensity of playing.

At the advanced and demanding music school Anna teaches at, most colleagues administer their students and their art form. Anna burns for her work. And her new violin student Alexander. Too much as it turns out. Continue reading "#TIFF19 #review: The Audition" »

Part of an ongoing series of mini profiles on the blog German Film @ Canada on the movers and shakers that make the Berlinale one of the most important events in the international film calendar: the filmmakers, programmers, curators, industry promoters and fans, from rookies to veterans.

Name & role: Mario Pfeifer, producer/director/artist; Berlin Biennale 2018; in preparation for a survey exhibition at The Power Plant in Toronto for summer 2019.

This is my 15th Berlinale. Continue reading "Berlinale People: Mario Pfeifer, artist" »

Join us Friday at 6pm for free at the Goethe-Institut Toronto.

Here are Stefan Kaegi and Helgard Haug of Berlin performance group Rimini Protokoll shooting themselves in the centre of Berlin to situate where SHOOTING OURSELVES was filmed, the documentary accompanying their Luminato 2016 interactive game “Situations Rooms”:



The Goethe-Institut Toronto is showing the Canadian premiere of SHOOTING OURSELVES by Christine Cynn during this year's Luminato Festival. Free & one night only, join us in Toronto via Berlin and New York on June 23. Read up on Situation Rooms and its topical commentary on art and war here.

Last summer, in partnership with the Luminato Festival, the Goethe-Institut presented the award-winning multi-player video installation “Situation Rooms” by famed Berlin performance collective Rimini Protokoll. This year, we are happy to reflect on this unusal immersive art experience with the documentary SHOOTING OURSELVES by the co-director of THE ACT OF KILLING, Christine Cynn, with a free Canadian premiere at the Goethe-Institut Toronto on June 23. Cynn on her Situation Rooms and the omnipresence of small screens:

“There are times when one chooses to make a film. Other times, the film chooses you. A chance meeting leads to an impulse and, camera in hand, I find myself caught inside a superphenomenal vortex. So it happened with ‘Shooting Ourselves.’ After immersing myself for years in the performative politics of mass-murder in one small region of Indonesia for ‘The Act of Killing’, I knew how rare it is for so many people from so many conflicts to come together to re-enact parts of their lives. Continue reading "SHOOTING US: moving targets, moving images" »

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" -..." »

Claudia Schmid, born in Cologne in 1956, studied at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna for a solo career as a flutist. She changed over to visual arts at the art Academies in Vienna and Dusseldorf. In 1991 Schmid began to work as a film author and director for German television. Over the years she has realized about 15 documentaries with a focus on artist portraits, among others “Attempts at Love - Werner Schroeter”, “The Silence of Innocence - The Artist Gottfried Helnwein”, “The Redrawn World - The Artist Heinz Emigholz" and her latest, “Richard Deacon - In Between”.

After presentations at Art Cologne, Museum Ludwig and Tate Modern, Claudia Schmid is the Goethe-Institut’s guest at this year’s Reel Artist Film Festival Toronto with her portrait of British sculptor Deacon.

She will be in conversation with art journalist Terence Dick and show excerpts from her films in our free "Culture talks @ Goethe" at the Goethe-Institut Toronto at 5.30pm, before her film screening at 9pm at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Why the title "In Between” for Turner Prize winner Richard Deacon? In all of his works, Richard Deacon explores the “in between”, both in form and philosophical content: The relationship between space and form, between negative space and full shapes – presence and absence. Between organic and industrial language of form, amorphous shapes and rational thinking. The ambiguity of language and form, the material as a substance and its malleability. The artwork between the observer and the world, between intimacy, privacy and society. “In Between” is the window between the outside and the inside, between reality and fiction.

In this latest film, the sculptor and filmmaker Claudia Schmid meets the sculptor Richard Deacon. What’s the difference between film-making and sculpture-making?...
Continue reading "The World Redrawn: Claudia Schmid's artist..." »