German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

German public broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk has just distanced itself from the film "Lovemobil". The award-winning cinema documentary by Elke Margarete Lehrenkrauss, co-produced by NDR, shows scenes in large sections that are not authentic. This is the result of research by NDR's investigative YouTube youth program "STRG_F." The film is said to be based on many years of research by the author, but central protagonists of the film do not describe their personal experiences, but play a role. Numerous situations are re-enacted or staged. Watch the trailer here. Continue reading "Public broadcaster distances itself from the..." »

72 films from 29 countries (out of 14,200 entries), with nearly half directed by women, makes up this year's largely virtual Sundance Film Festival 2021 that runs 28 January to 3 February 2021. 50 Shorts, 4 Indie Series, 14 New Frontier Projects to Debut on Feature-Rich Digital Platform & Satellite Screens Nationwide complement this year's edition, for which you won't have to pack your skis.

Ronny Trocker's German-Italian-Danish feature HUMAN FACTORS (DER MENSCHLICHE FAKTOR), developed through the Torino Film Lab, is part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. Continue reading "German Films @ Sundance 2021" »

In the spring, we talked to Toronto filmmaker Stephanie Weimar as she had just finished shooting her footage for her upcoming documentary WRITING THE LAND (produced by Primitive Entertainment for CBC Arts and Arte/ZDF), just in the nick of time as Covid struck Canada. When I contact Stephanie in June as we continue to follow two German-Canadian film projects in our series "The Making of", she writes: "Locking Arte today! Shooting for CBC tomorrow! And fine cuts for CBC next Friday!" Lots to talk about:

Hello Steph, four months to go and you're knee-deep in the editing process. What will be your opening image to launch and introduce WRITING THE LAND?
Books. Lots of books. And writers. And more books. Continue reading "THE MAKING OF: "WRITING THE LAND",..." »

Love is a business at "Family Romance, LLC”, Werner Herzog's latest film as well as the (real) company that offers a human substitute rental service, inventing absent fathers or stand-in companions as needed. Founder Yuichi Ishii helps fulfill the dreams and emotional needs of his clients. Like the mother of the 12-year-old girl Mahiro who hires Ishii to impersonate the absent father. Soon, reality begins to blur around the #fakefeels.

How did Werner Herzog, the nomad, the adventurer, the extreme athlete in the filmmaking pantheon, get to such an emotional and vulnerable place, and to Japan? (2-min video review) Continue reading "Emotions by Proxy: Herzog’s “Family Romance,..." »

Hello World. Microsoft’s gender-neutral AI “Tay” says they are stoked to meet me. "The more humans share with me the more I learn.” And there’s the rub. Who teaches these new artificial kids? And what do they teach them? Shalini Kantayya's documentary “Coded Bias,” which premiered at Sundance in January and just screened at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival (the largest in North America) is getting a lot of deserved attention as it doesn’t need two minutes to go for the jugular: Shockingly pervasive, all-encompassing image bias built into algorithm-based tech is stealthily governing our day-to-day lives, from Amazon to Alexa. Snapchat filters. Gendered shopping suggestions. Spotify playlists. Credit checks. Resume key wording. AI recruiting. All algorithm-based.

The film, co-produced by Sabine Hoffman, who began her career as an editor in Berlin before moving to the US, is extremely packed and quick on its feet but deftly crafted around a single-minded focus. It successfully walks the fine line between accessibility, digestibility and not losing necessary complexity. “Coded Bias” is a compulsory AI Ethics 101 course by way of a stringently compelling investigation on the road to data authoritarianism and algorithmic oppression (thank you for the helpful little “smart screen“ notes and highlights to keep track of all the hits that keep on coming). Continue reading "#imagesmatter: Coded Bias #review " »

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 many public library cards in Canada and elsewhere. Download the Kanopy app, log in with your library account, and a portal of high-quality global content awaits.

To sift through the catalogue, I am curating a little series of 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.

☆ Vicky Krieps before "Phantom Thread" fame! Frederick Lau fresh off the success of one-shot wonder "Victoria"! Here he is back again as a hapless bank robber. If you missed "Gutland" in the TIFF17 Discovery section, here's your chance to catch up on this surreal Luxemburghish-German rural noir. Official submission of Luxembourg for Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards, and you can learn some German & Letzeburgesch too. Continue reading "#MyKanopyKanon streaming tips 7" »

Congratulations to filmmaker Marc Wiese, who just won the FACT:AWARD at CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, with this new documentary "We Hold the Line", which had its world premiere at the prestigious Danish festival.

"We Hold the Line" follows a group of Filipino journalists and their fight for democracy and human rights in a country where president Duterte has waged a 'war on drugs', killing thousands of people.

The jury stated: “The CPH:DOX F:act Award goes to the film depicting dark, troubling events in a skilful yet measured way, smartly focusing on just the right situations while employing a precise cinematic language. Continue reading "Marc Wiese wins at Copenhagen Doc Fest" »

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.

☆ #Thinking of my family under #lockdown in #Spain (+ never too late to revisit #Bauhaus100): Just before Europe crumbled, architect Mies van der Rohe Continue reading "#MyKanopyKanon streaming tips 2" »

Interview reposted from May 2017 on the occasion of the 61st DOK Leipzig 2018: North America's biggest documentary film festival Hot Docs brings hundreds of films to Canadian audiences each spring. The Goethe-Institut added a coda to the 2017 festival with selected German documentaries that won the Goethe Documentary Prize at DOK Leipzig Festival over recent years. A conversation about cultural specificity in documentary filmmaking and international vs. national festival programming that we kicked off with DOK Leipzig's new-ish lead programmer Ralph Eue:

Jutta Brendemühl: When you took up your new position as head of programming for venerable DOK Leipzig festival, you commented: “The films that I envisage in the program are ideally films with transformative power, Continue reading "DOK Leipzig programmer Ralph Eue on..." »