German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

Select media responses to "Ulrike Ottinger in Asia":

“The Goethe-Institut's ULRIKE OTTINGER IN ASIA series is well worth your time” – Norm Wilner (NOW Magazine) on Twitter

"Ottinger is one of the greatest voices of German and world cinema, as well as one of the most important voices of feminist and queer cinemas." – Shahbaz Khayambashi, Wylie Writes

“To a Canadian viewer, Under Snow may bring to mind the historic dramas of the Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk: There's a story being told but there is also, equally importantly, a quest to record an ancient way of life.” – Kate Taylor, Globe & Mail Continue reading "Ulrike Ottinger in Asia: Culture from a Distance" »

BARBARA SUKOWA will introduce on Oct 3!
NOW Magazine's Susan C. Cole will introduce on Oct 12!

Email me by noon EST on Sept 29 for your chance to win tickets to any of the 3 films!
(Only the winners will be notified.)

Hard to keep track of author Frank Goosen's cinematic adventures. While we are showing his book-on-film LEARNING TO LIE, he is eagerly awaiting the world premiere of Sönke Wortmann's take on SUMMER FEST in Goosen's hometown of Bochum, June 2 if you want to drop by (Goosen will read from the book here). And now Berlin über-producer UFA announces this:

Shooting has begun on the new feature film "So viel Zeit" ("So Much Time") starring Laura Tonke, Jan Josef Liefers, Armin Rohde, Jürgen Vogel and many other stars. In it, Liefers plays a tax lawyer who falls ill with a brain tumour and tries to get his old band together after thirty years. In "So viel Zeit," the cinema adaptation of the novel of the same name by Frank Goosen, director Philipp Kadelbach ("Naked Among Wolves," "Generation War") celebrates life, music and the fact that it is never too late to turn one’s life around. Continue reading "Frank Goosen on film (IV): SO MUCH TIME starts..." »

Framing our March 7-14 film series Heimat NOW, we are asking filmmakers from different places What's your #SoundOfHeimat. Here is what Toronto indie filmmaker Kazik Radwanski, who just pondered in the Globe & Mail that the secret to Canadian film success lies in lentils & luck, pitched in from his hyper-local perspective of living and working in the city's west end:

"There’s a scene in my latest film HOW HEAVY THIS HAMMER where the protagonist, Erwin, who has recently separated from his wife, shows his new place to his two sons. He chooses to first take them to the roof, pulling them close so he can point out the local landmarks: Ali Baba’s, Coffee Time and Bloor Street West. Since I am an independent filmmaker working with scarce resources, Erwin’s apartment in my fictional film is of course my literal home in real life.
Continue reading "Toronto filmmaker Kazik Radwanski's #SoundOfHeimat" »

We're continuing our conversation about our GOETHE FILMS series "Heimat NOW" that starts today with the North American premiere of a debut film fresh out the the Potsdam-Babelsberg Film Academy.

Here's a Q&A with first-time feature film director Bernadette Knoller about choosing a remote island location and casting her father, well-known actor-director Detlev Buck:

What was the idea that started HOLIDAYS?

At the beginning of her story, Vivi has an some sort of breakdown. It could be called depression or burnout. Luckily, it’s not. And we didn’t want to write a story about mental illness per se. She simply experiences a summer full of strange encounters. Because there is no formula for how to become functional again. Continue reading "GOETHE FILMS goes on HOLIDAYS" »

Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne … forget the big city lights -- real life happens in between. Or so the quintessentially German “Heimatfilms" will have us believe. The GOETHE FILMS @ TIFF Lightbox excursion "Heimat NOW" into the genre will shine a light on Germany from north to south and east to west and ask how films have reflected the country’s regionalism after reunification.

The word Heimat is famously untranslatable, holding multiple complementary meanings in German — descendance, heritage, tradition, your culture, your tribe, your family, your language: all make up one’s own personal Heimat (as author Frank Goosen argued in our interview on the topic). It is at the same time one of the most transcendental and universal terms, as everyone has a Heimat, or more than one, or a lost one, or a regained one, or a virtual one. The concept affords a wide range of important personal and group orientation -- identification, assurance, belonging-- but can become controversial when bordering on or being hijacked to foster patriotism, nationalism, and propaganda.

The term Heimatfilm has long entered the lexicon of international cinema and is constantly being reinterpreted, with a notable resurgence over the past ten or fifteen years. Continue reading "Heimat(film) now: State of the nation" »

Continuing our conversation about films on Heimat, that untranslatable and highly charged German word that encompasses home, belonging & more, we talked to German author Frank Goosen, who has three films on the screen and more in the works. Frank will be our guest in Toronto for our GOETHE FILMS series "Heimat NOW".


Jutta Brendemühl: Talking about Heimat, you and I are on the same page: We grew up within 10km of each other in the post-industrial West German region called Ruhrgebiet, went to Bochum University at the same time, hung out in the same three, four bars and clubs… Quick, give us 5 words that describe and define your Heimat:

Frank Goosen: Work, beer, soccer, Autobahn, green. Yours?

JB: You’re a down-to-earth guy, Frank, a true “Ruhri”. Mine are solidarity, loyalty, guts, sangfroid, and the neighbourhood of the city of Mühlheim called “Muttererde” – which translates as mother earth as well as top soil.

You have made a career of that feeling, of Heimat, as the most famous Ruhrgebiet writer-performer, who speaks and writes the rough and quick-witted working-class dialect of the region. How do you walk that fine line between flat-lining stereotype and cliché and heart-warming audience engagement? Continue reading "Heimat NOW: Frank Goosen & the sound of..." »

Continue reading "GOETHE FILMS: HeimatNOW (win tix!)" »

Over the summer I had the chance to skype with Andreas Dresen -full disclosure: one of my favourite auteurs- about his 1992 feature debut "Silent Country", which we showed on 35mm to amazed audiences in Toronto recently. In the film, young, naive and enthusiastic theatre director Kai comes to a grim East German provincial town to put on Beckett's “Waiting for Godot”. Although the lethargic company shows no interest in the play, his spirit remains undaunted. Meanwhile, it is fall 1989. The world is changing and far away in the capital, a revolution is taking place. Great hopes emerge in the little town, and unexpected events overtake Kai's derailed production. Reflections of and on Dresen's own life and work are inevitable.
His latest film "Als wir träumten" (German trailer), again set in the GDR around the "Wende", is in Competition at Berlinale 2015.


Jutta Brendemühl: Your first major feature film, shot in 1991 and set during the last days of the GDR, is called “Silent Country” – ”Stilles Land” in the original German. In how far did you experience Germany around 1989 as “still”, silent or quiet?

Andreas Dresen: A country can be “still” if it is paralyzed, if nothing happens anymore, when there is no going forward or backward. “Still” as standstill. But “still” can also be a poetic entity in which we can find ourselves. The title therefore has a double meaning. The pivotal point was a poem by Wolf Biermann of the same title: “Das Land ist still” - the county is silent. And it surely has a mean streak to it, too. In the film, nobody reacts to the political events that happen outside the theatre – the escape of many GDR citizens via Hungary. It seriously was that “silent” in September 1989.

Continue reading "Interview: Andreas Dresen on 1989/2014 (part 1/2)" »

“Absurdistan” director Veit Helmer explains some of the unique challenges and joys of making a Babylonian allegorical comedy:


In a report on the shooting of “Absurdistan” the film is called a “silent film in esperanto”. In what genre do you categorize your third film?
For me, the charm of movie-making lies in the filmic narration, in finding images that convey emotions rather than putting words in the mouths of actors. The film thus becomes a universal art form.

What was the biggest challenge in the production process?
Azerbaijan hasn´t had a film infrastructure since the collapse of the Soviet Union. One year before the start of the shoot I gave workshops in order to teach Azerbaijan film students about how to work on set. The catering truck, stocked with 30,000 meters of film, took a week to get here from Germany. The team came from Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, France, Germany. There was a Babylonian confusion of tongues on set.

Continue reading "GOETHE FILMS: Absurdistan is..." »