German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

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..." »

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" »