German Film @ Canada - Goethe-Institut

A year ago I dug deep here in two parts into TV’s obsession with fictionalized history and left you with German reunification. Time for a check-in with upcoming productions from the Nibelungs to today. The Germans, famous for "coming to terms with the past", have recently taken their Vergangenheitsbewältigung to a whole new level (or just medium), doggedly working their way through the centuries in new high-quality TV productions:

Let’s start with mythical beginnings with the greatest (anti-)hero of German legend: “Hagen von Tronje” will be directed by David Wnendt ("Look Who's Back") and likely hit TV screens in 2021. Continue reading "A TIMELINE OF TV'S OBSESSION WITH HISTORY (3)" »

Focusing on the media history of urban and natural landscapes, Munich audio-visual artist Andreas Wutz’s concepts relate to historical and contemporary time. He is in residence at Toronto's Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) with the support of PIX Film and the Goethe-Institut for the month of November, working on a new project called 80 seconds in Toronto, a mixed media installation that explores local districts at night-time to combine or contrast the images with specific sounds recorded in that neighbourhood, or with sounds that result from exposing found objects or site-specific patterns and structures onto an optical sound track. The project title refers to the photo-based film 1 second in Montreal by Michael Snow. At the same it alludes to the fact that the cyclic rhythm of a carousel slide projector is defined by 80 slides.

Here are some first visual impressions of Wutz' work-in-progress and his artist statement, chasing prehistoric glaciers and inaudible rivers: Continue reading "Andreas Wutz sees Toronto" »

Lars Kraume, last on the scene two years ago with the remarkable MY SISTERS, will be busy travelling over the next few weeks. Kraume just won the “Prix du Public UBS 2015” Audience Award at the 68th Festival del Film Locarno and will take his film straight to #TIFF15. His political thriller THE PEOPLE VS. FRITZ BAUER celebrated its world premiere in front of 8000 audience in an open-air screening on the Piazza Grande and is coming to Toronto for its North American premiere in September.

Kraume presents the gripping portrait of the German prosecutor general Fritz Bauer and his battle to bring the Nazi perpetrators to justice at a time when the young Federal Republic of Germany wanted to put this period behind it. Continue reading "Two German films go from Locarno to #TIFF15" »

Dear Romuald Karmakar,

With 19 “clips” over 19 days, with protagonists ranging from animals at Berlin Zoo to neo Nazis on Alexanderplatz, I was surprised but happy to hear you are one of four artists, alongside Germany's favourite Ai Wei Wei (and his mother), to animate the German Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale starting tomorrow –or rather the French Pavilion, as both countries have traded places again this year, harking back to the first post-war Biennale. But that shouldn’t matter to you as a multi-hyphenated German-French-Iranian writer-director-producer of feature films and docs anyway. I was a bit worried about what kind of shot you would be given at the grandiose art spectacle when Deutschlandfunk radio commented on your inclusion in Susanne Gaensheimer's curation: "The film community ignores this honour, the art world is irritated. As usual, Romuald Karmakar polarizes." Continue reading "To Romuald Karmakar, c/o Venice Biennale" »