Titel Kino 2/2001(2 Alternativ) - German Films

Director’s Portrait Angela Schanelec
Form as a framework within which life finds a place –
Angela Schanelec’s films are characterized by a
paradox. On the one hand, with respect to form, her
works are the most self-contained and – in the best
sense of the word – self-willed on the entire German
film scene. However, her intrinsically quiet takes,
together with the hypersensitive sound track, lead to
the development of an immense openness; they capture
atmosphere and everyday moments which set
forth reality almost in passing. Critics often see
Angela Schanelec, who admits to taking Maurice
Pialat and Robert Bresson as her models, in close
connection with French cinema. Schanelec herself
reacts soberly to this French comparison: “My films
come about as the result of observation and the way
I feel about reality, that is all”.
Schanelec’s new film Passing Summer (Mein
langsames Leben) follows a handful of people,
aged around thirty, through a summer and an autumn
in Berlin. Basically, “follow” is the wrong word, for
usually the camera remains static and constitutes the
section where life is taking place at a specific time.
The characters sit in a café, in the kitchen or a
restaurant, by a lake and in the park. They talk about
their work and their holidays, about marriage and
whether it is okay to simply earn some money in
your profession rather than try to change the world.
“In this film there is no conflict in the classical, dramatic
sense”, says Schanelec, “I was interested in
what these young people do with their lives. It is a
matter of the familiar, of a normality which each
person handles in a different way.”
Angela Schanelec was born in Aalen, Baden-Württemberg in 1962. From 1982 to 1984, she trained
as an actress at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt. After this, she was engaged by
several theaters, including: the Schauspielhaus in Cologne, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the Schaubühne
in Berlin and the Schauspielhaus in Bochum. In 1990, Angela Schanelec decided to finish her career as an
actress and applied to the Academy of Film and Television in Berlin (dffb). Here she studied Direction until
1995. During her studies, she made the short films Schöne gelbe Farbe. Weit entfernt (1991),
Prag, März 1992 (1992) and Über das Entgegenkommen (1993). Angela Schanelec’s first
feature film The Summer I Stayed in Berlin (Ich bin den Sommer über in Berlin geblieben)
(1994) already shows the city of Berlin as it is perceived by her characters. This is also true of
her graduation film My Sister’s Good Fortune (Das Glück meiner Schwester, 1995). In 1998,
she made Places in Cities (Plätze in Städten), which was shown in the Cannes section “Un certain
regard” during the same year. Since then, she has completed Passing Summer (Mein langsames
Leben, 2001), an ensemble film about people in their mid-thirties living in Berlin, which was screened at
the Forum of this year’s Berlinale and will be opening in German cinemas in September 2001.
UNSWERVING
COMMITMENT
Normality, in Schanelec’s work, is conversations
which appear to have been filmed from the next
table, scenes in which people’s talk is confused and
they interrupt each other, making tense digs at the
others and sitting in troubled silence. However, the Angela Schanelec (photo © Schramm Film 2000)
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