Titel Kino 2/2001(2 Alternativ) - German Films
Titel Kino 2/2001(2 Alternativ) - German Films
Titel Kino 2/2001(2 Alternativ) - German Films
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Director’s Portrait Angela Schanelec<br />
Form as a framework within which life finds a place –<br />
Angela Schanelec’s films are characterized by a<br />
paradox. On the one hand, with respect to form, her<br />
works are the most self-contained and – in the best<br />
sense of the word – self-willed on the entire <strong>German</strong><br />
film scene. However, her intrinsically quiet takes,<br />
together with the hypersensitive sound track, lead to<br />
the development of an immense openness; they capture<br />
atmosphere and everyday moments which set<br />
forth reality almost in passing. Critics often see<br />
Angela Schanelec, who admits to taking Maurice<br />
Pialat and Robert Bresson as her models, in close<br />
connection with French cinema. Schanelec herself<br />
reacts soberly to this French comparison: “My films<br />
come about as the result of observation and the way<br />
I feel about reality, that is all”.<br />
Schanelec’s new film Passing Summer (Mein<br />
langsames Leben) follows a handful of people,<br />
aged around thirty, through a summer and an autumn<br />
in Berlin. Basically, “follow” is the wrong word, for<br />
usually the camera remains static and constitutes the<br />
section where life is taking place at a specific time.<br />
The characters sit in a café, in the kitchen or a<br />
restaurant, by a lake and in the park. They talk about<br />
their work and their holidays, about marriage and<br />
whether it is okay to simply earn some money in<br />
your profession rather than try to change the world.<br />
“In this film there is no conflict in the classical, dramatic<br />
sense”, says Schanelec, “I was interested in<br />
what these young people do with their lives. It is a<br />
matter of the familiar, of a normality which each<br />
person handles in a different way.”<br />
Angela Schanelec was born in Aalen, Baden-Württemberg in 1962. From 1982 to 1984, she trained<br />
as an actress at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt. After this, she was engaged by<br />
several theaters, including: the Schauspielhaus in Cologne, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the Schaubühne<br />
in Berlin and the Schauspielhaus in Bochum. In 1990, Angela Schanelec decided to finish her career as an<br />
actress and applied to the Academy of Film and Television in Berlin (dffb). Here she studied Direction until<br />
1995. During her studies, she made the short films Schöne gelbe Farbe. Weit entfernt (1991),<br />
Prag, März 1992 (1992) and Über das Entgegenkommen (1993). Angela Schanelec’s first<br />
feature film The Summer I Stayed in Berlin (Ich bin den Sommer über in Berlin geblieben)<br />
(1994) already shows the city of Berlin as it is perceived by her characters. This is also true of<br />
her graduation film My Sister’s Good Fortune (Das Glück meiner Schwester, 1995). In 1998,<br />
she made Places in Cities (Plätze in Städten), which was shown in the Cannes section “Un certain<br />
regard” during the same year. Since then, she has completed Passing Summer (Mein langsames<br />
Leben, <strong>2001</strong>), an ensemble film about people in their mid-thirties living in Berlin, which was screened at<br />
the Forum of this year’s Berlinale and will be opening in <strong>German</strong> cinemas in September <strong>2001</strong>.<br />
UNSWERVING<br />
COMMITMENT<br />
Normality, in Schanelec’s work, is conversations<br />
which appear to have been filmed from the next<br />
table, scenes in which people’s talk is confused and<br />
they interrupt each other, making tense digs at the<br />
others and sitting in troubled silence. However, the Angela Schanelec (photo © Schramm Film 2000)<br />
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