Titel.KINO 1/04.RV - german films

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FAR AWAY AND What makes great events so satisfying? The fact that they begin in a small way, like everything else. One example is a story from exactly a year ago. Visiting French distributors had just seen a film called Good Bye, Lenin! at the Berlin Film Festival, and in fact, for a German film, it wasn’t bad at all. The professionals acknowledged afterwards that it might attract 100,000 viewers in France, but they also hesitated. Who would have the courage to release such a film – in France, where German cinema has been poison to the box offices for years? Then suddenly, the man called ”Jeannot“ by the big Parisian family of distributors charmingly begged his colleagues: “Oh, let me have it, I have a space in my program at the moment.“ So Jean Hernandez, director of the young Océan Films Distribution, secured himself the scoop of the year 2003 as casually and cleverly as that – and Fabienne Vonier from Pyramide Distribution related the tale at the first German-French film meeting in Lyon in November 2003, to the great amusement of 150 specialists from the field. It was a modesty that was destined to pay: Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin! – deliberately marketed as a German film available only in the original version with subtitles – drew almost 1.5 million viewers to cinemas in France. ”That is YET SO CLOSE: GERMAN-FRENCH FILM RELATIONS really tremendous,“ says Hernandez today – but the ”emotional quality“ of the mother-son relationship before the background of the fall of the Wall, a topic that fascinates people in France as well, gives the film its simple conviction. Good Bye, Lenin!, Océan’s first German film, thus became the first German-language blockbuster in France for 22 years – since Uli Edel’s drug story We Children from Bahnhof Zoo (Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, almost 2.9 million viewers). Generally speaking, 2003 was a year of international successes for German cinema: an OSCAR for Caroline Link’s Nowhere in Africa (Nirgendwo in Afrika), Wolfgang Becker’s triumph worldwide, the Coppa Volpi in Venice for the very German star, Katja Riemann – perhaps this really has triggered the ”renaissance of German film“ in France, too, as the French film magazine Positif so obligingly predicted. On the other hand, it is of course true to say: where there was scarcely anything left, even a little is a lot. But what would a renaissance deserving the name actually signify? One or two German films in the competition at Cannes each year, current films by German directors everywhere in French cinemas, and the number of viewers watching these running to six figures on a kino 1 focus on german-french film relations 2004 4 Scene from ”Far Away So Close“ (photo courtesy of Filmbild Fundus)
Scene from ”Kings of the Road“ Scene from ”The Tin Drum“ reliable basis? A renaissance would mean – in other words – conditions like those 20 to 35 years ago. PARADISE LOST: CANNES At that time, France was a true paradise for some German filmmakers: Volker Schloendorff and Wim Wenders, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog had a safe platform in Cannes, and that was right at the top, in the competition – Schloendorff as early as 1966 with his debut Young Toerless (Der junge Toerless) and above all with the Golden Palm in 1979 for The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel); Wenders with Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit, 1976), going on to become the unchallenged German record-holder with a total of seven films up until 1997; Fassbinder in 1974 with Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf) and again in 1978 with Despair; and Werner Herzog in 1975 with Every Man For Himself and God Against All (Jeder fuer sich und Gott gegen alle), for which he received the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury, and later with other films including Woyzeck (1979) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). And there was influential French film criticism, more powerful than today and led by the Cahiers du Cinéma, which supported and presented German films to audiences – so well that these directors’ films, or at least some of them, ran more successfully in France than in Germany, particularly Wenders’ Golden Palm winner, Paris, Texas (1984). The Germans, for their part, were interested in the greats of the Nouvelle Vague, in François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Eric kino 1 focus on german-french film relations 2004 5
Page 1 and 2: Anne Ratte-Polle in ”Nightsongs
Page 3: AT B E R L I N GERMAN CINEMA AT BER
Page 7 and 8: Scene from ”Out of Rosenheim“ (
Page 9 and 10: The Export-Union’s Festival of Ge
Page 11 and 12: Scene from ”Good Bye, Lenin!“ F
Page 13 and 14: screenplay prize from the Filmverla
Page 15 and 16: in competition competition “Die
Page 17 and 18: Filmstiftung NRW. ”At the time, w
Page 19 and 20: I was like that as well. I was very
Page 21 and 22: Poster from anti-piracy campaign an
Page 23 and 24: Peter Lohmeyer, Louis Klamroth, Soe
Page 25 and 26: Bill Handel from ”Frozen Angels
Page 27 and 28: ”The project was actually develop
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Page 31 and 32: with a sociological background. Our
Page 33 and 34: Der Prozess In over eight years of
Page 35 and 36: Romanze in Moll ROMANCE IN A MINOR
Page 37 and 38: Auf Leben und Tod - Sternstunden un
Page 39 and 40: Baltic Storm During the night from
Page 41 and 42: Charlotte Charlotte returns to Berl
Page 43 and 44: Fremder Freund THE FRIEND We were f
Page 45 and 46: Gegen die Wand HEAD-ON ”You can p
Page 47 and 48: Kroko She’s the blond bitch of th
Page 49 and 50: Rosenhuegel ROSEHILL Ten-year-old P
Page 51 and 52: Soloalbum Ben leads the kind of lif
Page 53 and 54: Unterwegs EN ROUTE Three young peop
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Film und Video Untertitelung Gerhar
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ASSOCIATION OF GERMAN FILM EXPORTER
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FOREIGN REPRESENTATIVES Argentina D
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Titel.KINO 1/04.RV - german films

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