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<strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong><br />
Quarterly 4 · 20<strong>05</strong><br />
DIRECTORS’ PORTRAITS<br />
Byambasuren Davaa & Douglas Wolfsperger<br />
PRODUCER’S PORTRAIT<br />
Clasart Film: Focusing on Quality<br />
PORTRAIT: AG DOK<br />
25 Years of the <strong>German</strong> Documentary Association<br />
SPECIAL REPORT<br />
Digital Cinema in <strong>German</strong>y
german films quarterly 4/20<strong>05</strong><br />
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focus on<br />
DIGITAL CINEMA IN GERMANY<br />
portrait<br />
A LESSON IN PERSISTENCE<br />
A portrait of the <strong>German</strong> Documentary Association<br />
directors’ portraits<br />
A MEDIATOR BETWEEN TWO WORLDS<br />
A portrait of Byambasuren Davaa<br />
FILMS THAT HOVER<br />
A portrait of Douglas Wolfsperger<br />
producer’s portrait<br />
FOCUSING ON QUALITY<br />
A portrait of Clasart Film<br />
actors’ portraits<br />
ENERGY AND HIGH STANDARDS<br />
A portrait of Burghart Klaussner<br />
MANY FACES, MANY TALENTS<br />
A portrait of Katja Riemann<br />
news<br />
in production<br />
4TOECHTER<br />
Rainer Kaufmann<br />
EBAY WORLD<br />
Stefan Tolz, Marcus Vetter<br />
GEFANGENE<br />
Iain Dilthey<br />
ICH BIN DIE ANDERE<br />
Margarethe von Trotta<br />
KNALLHART<br />
Detlev Buck<br />
LUCY<br />
Henner Winckler<br />
DER MANN VON DER BOTSCHAFT<br />
Dito Tsintsadze<br />
REINE FORMSACHE<br />
Ralf Huettner<br />
SIEBEN ZWERGE – DER WALD IST NICHT GENUG<br />
Sven Unterwaldt<br />
SOMMER ’01 AN DER SCHLEI<br />
Stefan Krohmer<br />
THE THREE INVESTIGATORS AND<br />
THE SECRET OF SKELETON ISLAND<br />
Florian Baxmeyer<br />
TKKG<br />
Tomy Wigand<br />
DER UNTERGANG DER PAMIR<br />
Kaspar Heidelbach<br />
DIE WILDEN KERLE III<br />
Joachim Masannek
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new german films<br />
24/7 THE PASSION OF LIFE<br />
Roland Reber<br />
BERLIN NIGHTS<br />
Gabriela Tscherniak<br />
BREAKING THE RULES –<br />
ACROSS AMERICAN COUNTERCULTURE<br />
Marco Mueller<br />
BRUDERMORD FRATRICIDE<br />
Yilmaz Arslan<br />
DU HAST GESAGT, DASS DU MICH LIEBST<br />
YOU TOLD ME YOU LOVE ME<br />
Rudolf Thome<br />
DIE GROSSE STILLE INTO GREAT SILENCE<br />
Philip Groening<br />
JUNGLE SPIRIT<br />
Ingo Storm<br />
DIE LETZTEN TAGE THE LAST DAYS<br />
Oliver Frohnauer<br />
MAKING OF ZEPPELIN!<br />
Hans Guenther Pflaum<br />
DIE MEGAKLINIK THE MEGAHOSPITAL<br />
Hans Andreas Guttner<br />
OBABA<br />
Montxo Armendáriz<br />
PELADÃO – ELF FREUNDE UND EINE KOENIGIN<br />
PELADÃO – SOCCER TEAMS AND BEAUTY QUEENS<br />
Joern Schoppe<br />
SOMMER VORM BALKON SUMMER IN BERLIN<br />
Andreas Dresen<br />
WAS LEBST DU? WHATZ UP?<br />
Bettina Braun<br />
WELTVERBESSERUNGSMASSNAHMEN<br />
MEASURES TO BETTER THE WORLD<br />
Joern Hintzer, Jakob Huefner<br />
the 100 most significant german films (part 19)<br />
DAS BOOT THE BOAT<br />
Wolfgang Petersen<br />
JAGDSZENEN AUS NIEDERBAYERN<br />
HUNTING SCENES FROM BAVARIA<br />
Peter Fleischmann<br />
LEBENSLAEUFE<br />
BIOGRAPHIES – THE STORY OF THE CHILDREN OF GOLZOW<br />
Winfried Junge, Barbara Junge<br />
BERLINER BALLADE THE BALLAD OF BERLIN<br />
Robert A. Stemmle<br />
film exporters<br />
foreign representatives · imprint
“Durchfahrtsland”(photo courtesy of<br />
Delicatessen/Edition Salzgeber)<br />
DIGITAL CINEMA<br />
IN GERMANY –<br />
THE WAITING GAME<br />
Digital cinema – everyone’s talking about it. Hardly a week seems to<br />
have gone by this year without a panel somewhere between<br />
Flensburg and Mittenwald on the pros and cons of digital vs. traditional<br />
35 mm projection.<br />
September, for example, saw Munich’s Media Business Academy<br />
devote a whole day event to the “cinema of the future”, while the<br />
Oldenburg International Film Festival staged a roundtable on High<br />
Definition and Digital Cinema with director and HD specialist<br />
Christopher Coppola, filmmaker Michael Klier and distributor Torsten<br />
Frehse of Neue Visionen, and AG Kino’s arthouse trade fair in Leipzig<br />
featured a Digital Update to give arthouse cinema-owners an overview<br />
of the current state of play in their particular field.<br />
But it seems to be mainly talking and not so much action here in<br />
<strong>German</strong>y when compared with some other parts of Europe.<br />
For example, there are the highly ambitious plans of the UK Film<br />
Council for the creation of a Digital Screen Network which should<br />
reach around 250 screens in 150 theaters and proposes adopting “the<br />
highest standards currently foreseen for digital cinema”, the 270<br />
screen network of Digital Houses in Sweden are almost entirely<br />
located in country areas and are linked with the desire to break free<br />
of traditional distribution, and the announcement of U.S. digital company<br />
Avica to create a network of 515 screens across Northern and<br />
Southern Ireland to make Ireland “the world’s first digital nation.”<br />
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At the moment, around 40 <strong>German</strong> cinemas are participating in<br />
the CinemaNet Europe network, another 24 screens<br />
located at such venues as Berlin’s legendary<br />
Zoopalast cinema, Nuremberg’s Cinecitta<br />
multiplex and Munich’s Inselkinos<br />
(formerly Forum der Technik) have had<br />
digital projectors installed by the<br />
Belgian XDC company as part of a<br />
100-screen network across Europe<br />
and have been screening such<br />
Hollywood blockbusters as Star Wars<br />
III, The Island, and Sin City in the digital<br />
format; and the ROWO Digital group<br />
has put E-cinema technology in place at<br />
such cinemas as Munich’s Mathaeser<br />
Filmpalast and the Kinopolis multiplex in<br />
Landshut to present cinema advertising ahead of the<br />
main program.<br />
STANDARDS SET – LETHARGY OVER?<br />
This summer, the Digital Cinemas Initiative (DCI), an umbrella group<br />
formed three years ago by the U.S. studios and exhibitors, announced<br />
an industry standard governing the digital cinema roll-out by presenting<br />
a set of unanimous system requirements and specifications to<br />
help manufacturers create uniform digital cinema equipment throughout<br />
the United States.<br />
According to the DCI, it is expected that individual print costs would<br />
be cut from $1,200 to about a quarter of that amount for the digital<br />
equipment and transportation charges would be eliminated as studios<br />
adopt satellite and fiber optic delivery systems.<br />
The <strong>German</strong>s, however, are not planning to accept the DCI standard<br />
without further analysis: the distributors association VdF and the exhibitors<br />
gathered under HDF-Kino e.V. have commissioned the Fraunhofer<br />
Institut to establish a so-called “digital testbed” which would be<br />
undertaken probably from the middle of next year. The researchers’<br />
findings would facilitate a level of transparency from which the various<br />
players would then be able to hammer out working models for the<br />
eventual roll-out of digital cinema in <strong>German</strong>y.<br />
“All of the majors are saying that they would be ready if – and this ’if ’<br />
is important – the business model is there,” says Thierry Perronnet,<br />
Marketing Director for Entertainment Imaging at Kodak. “What we<br />
hear from distributors and exhibitors is more of a waiting mode than<br />
anything else. People talk a lot about digital cinema but nobody is<br />
ready to start because they don’t know how much it is going to cost<br />
– and who is going to pay for it. That is the biggest question.”<br />
“The advantage of digital projection of commercials has been seen<br />
especially in the U.S. [where cinema advertising was hardly developed<br />
before] because you can divide it by regions and by cinema,” says Kai<br />
Langner, Kodak’s new General Manager for Entertainment Imaging in<br />
<strong>German</strong>y, Austria, Switzerland and the Nordic Countries. “The real<br />
critical thing is the cost of conversion: when you look at <strong>German</strong>y, for<br />
example, there are roughly 4,000 screens and today we talk about an<br />
investment of €100,000 per screen, i.e. €4 billion in total. One argument<br />
will be that the prices will be dropping, but still you have to<br />
<strong>cover</strong> the costs rather fast. But it doesn’t make sense for the whole<br />
industry to have two systems side by side, so I think you should have<br />
the conversion completed in a three year period. I think, though, that<br />
it will be a country-by-country change and it won’t be very cost effective<br />
at the start.”<br />
GERMAN RETICENCE<br />
“In <strong>German</strong>y, exhibitors are still rather reticent,” notes Andreas<br />
Kramer of the <strong>German</strong> cinema-owners association HDF-Kino e.V.<br />
“There is a situation where they say: ’Before we make any investments<br />
in any direction, we will first wait and see what happens abroad’.<br />
Many are looking to see what the Dutch do and how [the<br />
Belgian multiplex operator] Kinepolis works out.”<br />
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Kai Langner (photo courtesy of KODAK)<br />
Andreas Kramer (photo courtesy of HDF-Kino)
“Nachbarinnen”<br />
(photo courtesy of Delicatessen/Edition Salzgeber)<br />
“They are not only wanting to see how reliable the technology is, but<br />
also how the price structure for the tickets changes. Moreover, this<br />
discussion comes at a point where the readiness to make investments<br />
on this scale is not so big given the current problems in the cinema<br />
sector in <strong>German</strong>y,” Kramer says.<br />
Moreover, he believes that the discussion in <strong>German</strong>y about digital<br />
cinema “has been undertaken without making any distinction between<br />
D-Cinema and E-Cinema, i.e. everything under 2K such as the areas<br />
of advertising and marketing and alternative content where I would<br />
also include the [CinemaNet Europe network’s] Delicatessen program.<br />
A question we have to address is: are we going to stay on the<br />
level of E-Cinema here in <strong>German</strong>y and Europe or will we manage to<br />
become partners in the DCI standard? There is also the issue of who<br />
has their finger on the button for sending films into the cinemas; the<br />
programming of films must not be allowed to be taken out of our<br />
hands and, moreover, there still isn’t any convincing business model<br />
yet for Europe.”<br />
A report on the impact of digital technologies published by London’s<br />
Metropolitan Film School at the end of September noted that for<br />
exhibitors “digitially delivered content gives venues more flexibility,<br />
control and choice. It follows that a film can be shown in irregular<br />
intervals according to audience response or seasonal appropriateness,<br />
since each cinema would have its own copy – there is no conflict between<br />
a cinema wanting to holdover a print vs. another cinema wanting<br />
to introduce the film.”<br />
Moreover, the report’s findings showed that many of those interviewed<br />
for the study “expected that novel exhibition venues will turn<br />
to screening films, such as libraries, nightclubs and other film societies<br />
so that the way audiences experience films will evolve.”<br />
At the same time, many of the respondents “did not expect the supply<br />
chain to change for exhibitors. They believed that their main<br />
source of films would still be through distributors rather than sourcing<br />
films directly from producers or the filmmakers themselves.”<br />
CHANCES FOR THE ARTHOUSE MARKET<br />
“I don’t know any cinema which would be in the situation to convert<br />
to digital completely on its own,” argues Burkhard Voiges who is a comanager<br />
of Berlin’s Hackesche Hoefe Filmtheater and participates in<br />
the CinemaNet Europe initiative. “Those who benefit from this are<br />
the distributors, so we have to find a solution where the cinemas<br />
receive something in return. Otherwise, what is the use of having digital<br />
if I still have to pay the same rental. Our demands should be: digital<br />
technology must have the same quality as 35 mm, but also be cheaper.<br />
Why should it only be the others who can produce and distribute<br />
more cheaply through digitization?”<br />
“When I look at the arthouse market, I think it will be necessary to<br />
have our own access to networks,” Voiges suggests. “The majors have<br />
created a global standard and will develop their own networks and<br />
have associated cinemas to show these films. For us, though, it will be<br />
much more expensive and harder to create similar structures, so I<br />
think we should look at establishing smaller networks and not just<br />
think in terms of pan-European ones. For instance, you could have<br />
networks in a region like North Rhine-Westphalia or Berlin where<br />
specific marketing initiatives are then developed. If you had, say, 10<br />
cinemas in Berlin who have a HD DVD player or Blue Ray DVD player<br />
that could store high definition content, it would be easy to produce<br />
a HD DVD for these cinemas to screen and one could work on<br />
local marketing campaigns. That would be a form of digital cinema in<br />
the arthouse field.”<br />
According to Eva Matlok, managing director of the <strong>German</strong> arthouse<br />
trade association AG Kino, digital cinema could be particularly beneficial<br />
for the development of screenings for children: “when program-<br />
german films quarterly focus on digital cinema<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 6<br />
Eva Matlok (photo courtesy of AG Kino)
ming for the smaller children, you often find that the films are too long<br />
for them and digital projection would enable one to provide other<br />
content in the appropriate length [i.e. short films or medium length<br />
films] for the age-group.”<br />
At the same time, Matlok is not convinced that cinemas with digital<br />
projection would then consequently open up to alternative content<br />
such as live events and concerts being beamed in, while Voiges believes<br />
that there is “an opposite development where other public spaces<br />
which aren’t cinemas will show films in the future. I think this trend<br />
is more likely than the idea that we will be showing other things like<br />
football matches in the cinemas. People had always thought football<br />
would be ideal for this, but it just doesn’t function in the cinema.<br />
People want to drink their beer, stand around, shout out, and have a<br />
smoke during the match. You can do that in the pub, but not in a cinema.”<br />
Interestingly, Voiges had an illuminating experience with the digital<br />
projection of Wagner’s Der Ring der Nibelungen in the 1976 production<br />
by Patrice Chereau and Pierre Boulez over four Sundays in<br />
August which was organized by CinemaNet Europe in cooperation<br />
with Universal, Deutsche Grammophon and Premiere’s Classica pay<br />
TV channel. “Surprisingly, it went very well,” Voiges reports. “The<br />
attendances were very good and they were all theater-goers, it was<br />
definitely not a cinema audience. That’s the nice thing, really – that<br />
you have other people in your cinema. The cinema-owners I spoke<br />
with said that they didn’t find the picture quality that good, but the<br />
audience didn’t criticize it. The technical quality is judged more critically<br />
by us exhibitors than by our customers.”<br />
In fact, the differences between 35 mm and digital projection are not<br />
something that can be used as a marketing tag to attract the average<br />
member of the public to the cinema. “We had a small survey among<br />
those cinemas who participated in CinemaNet Europe’s Delicatessen<br />
and asked how the audience had reacted to the fact that the films<br />
were now being shown digitally,” Matlok recalls. “The unanimous response<br />
was that the audience wasn’t at all interested in this. They<br />
were only interested in the film’s storyline. True, they want the sound<br />
and picture to be OK, but digital in itself is no additional incentive to<br />
come to the cinema.”<br />
CINEMANET EUROPE –<br />
IMPROVING MARKET ACCESS<br />
“There’s nothing more boring than the technology,” adds Bjoern Koll<br />
of Salzgeber & Co. Medien, who has masterminded the <strong>German</strong> participation<br />
in the CinemaNet Europe network (previously known as<br />
European DocuZone). “What is more interesting is the content and<br />
what you can do with it. It wasn’t our aim to set the digital roll-out on<br />
its way,” he stresses. “We see digital cinema as a way of improving the<br />
marketing chances of smaller films.”<br />
CinemaNet Europe, which went live with its opening weekend over<br />
12 – 14 November 2004 across European countries and included the<br />
world premiere of Werner Herzog’s documentary The White<br />
Diamond, was based on the success of an earlier digital cinema project<br />
in the Netherlands. Cinema Delicatessen started distributing<br />
documentaries digitally in 2002, offering audiences a broader selection<br />
of films and reducing distribution costs. In its first year, attendances<br />
from the 10 cinemas surpassed expectations by 50% and<br />
attracted interest from other European countries which then led to<br />
the creation of CinemaNet Europe in 2003 with the support of the<br />
European Union’s MEDIA Plus Program.<br />
Distributing 12 European documentaries as well as locally produced<br />
films through its network of more than 180 cinemas in Austria,<br />
France, <strong>German</strong>y, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Spain,<br />
Slovakia and Belgium this year, CinemaNet Europe has its films subtitled<br />
on a central server, distributed on hard disk (but soon by satellite)<br />
and shown using 1.4K DLP digital projectors.<br />
“We have around 50 cinemas with equipment now installed and a<br />
compatibility with ROWO’s screens in 10-12 cinemas and want to<br />
reach the same situation with the EVS XDC member screens,” Koll<br />
explains. “This autumn, we will have some more cinemas joining the<br />
network in <strong>German</strong>y as well as Goethe-Institutes in Prague, London<br />
and Lisbon. Step by step, we are getting to the point where we want<br />
to be.”<br />
Koll argues that he doesn’t draw any line of definition between E-cinema<br />
and D-cinema. “It is a question of price – we tested projectors and<br />
presented our 1.4 K projector to cinema-owners in ’blind screenings’<br />
compared with 2K projectors and there was an unanimous vote for<br />
these [1.4 K] projectors. We are delivering an image where you can’t<br />
distinguish a difference if it comes from a good master of a 35 mm<br />
print. So, our required standard has been reached.”<br />
According to CinemaNet Europe, since a typical screen in their network<br />
holds up to 250 seats, “a mid-range 1.35K gives the audience<br />
the same viewing experience as a mainstream multiplex cinema with<br />
600-800 seats using a 2K projector.”<br />
OFFERING DELICATESSEN ALTERNATIVE<br />
TO MAINSTREAM<br />
This spring saw the staging of the first season of the network’s<br />
Delicatessen program of European documentaries and a local selection.<br />
Then, every Wednesday from 7 September to 30 November, a<br />
new Delicatessen lineup has been presented digitally on screens in<br />
such cinemas as Berlin’s Hackesche Hoefe Filmtheater and Filmkunst<br />
german films quarterly focus on digital cinema<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 7<br />
Bjœrn Koll (photo courtesy of Edition Salzgeber)
“Horst Buchholz … Mein Papa” (photo courtesy of<br />
Delicatessen/Edition Salzgeber)<br />
66, Frankfurt’s Filmforum Hoechst, Cinema Muenster, Munich’s<br />
Monopol, Leipzig’s Passage Kinos and Hamburg’s Zeise Kinos. The<br />
films selected this time around included Christopher Buchholz and<br />
Sandra Hacker’s documentary Horst Buchholz … Mein Papa, which<br />
had its premiere at the Berlinale in February, Roger Kappers’ Alan<br />
Lomax – The Songhunter which showed at the Edinburgh Film Festival<br />
in August, Volker Koepp’s latest documentary Pommerland and<br />
Aleksandr Manic’s Shutka – Stadt der Roma.<br />
Koll admits that the CinemaNet Europe initiative has not been welcomed<br />
with open arms by all parts of the industry. The <strong>German</strong> distributors<br />
association VdF, for example, was critical in a position paper<br />
at the beginning of the year about the “missing separation between<br />
content and transport and the consequently privileged position enjoyed<br />
by Salzgeber for access to the digital screens compared to other<br />
distributors. While praising the Berlin-based company’s “outstanding<br />
pioneer work” in this new field of digital distribution, the VdF nevertheless<br />
suggested that there should be a greater transparency in the<br />
network’s offer of services to theatrical distributors.<br />
In particular, a group of Berlin distributors such as Neue Visionen and<br />
Piffl Medien have kept their distance from the network, but Koll notes<br />
that they use the cinemas’ digital projectors to show DVDs of their<br />
films. “A more positive development is the work we are now doing<br />
for the future for Tobis and MFA in encoding films for digital distribution,<br />
and we have handled films for distributors like Real Fiction<br />
(Alexandra Sell’s Durchfahrtsland) and Freunde der deutschen<br />
Kinemathek (Li Yinfan and Yan Yu’s documentary on the three-gorge<br />
dam Yan Mo – Vor der Flut) and a number of producers with films they<br />
are distributing themselves [such as Sebastian Heinzel’s 89 Millimeter<br />
and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady],” Koll reports.<br />
ATTRACTION TO FILMMAKERS AND FESTIVALS<br />
The possibilities of digital projection are also encouraging some<br />
filmmakers to consider the option of shooting digitally as well. “Each<br />
day, we have people coming to our offices to inform themselves<br />
about the possibilities of a HD shoot,” Koll says. “More and more<br />
filmmakers are thinking of shooting on this format and we are now<br />
working with a lot of low-budget or no-budget productions where<br />
digital distribution is the only one they can afford.”<br />
At the same time, CinemaNet works two-track offering 35 mm and<br />
digital distribution for certain titles such as Nachbarinnen or the documentary<br />
Horst Buchholz … Mein Papa. (Indeed, until digital roll-out<br />
really kicks in and the provision is universal, there will have to be the<br />
delivery in both formats for some time to come.)<br />
Similarly, film festivals in <strong>German</strong>y such as the Berlinale and Filmfest<br />
Muenchen have seen that digital projection enables them to show<br />
films where there is no 35 mm print available and they would consequently<br />
have to pass on showing the film. Koll is particularly pleased<br />
about the opening up of the Ophuels Festival program to digital projection<br />
instigated by the new festival director Birgit Johnson. “We will<br />
be there in 2006 encoding the data on the spot at the festival and that<br />
will give young producers a real hands-on feel for digital cinema!”<br />
Martin Blaney<br />
german films quarterly focus on digital cinema<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 8<br />
Werner Herzog’s “The White Diamond“ (photo courtesy of Delicatessen/Edition Salzgeber)
AG DOK’s Board of Directors<br />
PORTRAIT<br />
A LESSON IN<br />
PERSISTENCE<br />
A portrait of the <strong>German</strong> Documentary Association<br />
As the <strong>German</strong> Documentary Association (AG DOK) celebrates<br />
its 25th anniversary this autumn, persistence is the word that<br />
inevitably comes to mind as one looks back at the association’s activities.<br />
An “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Dokumentarfilm” [Workgroup Documentary<br />
Film] was founded at the Duisburg Film Week in September<br />
1980 by 84 assembled documentary filmmakers after more than a<br />
year of preparations and issued the “Duisburg Declaration” calling for<br />
the inclusion of the documentary genre in the <strong>German</strong> Film Law’s<br />
“project funding” category and for increased air-time for documentaries<br />
on television.<br />
“Some of the basic demands formulated by AG DOK in the early<br />
years could still be taken on 1:1,” notes Thomas Frickel who has<br />
been the association’s chairman since 1987. “When we came away<br />
from the image of documentary only equaling culture, AG DOK developed<br />
into a professional association and the membership numbers<br />
german films quarterly portrait ag dok<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 9
With 757 members, the <strong>German</strong> Documentary Association<br />
(AG DOK) is the largest professional association of producers working<br />
independently of television in <strong>German</strong>y. The association is open<br />
to representatives of all film genres but regards itself primarily as the<br />
film and media policy lobby force for documentaries.<br />
AG DOK engages itself to maintain and even increase the presence<br />
of the documentary genre in television schedules and cinema programs<br />
and questions the tendency of broadcasters to take more<br />
rights from independent producers for, at times, less money. The<br />
association participates in all debates on the future of film policy in<br />
<strong>German</strong>y and commissions legal assessments to support its arguments<br />
in the discussions. AG DOK’s members benefit from a legal<br />
advice service and can have their contracts counter-checked by an<br />
experienced media lawyer.<br />
AG DOK also represents the interests of documentary filmmakers in<br />
the administrative board of VG Bild-Kunst, the <strong>German</strong> Federal Film<br />
Board (FFA), and in the shareholders assembly of <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>.<br />
exploded. In essence, our work has been about developing working<br />
models and strategies to help the smaller independents obtain better<br />
structural conditions. One of the first important measures was to<br />
draw up model contracts and checklists for producers.”<br />
“As a single independent you are on your own against potential financers<br />
like television, whereas the AG DOK provides support for a<br />
stronger negotiating position. The exchange of information amongst<br />
members has also led to people becoming more aware of the key<br />
issues,” he continues.<br />
“The fact that AG DOK represents practically everyone who is anyone<br />
in the <strong>German</strong> documentary world is another reason why the TV<br />
channels talk to us,” adds board member Herbert Schwering of<br />
Cologne-based ICON Film. “AG DOK is in a way unique because it<br />
represents the interests of both producers and authors. Of course<br />
this is natural as, in the documentary sphere, it is often the case that<br />
the producer is also the author. On the producers’ side, we have<br />
addressed the question of how long license periods should be and<br />
raised the issue of repeat fees from the TV stations. We have also had<br />
to make it clear to the broadcasters that it is no less time-consuming<br />
to develop a script for a documentary than it is for a feature film.”<br />
“Over the past 25 years, we have constantly asked ’What will happen<br />
to the small production companies?’ – especially when one sees more<br />
and more program commissions going to large production companies,”<br />
Frickel says. “As a documentary filmmaker, you have a lot of<br />
idealism, and often work without <strong>cover</strong>ing your costs and in a state of<br />
self-exploitation. If this wasn’t the case, the big firms would of course<br />
also do more documentaries.”<br />
While some initiatives fell by the wayside over the last quarter of a<br />
century due to a lack of financing, AG DOK has regularly scored successes<br />
in the film political arena thanks to a sturdy persistency in its<br />
lobbying efforts.<br />
In addition, the establishment of the initiative “<strong>German</strong><br />
Documentaries” has created a platform for the international distribution<br />
of <strong>German</strong> documentaries as well as the presentation of<br />
members’ works at foreign festivals and professional get-togethers<br />
with colleagues from other countries.<br />
Contact:<br />
Arbeitsgemeinschaft Dokumentarfilm<br />
Schweizer Strasse 6 · 6<strong>05</strong>94 Frankfurt am Main/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-69-62 37 00 · fax +49-61 42-96 64 24<br />
email: agdok@agdok.de · www.agdok.de<br />
For example, in 1998, 18 years after its founding, the AG DOK finally<br />
received a seat and vote in the <strong>German</strong> Federal Film Board’s administrative<br />
board and also saw the “reference funding” minimum<br />
threshold for documentaries reduced to 25,000 admissions, while it<br />
took some nine years before the documentary filmmakers’ association<br />
became a shareholder in <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> at the end of August<br />
2004.<br />
Similarly, the drip-drip approach of the constant dialogue with the<br />
broadcasters in <strong>German</strong>y led to provisional agreements by ARD and<br />
ZDF this year to considerably relax the regulations on sureties for<br />
small producers and to place freelance writers and directors on equal<br />
footing with in-house staff regarding repeat fees.<br />
Over the years, AG DOK has often aired robust criticism about negative<br />
developments in the <strong>German</strong> film funding landscape when it has<br />
seen the interests of its members jeopardized, such as highlighting the<br />
influence of television or calling for dedicated nomination categories<br />
for the documentary at the <strong>German</strong> Film Awards.<br />
AG DOK has also played a role in improving the lot of the documentary<br />
filmmaker on a European level as well. AG DOK played an<br />
active role in the development of such initiatives as “Documentary”<br />
and “EuroAim” by serving on the board of directors as well as being<br />
involved in the launching of the European Documentary Institute<br />
(EDI) and the European Documentary Network (EDN), and the<br />
association began forging contacts with documentary colleagues in<br />
the Eastern half of <strong>German</strong>y long before the fall of the Berlin Wall.<br />
Moreover, the AG DOK and others’ protests at the absence of a<br />
documentary prize category at the first European Film Awards in Berlin<br />
in 1988 led to this category being introduced a year later for the ceremony<br />
in Paris.<br />
german films quarterly portrait ag dok<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 10
In a move to facilitate access to the international market for its members,<br />
AG DOK decided to attend the “Sunny Side of the Doc”<br />
market in Marseille for the first time in 1996.<br />
“Documentaries have a different status now,” Frickel explains. “There<br />
was a renaissance in the 1990s with an internationalization of the<br />
genre and an understanding that there is a TV market for documentaries.<br />
It took a while for <strong>German</strong> documentary filmmakers to realize<br />
this: some only work for their own market, while others think internationally.<br />
But there are strokes of luck where a film is about one’s<br />
own country and also has universal appeal.”<br />
A year after the premiere of <strong>German</strong> Documentaries in Marseille,<br />
though, the <strong>German</strong> Economics Ministry turned down the association’s<br />
application to finance the subtitling of films scheduled to screen<br />
at the 1997 Berlinale and a stand at the Sunny Side of the Docs.<br />
However, thanks to the chairman’s persistency, the Ministry did a<br />
turnabout in 1998 and started providing financing for the subtitling of<br />
films, the <strong>German</strong> Documentaries catalogue and a market presence in<br />
Cannes.<br />
Meanwhile, back home in <strong>German</strong>y, the Berlinale could not provide<br />
the association stand space at the 1998 European Film Market (EFM).<br />
As a reaction to the market’s decision, AG DOK members strolled<br />
around the EFM with a sales tray to distribute the <strong>German</strong><br />
Documentaries catalogue and flyers explaining the background to the<br />
protest.<br />
A year, later, the Berlinale still did not grant any stand space, but the<br />
AG DOK now took out legal action to win the right to have a presence<br />
on the market and has since become a regular participant at the<br />
EFM.<br />
Apart from the catalogue, the <strong>German</strong> Documentaries initiative has<br />
also staged a number of showcases around the world, such as in St.<br />
Petersburg (“Message to Man” festival), Perm/Siberia, Cairo/Egypt<br />
and Canton/China and became a partner for <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> from last<br />
year after the AG DOK took a 7% shareholding in the newly structured<br />
export promotion agency.<br />
“Agreements and cooperations had existed with the Export-Union in<br />
the past, particularly in the area of logistics as far as the transporting<br />
of prints and materials and the displaying of information material.<br />
They had supported our cause at festivals when we couldn’t be there<br />
ourselves in person,” Frickel recalls.<br />
But the beginnings of a closer collaboration between AG DOK and<br />
the promotion agency had been made with the documentary filmmakers’<br />
stand on the <strong>German</strong> Boulevard at Berlin’s European Film<br />
Market. “Now it’s taken for granted that we are part of the <strong>German</strong><br />
cinema family,” he says.<br />
AG DOK advises <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> on the selection of documentaries<br />
for its Festivals of <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> – for example, Pepe Danquart’s<br />
Hoellentour was shown at this year’s film week in Madrid and then<br />
repeated along with Thomas Grube and Enrique Sanchez Lansch’s<br />
Rhythm Is It! at another <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> showcase in Buenos Aires – and<br />
also continues to be present at festivals and markets where <strong>German</strong><br />
<strong>Films</strong> has not participated so far.<br />
Looking to the future, Frickel suggests that AG DOK will build on the<br />
strengths of the past 25 years with the focus on developing the<br />
exchange of information between the members, continuing the legal<br />
advice service, and retaining a strong lobbying position.<br />
In addition, the beginning of 2006 should see the launch of the project<br />
“OnlineFilm.org” which, according to AG DOK deputy chairman<br />
C. Cay Wesnigk will create “a legal, multi-lingual distribution platform<br />
for the inexpensive distribution and marketing of <strong>German</strong> and<br />
European documentary films via the Internet in Europe and in the<br />
whole world.” (The project had initially been launched in 2000, but<br />
proved to be ahead of its time on a technological level and was unable<br />
to raise the necessary private capital after the Neuer Markt<br />
bubble burst).<br />
Working with other partners throughout Europe, the project aims to<br />
make as many documentaries as possible available for downloading.<br />
“Together with our foreign partners (initially in Greece, Latvia and<br />
Lithuania, later in other European countries), we want to create<br />
regionalized sub-portals which, although they all have access to a central<br />
database with ’metadata’ (descriptive data and subtitles), will also<br />
be able to each develop their own profile and individually address<br />
their customers in their respective national language,” Wesnigk<br />
explains.<br />
Instead of making use of so-called digital rights management systems,<br />
OnlineFilm.org will now focus on transparency in its operations. “We<br />
will be open with the customers about the price structure and the<br />
distribution of the takings,” Wesnigk says. “The customer will thus be<br />
shown clearly that, apart from the structure which makes it possible<br />
for him to find and download the films, he is only paying the authors<br />
and producers whose work he is enjoying. Because of the transparency<br />
of the procedure, we are definitely expecting that our prices<br />
will be accepted and also paid by the users. We call this principle<br />
’Digital Rights Fair Trade’ (DRFT). We will be communicating this<br />
principle at all levels for it distinguishes us from all of the other providers<br />
and forms the basis of the OnlineFilm.org system.”<br />
Martin Blaney<br />
german films quarterly portrait ag dok<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 11
Byambasuren Davaa (photo courtesy of X Verleih)<br />
DIRECTOR’S PORTRAIT<br />
Byambasuren Davaa was born in the Mongolian capital<br />
Ulan Bator in 1971. From 1989 to 1994, she worked for<br />
Mongolian State Television as a presenter and assistant director;<br />
parallel to this, in 1993, she began a two-year course in<br />
Law at the university of her home town. She then began to<br />
study at the College of Cinematic Art in Ulan Bator in 1998.<br />
Two years later, she moved to <strong>German</strong>y to continue her studies<br />
in the Department of Documentary Film at the Academy of<br />
Television and Film (HFF/M) in Munich. Only her second film at<br />
the HFF/M, The Story of the Weeping Camel (Die<br />
Geschichte vom weinenden Kamel, 2003), which she<br />
realized together with her fellow student Luigi Falorni, became<br />
one of the most successful cinema documentaries of recent<br />
years: this film about an ancient ritual among Mongolian<br />
nomads was sold in around 80 countries and enthusiastically<br />
greeted by millions of cinema viewers all over the world. It has<br />
also won numerous international prizes – including Audience<br />
Awards at the festivals in Karlovy Vary, Indianapolis and Buenos<br />
Aires. In addition, it was nominated for an OSCAR in the category<br />
Best Documentary Film. Newsweek praised the director<br />
for her outstanding awareness of natural beauty, the<br />
Washington Post saw the film in the “proud tradition” of ethnographic<br />
masterpieces, and Screen International maintained that it<br />
possessed “all the qualities to melt the hardest heart and become<br />
a cult item.” Davaa’s graduation film at the HFF/M, The<br />
Cave of the Yellow Dog (Die Hoehle des gelben<br />
Hundes, 20<strong>05</strong>) could thus be sold in numerous countries in<br />
advance of its premiere. This semi-fictional feature about a<br />
young nomad girl, her dog and a Mongolian legend had its world<br />
premiere at the Munich Film Festival this summer – where it not<br />
only won the Audience Award, but also the coveted <strong>German</strong> Film<br />
Promotion Award.<br />
A MEDIATOR BETWEEN<br />
TWO WORLDS<br />
A portrait of Byambasuren Davaa<br />
A unique success story: within five years, Byambasuren Davaa<br />
has made it from her home amidst the steppes of Central Asia, via<br />
<strong>German</strong>y, to Hollywood and two OSCAR nominations – meaning that<br />
as a film student, she has already achieved something that others work<br />
for all their lives. But in fact, as the petite, energetic director emphasizes<br />
in our conversation, it is not her nature to plan things: “I don’t<br />
PR Agent: ana radica ! Presse Organisation<br />
Herzog-Wilhelm-Strasse 27 · 80331 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-23 66 12-0 · fax +49-89-23 66 12 20<br />
email: kontakt@ana-radica-presse.com<br />
www.ana-radica-presse.com<br />
need security – not as a person, nor as a filmmaker. For I know it<br />
doesn’t exist, anyway. I always react to a situation and try to remain<br />
open to anything.”<br />
It was probably this openness that gave the director, born in Mongolia,<br />
the courage to transfer from the film academy of her home town Ulan<br />
german films quarterly director’s portrait<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 12
Bator to the Munich Academy of Television and Film (HFF/M) in the<br />
year 2000, although she couldn’t speak a word of <strong>German</strong>. In the<br />
meantime, she speaks the language – perfectly – and remembers: “At<br />
that time, I arrived at the main station in Munich, spent a night in the<br />
waiting room, and began looking for an apartment the next day. That<br />
is my mentality: I just go somewhere and see what happens.”<br />
She made her second film at the HFF/M, The Story of the<br />
Weeping Camel, together with fellow student Luigi Falorni. This<br />
poetic documentary describes an ancient ritual carried out by the<br />
nomadic herders of Southern Mongolia when one of their new-born<br />
camels is rejected by its mother: enchanting musical sounds are<br />
performed to make the mother camel weep – and so induce her to<br />
suckle her offspring again. After a difficult research trip <strong>cover</strong>ing<br />
thousands of kilometers, the two filmmakers finally found a suitable<br />
family of nomads in the Gobi Desert. And at the end of seven<br />
strenuous weeks of shooting, during the musical ceremony, the<br />
mother camel actually did weep.<br />
The struggle and strain were worth it, and The Story of the<br />
Weeping Camel became a hit with audiences worldwide. In<br />
<strong>German</strong>y alone, more than 300,000 were delighted by the unusual<br />
combination of authentic documentary shots and moving feature-film<br />
plot. The film sold in more than 80 countries and has received numerous<br />
international awards. The crowing triumph: a nomination for the<br />
OSCAR for Best Documentary. It is by no means coquettish, but<br />
honest amazement and modesty which Davaa voices when she reviews<br />
this overwhelming response to her film: “Wherever I presented<br />
the film, whether in the USA or France, in Japan or Norway – every<br />
time, I was utterly astonished at how positively the audiences reacted<br />
to it!”<br />
It is possible that Davaa will repeat this success with her new film,<br />
The Cave of the Yellow Dog, her graduation film from the<br />
HFF/M, which had its much-acclaimed world premiere at this year’s<br />
festival in Munich and has been submitted for the OSCAR for Best<br />
Foreign Language Film. Again, Davaa takes her viewers to Mongolia –<br />
this time not into the Gobi Desert, but the steppes of the North<br />
West. From a documentary viewpoint, it tells the fictive story of a girl<br />
from a tribe of herdsmen and a stray dog – and at the same time, it<br />
grants us a fascinating insight into the life of the nomads, which is<br />
characterized by their great respect for nature. Davaa attempted to<br />
treat the family of herdsmen with the same kind of respect: “<strong>German</strong><br />
film teams always want to have everything thoroughly organized – but<br />
the people in Mongolia live in an entirely different fashion,” she relates.<br />
“That is why I made an effort to adapt myself and the crew to the<br />
nomads and to integrate us into the way of life there: for two months,<br />
we actually lived together with the family and all took the necessary<br />
time to get to know each other. We didn’t begin the shooting until we<br />
had developed that trust.”<br />
Davaa does not gloss over or romanticize anything in her film; she<br />
never falls prey to the temptation of ethno-kitsch, but portrays a<br />
society in a process of change: “I wanted to capture the traditional<br />
nomadic culture as long as it still exists,” she says. “I realize that there<br />
is no way of halting modernization. And I wouldn’t want to condemn<br />
that development wholesale, either. What I would like is for the old<br />
and the new to learn from one another, and for people to go on living<br />
their lives on an equal footing. But each viewer ought to draw his own<br />
conclusions from my film.” She herself learned not only traditional,<br />
but also modern values during her childhood – and she freely admits<br />
that she has happily accepted the advantages and opportunities of<br />
western life: “After five years in Munich, I feel like part of both<br />
worlds.” She can therefore imagine making her next film in <strong>German</strong>y:<br />
“People fascinate me. All over the world. Every person has his story.<br />
I certainly wouldn’t want to exclude the possibility of finding the<br />
material for my next film in Munich.”<br />
The “developing filmmaker”, as she describes herself, takes her hat off<br />
to her <strong>German</strong> colleagues: films like Grill Point, The Edukators and<br />
Sophie Scholl – The Final Days impressed her considerably, but she also<br />
admires documentaries such as Rhythm Is It! and Addicted to Acting.<br />
“I think the things that are happening in the documentary field are<br />
very interesting,” she remarks, “and of course I am glad that documentary<br />
films are becoming so popular again. Ten years ago, my films<br />
would probably have had no chance – at that time, it was mainly a<br />
matter of always pulling out the stops when it came to technical and<br />
special effects. I think people want to come back down to earth<br />
today: they are very interested in reality – but TV only offers them socalled<br />
reality shows such as Big Brother and Super Nanny.<br />
Byambasuren Davaa presents a successful alternative to this<br />
artificial TV-reality with her own films. However, her film language –<br />
located somewhere between feature film and documentary – evades<br />
any form of categorization. “Basically, I suppose, I don’t think in<br />
genres,” the 34-year-old director sums up, “and I don’t want to<br />
explain everything dutifully in my films, either. This fixation on the<br />
mediation of knowledge seems like a typical Western European<br />
characteristic to me. Of course, I also satisfy people’s thirst for knowledge<br />
in a certain sense – but subtly and with no claim to the absolute.<br />
My films are intended to be felt: an experience for all the senses rather<br />
than just for the mind!”<br />
Marco Schmidt (freelance journalist for print and television)<br />
spoke to Byambasuren Davaa<br />
german films quarterly director’s portrait<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 13
Douglas Wolfsperger (photo © Joachim Gern)<br />
DIRECTOR’S PORTRAIT<br />
Douglas Wolfsperger was born in Zurich, although<br />
a <strong>German</strong> citizen, in 1958. He grew up in<br />
Friedrichshafen and on Lake Constance and made his<br />
first Super 8 films as a schoolboy. After graduation,<br />
he gained practical directing experience at the<br />
broadcaster SWR in Baden-Baden. In 1982, he<br />
moved to Munich and collaborated on productions<br />
by the local Academy of Television & Film. His first<br />
feature film was made in 1985; since the early 90s, he<br />
has directed numerous documentaries and portraits<br />
for SWF and WDR. A father of three daughters,<br />
Wolfsperger now lives in Berlin and by Lake<br />
Constance. His films include: the features Lebe<br />
kreuz und sterbe quer (1985), Kies (1986),<br />
Probefahrt ins Paradies (1992), and Heirate<br />
mir! (1999), as well as the award-winning documentaries<br />
Bellaria – As Long As We Live<br />
(Bellaria – so lange wir leben, 2001), Riders<br />
of the Sacred Blood (Die Blutritter, 2002),<br />
and most recently Did You Ever Fall in Love<br />
with Me? (War’n Sie schon mal in mich<br />
verliebt?, 2004) which premiered this year at<br />
Locarno.<br />
Contact:<br />
Douglas Wolfsperger Filmproduktion<br />
Kurfuerstendamm 214 · 10719 Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-88 72 53 49 · fax +49-30-88 72 53 51<br />
email: buerowolfsperger@t-online.de<br />
www.Douglas-Wolfsperger.de<br />
FILMS THAT HOVER<br />
A portrait of Douglas Wolfsperger<br />
There are many examples of famous directors who began their<br />
careers making documentary films. But for a director to have been<br />
well-known for slightly scurrilous, ironic and always cutting feature<br />
films, and in the meantime to be acclaimed at international festivals for<br />
his documentary work, this is not something one encounters every<br />
day.<br />
Douglas Wolfsperger never sought to please the biggest possible<br />
audience; the humor of his satires (Lebe kreuz und sterbe<br />
quer, Probefahrt ins Paradies) was too black for that. But the<br />
comedy Heirate mir! – featuring the popular <strong>German</strong> media-autodidact<br />
Verona Feldbusch – was still one of the most successful TV<br />
movies to be broadcast on ProSieben. Nevertheless, it became more<br />
and more difficult for Wolfsperger to finance his films. The director,<br />
who has lived by Lake Constance for many years and also sets a lot of<br />
his stories in the area, views this as one of the basic problems in<br />
<strong>German</strong> cinema: “Everyone asks you if a TV station is involved. You<br />
may even only receive film support if a TV station is co-producing the<br />
german films quarterly director’s portrait<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 14
film.” In this sense, his stories suffer a considerable disadvantage from<br />
the start: “They have to be suitable for prime time; that means that<br />
certain material and ways of narrating are absolutely impossible.”<br />
It seemed like a stroke of fate, therefore, when Wolfsperger was<br />
“carried” – as he himself puts it – to documentary film at the beginning<br />
of the nineties. Quite by the way, he naturally profits from<br />
today’s “docu-boom”, for which he has a logical explanation: “People<br />
prefer to watch a good documentary rather than a bad feature film.”<br />
His love for the genre began with TV documentary work on the subject<br />
of cleaning ladies, cemetery gardeners and garbage disposal workers.<br />
At that time, Wolfsperger had already cultivated a working<br />
method which he finally developed to perfection in Bellaria – As<br />
Long As We Live – his most popular documentary film for the<br />
cinema to date. The starting point is unusual in itself: the film focuses<br />
on old people who meet regularly in a Vienna cinema to watch black<br />
& white <strong>German</strong> classics from the pre-Second World War years.<br />
But that was just the beginning for Wolfsperger. “I am very curious<br />
about people and their stories, particularly about the ’man on the<br />
street’ and milieus that are unfamiliar to me. I want to play with<br />
expectations and break through clichés,” he says, describing his<br />
motives for making films. That is why Bellaria is soon only concerned<br />
with the actual reason for its making on a secondary level. The same<br />
thing can be said of Riders of the Sacred Blood: the Heilig Blut<br />
(“Holy Blood”) ritual in Weingarten in Swabia – an annual horseback<br />
procession – is already bizarre enough in itself. But as in Bellaria, it<br />
soon becomes apparent that the biographies of the participants are<br />
even more interesting.<br />
On occasion, these people are like characters from the œuvre of<br />
Federico Fellini, but Wolfsperger always treats them with respect: the<br />
films are funny, certainly, but we do not amuse ourselves at the cost<br />
of the protagonists. Moderate direction makes sure that the films<br />
continue to “hover”, in Wolfsperger’s own words: here, documentation<br />
is almost akin to a feature film. He imagines something along similar<br />
lines for his feature films in the future: he would like the stories to<br />
be so authentic that they almost appear documentary. That is why he<br />
avoids labels for his hybrid projects. He doesn’t like the term “documentary<br />
film” anyway: “It sounds so didactic.”<br />
In Locarno, Wolfsperger recently presented his latest film, Did You<br />
Ever Fall in Love with Me?, a portrait of the Jewish cabaret<br />
artist Max Hansen, who had to flee from <strong>German</strong>y because of his disrespectful<br />
jokes about Adolf Hitler. The people in the film include<br />
Brigitta Mira, who actually knew Hansen personally; it was the Berlin<br />
actress’ final appearance in front of the camera before her recent<br />
death. The film – in which three of Hansen’s four children also<br />
remember their father – not only pays homage to the cabaret artist,<br />
but also to the range of great entertainment during those years.<br />
It is true that Wolfsperger’s films are still waiting to be dis<strong>cover</strong>ed<br />
abroad, but Bellaria’s successful tour has made it quite clear that their<br />
themes are more than capable of overcoming cultural borders. The<br />
depiction of a folk custom in Riders of the Sacred Blood, or so<br />
Wolfsperger thinks, also shows “a part of <strong>German</strong>y that has not been<br />
known in this way before.”<br />
For some years now, <strong>German</strong> films have been regaining their good<br />
international reputation. Wolfsperger has no desire to analyze the<br />
reasons why artistic reputation has been so rarely joined by commer-<br />
cial success as yet (as in Lola rennt and Good Bye, Lenin!). He supposes<br />
that “the whole business is too uncertain”. Even in <strong>German</strong>y, domestic<br />
productions are only successful in exceptional cases; why<br />
should they function abroad? On the other hand, examples like<br />
Bellaria show that an enthusiastic international audience can certainly<br />
be found, even for productions with a small niche on the market.<br />
Tilmann P. Gangloff (freelance media journalist for “Die Welt”,<br />
“Frankfurter Rundschau”, “Film + TV Kameramann”,<br />
“Blickpunkt:Film”, and “Cut”) spoke with Douglas Wolfsperger<br />
german films quarterly director’s portrait<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 15
Producer Markus Zimmer (photo courtesy of Concorde Filmverleih)<br />
PRODUCER’S PORTRAIT<br />
FOCUSING<br />
ON QUALITY<br />
A portrait of Clasart Film<br />
As Clasart Film approaches its 30th anniversary in two years, the<br />
Munich-based production outfit has increasingly become an important<br />
player in the <strong>German</strong> feature film landscape.<br />
Back in 1997, when Dr. Herbert Kloiber founded Clasart after acquiring<br />
Tele-Muenchen with his partner Fritz Buttenstedt, the focus of the<br />
production output was initially on classical music programs; a<br />
recording of a concert by Vladimir Horowitz at New York’s Avery<br />
Fischer Hall won five Emmy Awards in 1978.<br />
Clasart Film & Fernsehproduktion GmbH was founded in<br />
1977 as a subsidiary of Herbert Kloiber’s Tele-Muenchen-Group<br />
and initially specialized in the production of classical music programs,<br />
feature films and international TV movies and mini-series before<br />
expanding into <strong>German</strong>-language feature films under Markus<br />
Zimmer in the past five years. Clasart’s feature film credits are:<br />
Flashback – A Murderous Vacation (Flashback –<br />
Moerderische Ferien, dir: Michael Karen, 2000), The<br />
Cosmonaut’s Letter (Der Brief des Kosmonauten, dir:<br />
Vladimir Torbica, 2001), 12 Past Midnight (Null Uhr 12, dir:<br />
Bernd Michael Lade, 2001), Abgefahren (dir: Jakob Schaeuffelen,<br />
2004), Rock Crystal (Bergkristall, dir: Joseph Vilsmaier, 2004),<br />
Ich bin die Andere (dir: Margarethe von Trotta, 20<strong>05</strong>),<br />
Die Wolke (dir: Gregor Schnitzler, 2006) and Der Stern von<br />
Afrika (dir: Joseph Vilsmaier, 2006) as well as the co-productions<br />
Solo Album (Soloalbum, dir: Gregor Schnitzler, 2002) and<br />
Pura Vida Ibiza (dir: Gernot Roll, 2004). Zimmer was also coproducer<br />
through the mother company Tele-Muenchen of<br />
Margarethe von Trotta’s Venice prize-winner Rosenstrasse<br />
(2003). Clasart Film also produces TV movies and mini-series, including<br />
adaptations of novels by Rosamunde Pilcher (September,<br />
The Shell Seekers) and Maeve Binchy (Tara Road).<br />
Contact:<br />
Clasart Film & Fernsehproduktion GmbH<br />
Kaufingerstrasse 24 · 80331 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-2 11 87 60 · fax +49-89-21 18 76 29<br />
email: clasart@tmg.de · www.tmg.de<br />
In subsequent years, however, the company’s production portfolio<br />
was extended to include TV movies, mini-series and feature films with<br />
such credits as John Goldschmidt’s Machenka, Karoly Makk’s<br />
Ungarisches Requiem, Jack Gold’s Der Fall Lucona and Liv<br />
Ullmann’s Kristian Lavrans Tochter.<br />
From 1998, all of Tele-Muenchen’s production and co-production<br />
activities were gathered under the Clasart label, and a more intensified<br />
involvement in <strong>German</strong> feature films came in 2001 with the<br />
german films quarterly producer’s portrait<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 16
appointment of Markus Zimmer in addition to his existing<br />
responsibilities as head of Tele-Muenchen’s distribution arm<br />
Concorde Filmverleih.<br />
Zimmer, a graduate of the Production & Media Economy department<br />
from Munich’s Academy of Television & Film, has specialized on developing<br />
feature film projects at Clasart, while Rikolt von Gagern and<br />
Juergen Biefang have acted as service producers through their companies<br />
Gate Filmproduktion and Smallfish <strong>Films</strong>, respectively, for the<br />
TV mini-series based on novels by Rosamunde Pilcher and Maeve<br />
Binchy.<br />
"We don’t have any preference now as far as genres are concerned,"<br />
says Zimmer after the company tried its hand at making films for the<br />
teenage market with the horror film Flashback and the comedies<br />
Abgefahren and Pura Vida Ibiza. “When we made<br />
Flashback, there was a wave of teen horror films in the cinemas,<br />
but, unfortunately, when our film was released there had been several<br />
cases of teenagers going on murderous rampages, which was unfortunate<br />
timing. Moreover, the high point of the teenage comedies is<br />
also over. I think you have to work really independent of trends or<br />
work upstream of the next trends.”<br />
“Consequently, we decided to concentrate in the future on developing<br />
relationships with those directors where we have had good<br />
experiences,” he explains. A case in point is Margarethe von Trotta<br />
whose 2003 Rosenstrasse had been produced by Zimmer as an<br />
international co-production with Studio Hamburg and the<br />
Netherlands’ Get Reel Productions. The film clocked up 640,000<br />
admissions in <strong>German</strong>y, the best result ever for von Trotta at the<br />
<strong>German</strong> box office, and laid the foundation for a new collaboration<br />
which culminated in the shooting of Ich bin die Andere, starring<br />
Katja Riemann, August Diehl, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Barbara Auer,<br />
this summer.<br />
The same goes for Gregor Schnitzler whose Solo Album was coproduced<br />
by Clasart and sold over 400,000 tickets on its <strong>German</strong><br />
release three years ago. Principal photography began at the end of<br />
August on their next collaboration, Die Wolke, which has been<br />
adapted from Gudrun Pausewang’s 1987 best-selling novel of the<br />
same name by director Marco Kreuzpaintner.<br />
“I can really see the potential for international distribution for this<br />
film,” Zimmer suggests. “An accident at a nuclear power plant in<br />
<strong>German</strong>y is the departure point for the story in Die Wolke and we<br />
will release the film in good time ahead of the 20th anniversary of<br />
Chernobyl to draw attention once again to the dangers of nuclear<br />
power. I could imagine other countries would then pick the film up for<br />
release next year.”<br />
And a reunion is in the cards next year with Bavarian filmmaker<br />
Joseph Vilsmaier for the ambitious project Der Stern von Afrika,<br />
a remake of Alfred Weidenmann’s 1950s film about the legendary<br />
fighter bomber Hans Joachim Marseille. Clasart had teamed up with<br />
Vilsmaier two years ago to produce a new screen version of Adalbert<br />
Stifter’s Rock Crystal. “We were very pleased with the performance<br />
of this historical family film [in the cinemas],” he notes. “It will<br />
now be re-released theatrically this Christmas and is sure to become<br />
a regular feature in the TV schedules in the future. We are now in discussions<br />
with a media fund to come onboard Joseph’s new project.”<br />
As Zimmer explains, Clasart is run as an extremely lean operation<br />
without a large apparatus developing projects in-house: “we are reliant<br />
on the contacts to directors and external producers to gain access<br />
to interesting projects. Since we are also getting involved in co-productions<br />
as well as in-house production, producers can come to us<br />
[with a project] and either we make a license deal for the <strong>German</strong><br />
rights or we come onboard as a co-producer. We try to reach between<br />
4-5 other <strong>German</strong> productions a year to complement to our<br />
own productions.”<br />
In the case of Margarethe von Trotta’s latest film, this project was the<br />
result of in-house development by Zimmer from the point when he<br />
met Peter Maerthesheimer at a Fassbinder event five years ago and<br />
was told about the author-screenwriter’s new novel Ich bin die<br />
Andere.<br />
However, Zimmer points out that the responsibilities of also being in<br />
charge of the theatrical distribution arm – with 12-15 releases a year<br />
– and film acquisitions at Concorde means that he can only handle<br />
around two projects a year when he is donning his producer’s hat.<br />
Nevertheless, he agrees that there are advantages for his work as a<br />
producer in also being a distributor since he has a better understanding<br />
of what the market is looking for than those colleagues who<br />
are only producers. Moreover, the fact that the mother company<br />
Tele-Muenchen’s interests also extend to the television channels RTL<br />
2 and Tele 5 is a further plus. At the same time, Zimmer stresses that<br />
Clasart [and Concorde] “are not restricted to one particular station.<br />
We have sold our films to everyone and have good business contacts<br />
to everybody. You look to see where you get the best deal.”<br />
While some of Clasart’s TV projects have been shot in the English<br />
language, Zimmer is keen to keep his feature film output at Clasart to<br />
<strong>German</strong> language productions only. “We prefer to have a national<br />
identity for our projects as we are making them first and foremost for<br />
the <strong>German</strong> cinema audience. Our thinking is that if a film is authentic<br />
for the <strong>German</strong> market with <strong>German</strong> talents, then it can also be<br />
interesting for other countries. I think people abroad want to see<br />
<strong>German</strong> stories from <strong>German</strong>y and, as far as big international genre<br />
productions are concerned, the budgets are just too low in <strong>German</strong>y.<br />
That’s not the direction we are going to specialize on.”<br />
Markus Zimmer spoke with Martin Blaney<br />
german films quarterly producer’s portrait<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 17
Burghart Klaussner (photo © Alex Trebus)<br />
ACTOR’S PORTRAIT<br />
Burghart Klaussner was born in 1949 in Berlin. In 1969, he<br />
initially began courses in <strong>German</strong> and Theater Studies at the Free<br />
University Berlin, but transferred to the “Max Reinhardt School” in<br />
the same year, where he trained as an actor. As early as 1970,<br />
Klaussner received his first engagement at the Schaubuehne am<br />
Hallischen Tor, which came to an end in 1972. Since then, Klaussner<br />
has appeared on the stage of many theaters including the Hamburg<br />
Schauspielhaus, the Schiller Theater and Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin,<br />
and in Frankfurt, Bochum and Zurich. After his cinema debut<br />
Ziemlich weit weg (dir: Dietrich Schubert), he acted in some of<br />
the most important <strong>German</strong> cinema films of the last two decades,<br />
including Der Beginn aller Schrecken ist Liebe (dir: Helke<br />
Sander), Kinderspiele (dir: Wolfgang Becker), 23 (dir: Hans-<br />
Christian Schmid) and Good Bye, Lenin! (dir: Wolfgang Becker).<br />
Most recently, he has completed shooting for Requiem, the new<br />
film by Hans-Christian Schmid and for Dito Tsintsadze’s Der Mann<br />
von der Botschaft (aka Saschka). Klaussner lives in Berlin; he is<br />
married with two sons.<br />
At first glance, he looks quite harmless. A quiet guy, you might think,<br />
rather inconspicuous, someone who wouldn’t harm a fly. A run of the<br />
mill kind of guy. You wouldn’t expect much of him. But if you look<br />
more closely, uncertainty sets in. There is something about<br />
Burghart Klaussner that soon throws those first impressions<br />
into question: something seething, a force beneath the surface. And<br />
suddenly, you believe that he is capable of anything.<br />
“I wait and see. I am curious” is Klaussner’s assessment of his own<br />
attitude towards roles and directors. In fact, he has been around for a<br />
Agent:<br />
Above the Line GmbH<br />
Goethestrasse 17 · 80336 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-59 90 84 23 · fax +49-89-5 50 38 55<br />
email: mail@abovetheline.de · www.abovetheline.de<br />
ENERGY AND<br />
HIGH STANDARDS<br />
A portrait of Burghart Klaussner<br />
long time. But people only really became aware of Klaussner about<br />
eighteen months ago, when he acted in Hans Weingartner’s The<br />
Edukators (Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei), participating in<br />
the competition at Cannes in 2004. Klaussner had a major part – that<br />
of Hardenberg, a rich banker who is abducted to an isolated<br />
mountain hut by three young people with a rather confused political<br />
outlook. Soon, it turns out that he himself was active in the 1968<br />
movement, and the claustrophobic scenario evolves into a mountain<br />
commune, whose members avidly discuss conformism and the<br />
meaning of life. There comes a point when Hardenberg/Klaussner<br />
german films quarterly actor’s portrait<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 18
almost develops into a kind of replacement father for the polit-kids.<br />
And he has played many fathers. It began as long as thirteen years ago,<br />
in Wolfgang Becker’s Kinderspiele, one of his first cinema roles –<br />
”a very important film for me.“ Klaussner had already made his bigscreen<br />
debut in 1980, in Dietrich Schubert’s Ziemlich weit weg.<br />
This was followed by Helke Sander’s Der Beginn aller<br />
Schrecken ist Liebe in 1984 – precisely at the time when, after<br />
Fassbinder’s death, the New <strong>German</strong> Film for which the actor<br />
Klaussner would have been so suited was coming to an early demise.<br />
”There has always been something anti-cyclic about me,” he replies<br />
laconically, when asked whether he regrets having arrived on the<br />
scene too late for this great age of post-war <strong>German</strong> cinema – yet he<br />
admits that his cinema career sometimes appears to have developed<br />
with a “time-lag”.<br />
Since Kinderspiele, Klaussner has continued to embody a wide<br />
range of fathers: in Hans-Christian Schmid’s 23 and Crazy, and in<br />
Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin!. “It’s actually a superfluous<br />
cliché,” he says, “but that kind of restriction to certain roles is part of<br />
the industrialization of cinema.” Such “mainstream thinking” by a few,<br />
he adds, “is a catastrophic attitude.” And yet “there is an infinite<br />
number of conceivable ways to tell a story in the cinema.” The actor<br />
speaks willingly and at length about the “saturation of <strong>German</strong> ideas”,<br />
about the fact that “energy and high standards” are frequently lacking,<br />
even among many filmmakers. A great deal is “too flat, too speculative<br />
– not serious enough.” And Klaussner is serious about his profession,<br />
as one very soon realizes.<br />
Like so many others, the now 56-year-old actor began performing on<br />
the stage. Born in Berlin – his father ran a pub in Charlottenburg – and<br />
growing up later in Munich, he returned to the capital in 1969. After<br />
a year studying <strong>German</strong>, he was accepted at the Max Reinhardt<br />
School, and soon after that he was already acting under George<br />
Tabori and Hans Lietzau.<br />
Today, he alternates between the stage and the camera a lot – and by<br />
contrast to many of his colleagues, this doesn’t cause him any problems.<br />
On the contrary: “As I see it, there isn’t such a big difference.<br />
In the theater, of course, the superior analysis of the material is a plus.<br />
But for my working method, at least, it makes no difference.”<br />
From which directors has he learned the most? “From many. I appreciate<br />
the precision of Wolfgang Becker’s work; and I admire Dito<br />
Tsintsadze for his surrealism, Hans Weingartner for his journalistic<br />
quality, and Hans-Christian Schmid for his seriousness and courage to<br />
seek alternative approaches.”<br />
Klaussner has just finished the shooting for two new films: Requiem<br />
by Hans-Christian Schmid – where, of course, he plays a father. In the<br />
new film by Dito Tsintsadze that just wrapped shooting in Georgia, his<br />
role is that of a <strong>German</strong> diplomat who takes care of a refugee child<br />
and thus becomes a kind of replacement father, once again.<br />
In the next months, however, we will find him on the stage again, in<br />
Botho Strauss’ play Die Zeit und das Zimmer. Burghart Klaussner’s<br />
greatest wish for the future is to play the part of “a confidence trickster.<br />
I regard that as a very interesting character, a key to the present<br />
age. Certainly fitting in the Federal Republic of <strong>German</strong>y.”<br />
Ruediger Suchsland, <strong>German</strong> correspondent for Cannes’<br />
Semaine de la Critique and film critic for the “Frankfurter Rundschau”<br />
and “Filmdienst” among others, spoke with Burghart Klaussner<br />
german films quarterly actor’s portrait<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 19
Katja Riemann (photo: <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>)<br />
ACTRESS’ PORTRAIT<br />
Katja Riemann was born in Kirchweyhe near Bremen. She studied<br />
Dance in Hamburg, and Acting at the College of Music and Drama in<br />
Hanover and at the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich. On the stage<br />
of the renowned Munich Kammerspiele, she performed in productions<br />
by Dieter Dorn, Alexander Lang and Volker Schloendorff. After<br />
her first leading role – for which she was awarded the Adolf Grimme<br />
Prize – in the TV event Sommer in Lesmona by Peter Beauvais<br />
(1986), the sensational success of the short, 60-minute HFF/M graduation<br />
film Making Up (Abgeschminkt, 1993) by Katja von<br />
Garnier not only triggered Riemann’s film career, but also the <strong>German</strong><br />
cinema boom of the 1990s. This was followed by leading roles in audience<br />
successes such as Soenke Wortmann’s Maybe, Maybe Not<br />
(Der bewegte Mann, 1994), Talk of the Town (Stadtgespraech,<br />
1995) by Rainer Kaufmann (<strong>German</strong> Film Award for the<br />
Best Leading Actress) and the music film bandits (1997), also in<br />
cooperation with Katja von Garnier, for which she again (together<br />
with her achievement in The Pharmacist/Die Apothekerin<br />
by Rainer Kaufmann) received the <strong>German</strong> Film Award in Gold for the<br />
Best Actress. After a period during which she also worked abroad,<br />
including roles alongside Gérard Dépardieau in the multi-part international<br />
TV film Balzac (1999) by José Dayan and in the <strong>German</strong>-<br />
Canadian production Desire (2000) by Colleen Murphy, she could<br />
be seen in various TV films and was in Hermine Huntgeburth’s successful<br />
children’s feature Bibi Blocksberg (2002). In addition to<br />
film, Riemann has recently become more involved in music; today she<br />
is the lead singer of an eight-man band that has already recorded<br />
several CDs and been on concert tours. “Triumph for <strong>German</strong><br />
Cinema” was the headline marking Riemann’s greatest international<br />
success to date: at the Venice film festival in 2003, she received the<br />
Coppa Volpi as Best Actress in Margarethe von Trotta’s film Rosenstrasse,<br />
a drama about civil courage during the Nazi period shown<br />
at cinemas in more than 20 countries. Riemann won another <strong>German</strong><br />
Film Award for the Best Supporting Actress in Oskar Roehler’s<br />
Agnes and his brothers (Agnes und seine Brueder,<br />
2004).<br />
Measured by the audiences that have viewed her cinema films and the<br />
national and international awards she has received, Katja Riemann<br />
is probably the most successful <strong>German</strong> actress since the beginning of<br />
the nineties. And like many of the most famous <strong>German</strong> actresses<br />
before her – from Romy Schneider to Nastassja Kinski – she has been<br />
through some remarkable changes in image. For a long time, she was<br />
identified primarily with <strong>German</strong> comedy successes such as Maybe,<br />
Agent:<br />
Erna Baumbauer Management<br />
Keplerstrasse 2 · 81679 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-47 85 77 · fax +49-89-4 70 21 98<br />
MANY FACES,<br />
MANY TALENTS<br />
A portrait of Katja Riemann<br />
Maybe Not or Talk of the Town, but now every new film role<br />
for Riemann seems to be a surprise to both press and public; whether<br />
in the context of great historical-political cinema, melodramatic satire<br />
or humorous children’s films, her versatility and credibility are always<br />
remarkable, enabling her to embody a huge range of female characters.<br />
german films quarterly actress’ portrait<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 20
Katja sees these changes in perception, but her attitude towards the<br />
film material has remained the same: “With respect to the films that I<br />
have acted in, I never look at the genre first, but at the role I am to<br />
play and the complexity of the characters. Sometimes, I also embodied<br />
completely different characters in the so-called comedy roles;<br />
take Talk of the Town and The Pharmacist, for example, although<br />
superficially it was all considered comedy.”<br />
And indeed, Katja’s artistic career has never followed a straight line:<br />
even today – as a famous film and theater actress, the author of children’s<br />
books, and the leader of a band singing her own songs – she still<br />
recalls the doubts she felt about the acting profession at the beginning<br />
of her career. In 1989, after three years at the Munich Kammerspiele,<br />
she even considered leaving the profession altogether in her early<br />
twenties. She explains her philosophy: “I need team work and an<br />
exchange, I am not a soloist. The most exciting thing is being able to<br />
work together with people, to feel your way forward, to develop a<br />
role – a psychogram – or to build up tension by means of dialogue<br />
with others. Acting is interaction between a person and the role, and<br />
between oneself and one’s fellow actors.”<br />
Since then, the orientation on teamwork has been augmented by<br />
Katja’s music. All the members of a band are dependent on one another,<br />
as Katja knows – at the latest since she had to learn to play the<br />
drums for her role as a member of a women’s combo (together with<br />
Jasmin Tabatabai and Nicolette Krebitz) in bandits. The desire for<br />
music of her own developed between 1998 and 2001, when she was<br />
also attempting to put some distance between herself and <strong>German</strong><br />
comedy by working abroad a lot. Her experiences with international<br />
productions like the large-scale biopic Balzac, the Italian-French<br />
production Nobel (Fabio Carpi, 2001), or the romantic thriller<br />
Desire (which brought her a nomination for the Canadian Genie<br />
Award as Best Leading Actress) have also altered her view of the<br />
<strong>German</strong> film business, which she sometimes believes revolves around<br />
itself too much.<br />
Katja sees the importance of an international echo for <strong>German</strong> films,<br />
but knows that this is not yet a matter of course: “When films that I<br />
have acted in are praised abroad, I still regard it as a particular honor.<br />
The exchange with directors and actors at international festivals<br />
means a lot to me, and my experiences with Rosenstrasse and<br />
Agnes and his brothers – in Venice, Toronto, Eastern Europe,<br />
etc. – were gigantic in that respect.” When there is an additional political-moral<br />
intention – that is, “to use the film to tell the unique story<br />
of women’s protest against the Nazis in Berlin’s Rosenstrasse during<br />
1943”, as the politically and socially committed actress adds – “those<br />
are the moments when this profession gives you the most sublime<br />
feeling imaginable.”<br />
Katja also cites another aspect regarding this orientation on other<br />
countries: “After three English films, fortunately it is no problem for<br />
me to act in English as well. Perhaps my music helps there, because I<br />
sing mainly in English and write English song texts.”<br />
As far as Katja’s immediate plans for the future are concerned, she<br />
sees a continuing mix of film, music and the theater. After a certain<br />
delay, the prize in Venice has led to many interesting offers from<br />
abroad; she has been approached by American and French producers.<br />
In the near future, it will be possible to see her on the stage in<br />
Potsdam, playing the role of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. In addition, Katja<br />
has just finished shooting a new film directed by Margarethe von<br />
Trotta, Ich bin die Andere, in which she plays a multiple personality.<br />
“A huge challenge as far as the role is concerned, but it also<br />
means marvellous cooperation with colleagues such as Armin<br />
Mueller-Stahl and August Diehl.”<br />
During the autumn, she will be in front of the cameras again – in<br />
Romania – for the American production Blood and Chocolate;<br />
this is a poetic werewolf story set before a “Romeo and Juliet” background,<br />
and will be the third film made with her friend Katja von<br />
Garnier as director. Transformation into a werewolf should present<br />
no difficulties for an actress with as many faces and talents as Katja<br />
Riemann …<br />
Felix Moeller (documentary filmmaker)<br />
spoke with Katja Riemann<br />
german films quarterly actress’ portrait<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 21
Scene from “Sophie Scholl” (photo © Juergen Olczyk)<br />
NEWS 4/20<strong>05</strong><br />
“SOPHIE SCHOLL” REPRESENTS GERMANY IN RACE FOR THE OSCAR<br />
The independent expert jury, which was appointed by <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong><br />
to select the <strong>German</strong> entry to compete for the OSCAR for the Best<br />
Foreign Language Film, has – under the chairmanship of Antonio<br />
Exacoustos – chosen Sophie Scholl – The Final Days by Marc<br />
Rothemund.<br />
The jury on its decision: “Sophie Scholl is a film of great emotional concentration,<br />
carried by outstanding acting achievements. Its significance<br />
lies in the timeless subject matter of selfless resistance and opposition<br />
against all forms of suppression.“<br />
The production by Neue Goldkind Filmproduktion/Munich (producers:<br />
Christoph Mueller, Sven Burgemeister) and Broth Film/Munich<br />
(producers: Marc Rothemund, Fred Breinersdorfer) in co-production<br />
with BR/Munich, SWR/Baden-Baden and ARTE/Strasbourg had its<br />
world premiere in the “Official Competition” of the 20<strong>05</strong> Berlin<br />
International Film Festival and went on to receive the Silver Bear for<br />
Best Direction. Julia Jentsch was awarded the Silver Bear for Best<br />
Leading Actress. The film also received three <strong>German</strong> Film Awards.<br />
Sophie Scholl has been shown worldwide at over 20 film festivals and<br />
has won numerous prizes. Audiences and the international press have<br />
responded extremely positively to the film.<br />
Sophie Scholl opened in <strong>German</strong>y on 24 February 20<strong>05</strong> and has since<br />
then posted some 1.2 million admissions (Distributor: X Verleih).<br />
Bavaria Film International has already sold the film to some 30 territories,<br />
including important countries like Italy, Spain, France, Great<br />
Britain, Israel and Japan. In the U.S., Zeitgeist will be bringing the film<br />
to American screens in February 2006. Zeitgeist also successfully marketed<br />
Caroline Link’s OSCAR-winner Nowhere in Africa in the U.S.<br />
Sophie Scholl was funded by the <strong>German</strong> Federal Film Board (FFA),<br />
BKM, and FilmFernsehFonds Bayern.<br />
On 31 January 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and<br />
Sciences (AMPAS) will nominate from the international entries those<br />
five films which will participate in the final selection to compete for the<br />
OSCAR for the Best Foreign Language Film. The official OSCAR awards<br />
ceremony will be held in Los Angeles on 5 March 2006.<br />
german films quarterly news<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 22
Preparation for the first Bavarian Film Week in Peking:<br />
Journalist Zhang Yufei interviews director<br />
Benjamin Heisenberg (“Sleeper”)<br />
BAVARIA, INDIA AND CHINA<br />
With film and location presentations at festivals in Shanghai, Goa and<br />
Pusan as well as an independent film week in Bangalore in 2003, FFF<br />
Bayern established intensive and long-lasting contacts with the Asian<br />
film scene. This October, India paid a return visit to Bavaria: Munich<br />
hosted its first “Indian Film Week”, initiated by the Bavarian State<br />
Chancellery, the Indian Consulate and FFF Bayern. As part of the<br />
500th anniversary of Indian-Bavarian trade relations, the film week<br />
showcased Ketan Mehta’s historical epic The Rising – Ballad of Mangal<br />
Pandey, and other current Indian films. Partners were the Bavarian<br />
broadcaster RTL II and ARRI.<br />
In November, FFF is presenting twelve <strong>German</strong> feature films and<br />
documentaries in cinemas throughout the Chinese capital of Peking.<br />
The event is a premiere in the history of <strong>German</strong>-Chinese relations.<br />
“Boosting Friendship” is the motto of this film week organized in cooperation<br />
with the Goethe-Institute Peking and the Beijing Film<br />
Academy. Partners are ARRI, BMW, the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation,<br />
gotoBavaria and the China University of Communication. The film<br />
week will be opened by Johannes Brunner’s film Oktoberfest – an ideal<br />
opening as several “Oktoberfests” will also being taking place in Peking<br />
at this time.<br />
GERMAN FILMS CONTINUE TO IMPRESS<br />
<strong>German</strong> film fans are following the European trend: in the first half of<br />
20<strong>05</strong>, admissions in <strong>German</strong>y were at 60.3 million as compared to<br />
72.3 million in the first half of 2004 – a 16.6% loss. And despite the<br />
increase in ticket prices, “only” €352.5 million in turnover was<br />
recorded – some €67 million (16%) less than the previous year. Just<br />
as in Great Britain, France and Italy, there are reasons to believe that<br />
the problems have been imported from Hollywood.<br />
American blockbusters are of course necessary for impressive figures<br />
– but they came over in smaller numbers this year. The comparison of<br />
the Top 10s in both years makes it clear: in 2004; nine of the ten<br />
strongest films pulled in admissions of over 2 million; this year only<br />
three were able to do such.<br />
The findings of a <strong>German</strong> Federal Film Board (FFA) study on<br />
admissions points out the drastic differences at the box office. The<br />
general enthusiasm for special effects – which of course has boosted<br />
U.S. films in the last years – is waning. In 20<strong>05</strong>, <strong>German</strong> film fans showed<br />
more interest in the quality of the actors and story content. Given<br />
this, the continuing success of <strong>German</strong> productions cannot be<br />
emphasized enough.<br />
In the first half of 20<strong>05</strong>, some 11.8 million cinemagoers chose a<br />
<strong>German</strong> production, a 25% increase in comparison to 2004. The<br />
results: in the <strong>German</strong> Top 10 from January to June 20<strong>05</strong>, there were<br />
five “admissions millionaires”; in 2004 there was only one. Thus far, 62<br />
<strong>German</strong> productions have been released in local cinemas, almost as<br />
much as the U.S. output of 69 releases. But not only on the home<br />
market, the wave of new <strong>German</strong> films are finding fans abroad. Even<br />
the U.S. has taken a liking to <strong>German</strong> topics: films like Sophie Scholl –<br />
The Final Days and Go for Zucker have already been sold to American<br />
distributors. The rising box office abroad is developing into a solid<br />
economic dimension for <strong>German</strong> producers. A structural film crisis in<br />
<strong>German</strong>y is therefore not being forecasted for the future. The current<br />
economic weaknesses being experienced by film theater operators<br />
from slacking admissions is being somewhat balanced out with almost<br />
€10 million in “emergency support” from the FFA.<br />
KATJA JOCHUM JOINS<br />
FFA MANAGEMENT BOARD<br />
As of 1 July 20<strong>05</strong>, Katja Jochum has joined the <strong>German</strong> Federal<br />
Film Board’s executive board as deputy CEO. The administrative<br />
committee had already appointed her to the management team in<br />
June of this year. The Saarland native previously lead the business<br />
dealings of Senator Entertainment’s television arm. Jochum follows as<br />
successor to Kirsten Niehuus, who has been appointed managing<br />
director of the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. Jochum’s main<br />
areas of responsibility will be in funding and support.<br />
After studying Business Administration at the European Business<br />
School, with semesters abroad in Paris and London, she began her<br />
career as the assistant to the CEO of Bertelsmann’s Electronic Media<br />
wing. <strong>German</strong>y’s largest media group soon began to entrust her with<br />
further responsibilities, including those as head of <strong>German</strong><br />
Acquisitions and Sales at CLT-UFA International in Luxembourg and as<br />
deputy director for content at the Bertelsmann Broadband Group in<br />
Cologne. “Together with the film industry,” the new vice CEO says<br />
she would like to “strengthen, both nationally and internationally, the<br />
economic success of <strong>German</strong> films on the basis of quality and artistic<br />
diversity.”<br />
german films quarterly news<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 23<br />
Katja Jochum
Jean-Claude Schlumberger, Peter Sehr<br />
(photo: <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>)<br />
“Die kluge Bauerntochter” (1984, photo © Hylas-Film)<br />
PETER SEHR NAMED “CHEVALIER DES<br />
ARTS ET LETTRES“<br />
On 21 July 20<strong>05</strong>, Peter Sehr was welcomed into the prestigious<br />
circle of the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. During a ceremony at the<br />
French Consulate General in Munich, Sehr was recognized for his long<br />
dedication to the cooperative efforts between the <strong>German</strong> and<br />
French film industries. Together with his partner Marie-Noelle, he<br />
founded the Munich-based production company P’Artisan<br />
Filmproduktion in 1988. The writer, director, producer and operator<br />
of the legendary ARRI Cinema in Munich is also an instructor at the<br />
Film Academy Baden-Wuerrtemberg, where he founded the French-<br />
<strong>German</strong> Masterclass in cooperation with the La Fémis film school in<br />
Paris within the framework of the Académie franco-allemande du<br />
cinéma.<br />
DEFA PUPPETS ON TOUR<br />
The puppet figures from the DEFA Studios for Animated Film were<br />
displayed in an exhibit from 8 September – 12 October 20<strong>05</strong> at the<br />
Goethe-Insitut in Rotterdam on the occasion of the 50th anniversary<br />
of the founding of the former state studios in Dresden. With 240<br />
employees and a total production of 1,500 films in 35 years, the DEFA<br />
Studios for Animated Film were worldwide one of the largest of their<br />
kind.<br />
The exhibited puppets from eleven DEFA films demonstrated the stylistic<br />
spectrum and the artistic ability of the studio’s puppet designers.<br />
Visitors of the exhibit were enthusiastic about the fragile and at times<br />
somewhat bizarre puppet figures and the accompanying film excerpts,<br />
which provided insight into an important chapter of <strong>German</strong><br />
film history. Further interest to present the exhibit, which has been<br />
sponsored by the Cultural Foundation of Saxony and the DEFA<br />
Foundation, has come from Cracow, Riga and Tallinn.<br />
GOVERNMENT STRENGTHENS COMPETI-<br />
TIVENESS OF THE GERMAN FILM INDUSTRY<br />
On the initiative of <strong>German</strong> Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a task<br />
force of representatives from the federal government and the film<br />
industry have developed a concept for a €90 million venture capital<br />
fund. For the financing of <strong>German</strong> films and <strong>German</strong>-international coproductions,<br />
conditionally repayable loans of up to 20% of a film’s<br />
budget may be granted by the <strong>German</strong> Federal Film Board if the film’s<br />
exploitation concept is deemed to be positive. Another funding prerequisite<br />
is that at least five times the amount loaned be spent in<br />
<strong>German</strong>y. Return payments on the loan will then revolve into further<br />
funding budgets in order to help build up a sustainable financing instrument.<br />
Further concept details, in particular the specifications regarding<br />
repatriation of profits, are currently being discussed with <strong>German</strong>y’s<br />
regional film funders.<br />
Christina Weiss, State Minster for Culture and the Media, was<br />
instrumental in the development and implementation of the concept<br />
and stresses that “a future-oriented instrument has been developed<br />
here that will not only strengthen the competitiveness of film producers,<br />
but will also help to increase employment at <strong>German</strong> studios.<br />
The federal government has already planned in the necessary budgetary<br />
funds into its financial plan for the year 2006.” Considering the<br />
vast consensus between the governing coalition and the CDU/CSU<br />
party in film political matters, Weiss is convinced that the concept’s<br />
implementation will be based on a wide majority of support, particularly<br />
in light of the planned elimination of <strong>German</strong> media funds.<br />
SHORT FILM GOES MOBILE<br />
Mobile network providers and mobile phone producers in <strong>German</strong>y<br />
are showing increasing interest in short films. “MobileTV”, “Portable<br />
Media Center” and “Video-MMS” are just a few of the new technologies<br />
which, together with the UMTS system, offer new possibilities<br />
for short films. For example, at the beginning of September the<br />
<strong>German</strong> Short Film Association (AG Kurzfilm) and<br />
Interfilm Berlin presented short films at the World of Consumer<br />
german films quarterly news<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 24<br />
Christina Weiss (photo © Ossenbrink)
Gerd Ruge (front center) with this year’s scholarship winners and<br />
NRW State Secretary for Media Thomas Kemper (back 2nd from<br />
right) and NRW-CEO Michael Schmid-Ospach (back right)<br />
Electronics (IFA) in Berlin. In cooperation with T-Systems International,<br />
two digital AV programs were presented, one of which<br />
screened the AG Kurzfilm’s program of selected shorts. Interfilm was<br />
also present as a “content deliverer” at the IFA. Also in the business is<br />
the Hamburg-based company Bitfilm, which has clients from various<br />
firms in the field of mobile technology. And since 2003, they have<br />
organized a competition for “micromovies” for mobile phones. But<br />
the fact that impressive films can indeed be shot on mobile phones<br />
was also proven recently at the short film festivals in Berlin and<br />
Oberhausen. Interfilm Berlin and Siemens Mobile handed out the<br />
Micro Movie Award last year, making it the first international competition<br />
for mobile phone short films. In Oberhausen, five filmmakers<br />
were challenged to create films (two to three minutes in length) with<br />
the Nokia models N90 and 6680. The results were a bit shaky and,<br />
due to the low resolution, somewhat blurry, but nonetheless validated<br />
a new trend. Being able to have a high-quality, handy and inconspicuous<br />
recording device on hand at all times allows for new directions<br />
in artistic work. Even if it is still uncertain what this new technology<br />
will mean for the sales branch and if these new impulses will have<br />
a lasting impact on film art, one thing is for sure: short films will continue<br />
to live up to their reputation in the field of experimental artwork.<br />
REALITY IN THE CINEMA<br />
At the end of August, the <strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW granted scholarships<br />
to young documentary filmmakers for the fourth time. The<br />
“Gerd Ruge Project Scholarship” is endowed with some €100,000 to<br />
support the projects of young filmmakers. The grant is meant to help<br />
in the realization of outstanding exposés, which in the documentary<br />
segment often run into difficult hurdles. And the filmmaker Konstantin<br />
Faigle can prove that this initiative is not just a bunch of hot air. His<br />
wonderfully laconic documentary Die grosse Depression (“The Great<br />
Depression”), which takes a close look at this very <strong>German</strong> state of<br />
mind, won the Gerd Ruge Scholarship in 2003 and was released in<br />
<strong>German</strong> cinemas this September.<br />
At the end of August, a jury of seven, under the chairmanship of the<br />
journalist himself – Gerd Ruge – awarded the fourth scholarship. Jana<br />
Matthes’ and Andrea Schramm’s project Blutrache received €50,000,<br />
Christiane Buechner received €40,000 for her project Perestroika, and<br />
Ruth Olshan’s exposé Being kosher received €17,840. A further<br />
€12,000 were divided between two incentive scholarships for Fatima<br />
Abdollahyan and Nicole Armbruster. The winners, who were chosen<br />
from some 50 candidates, now have 18 months to develop a high-quality<br />
documentary film project.<br />
KINO!20<strong>05</strong>: NEW GERMAN FILMS<br />
IN NEW YORK<br />
After its re-opening last autumn, New York’s Museum of Modern Art<br />
will once again host the traditional KINO!20<strong>05</strong>: NEW GERMAN<br />
FILMS this year from 2 - 10 November 20<strong>05</strong>. MoMA senior film<br />
curator Laurence Kardish has invited Go For Zucker! An Unorthodox<br />
Comedy (Alles auf Zucker!) by Dani Levy to open the program. The<br />
film will then be released in U.S. cinemas.<br />
Manfred Wilhelms’ documentary Der Flaneur von Berlin – A Tale of Two<br />
Cities, (Der Flaneur von Berlin – Eine Erzaehlung von zwei Staedten), with<br />
Henry Ries, will have its world premiere at the event. Other films in<br />
the program include: Willenbrock by Andreas Dresen, Ghosts<br />
(Gespenster) by Christian Petzold as well as Zeppelin! by Gordian<br />
Maugg, Hitler Cantata (Hitlerkantate) by Jutta Brueckner, and Franz<br />
Mueller’s graduation film from the Academy of Media Arts in<br />
Cologne, Science Fiction.<br />
Next Generation 20<strong>05</strong> – <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>’ own short film program – will<br />
be presented twice in the presence of the directors Izabela Plucinska<br />
(Jam Session) und Mara Eibl-Eibesfeldt (The Final/Endspiel). And a highlight<br />
for the closing: Sophie Scholl – The Final Days (Sophie Scholl – Die<br />
letzten Tage) by Marc Rothemund, which is representing <strong>German</strong>y this<br />
year in the race for the OSCAR in the category Best Foreign Language<br />
Film.<br />
HILDEGARD KNEF EXHIBIT IN<br />
FILMMUSEUM BERLIN<br />
She was the first <strong>German</strong> post-war actress, the “Sinner”, the acclaimed<br />
Broadway star, the maligned emigrant, and the celebrated<br />
repatriate. In a special exhibit, running from 24 November 20<strong>05</strong> until<br />
17 April 2006, the Filmmuseum Berlin is hosting “Hildegard<br />
Knef. An Artist from <strong>German</strong>y”. As an actress, singer, writer and painter,<br />
Hildegard Knef refused to be pinned down to one specific artistic<br />
german films quarterly news<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 25<br />
Hildegard Knef, 1964 (photo © Ulrich Mack)
Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg Masterclass in L.A. with<br />
Corina Danckwerts (photo © Tomy Lechner)<br />
form. Previously unpublished photographs, show dresses, fashion<br />
designs from Pierre Balmain, letters from Henry Miller, Carl<br />
Zuckmayer and Marlene Dietrich and other pieces from Knef ’s estate<br />
document the decisive stations of a career so closely connected to<br />
<strong>German</strong> cultural history.<br />
FILM ACADEMY BADEN-WUERTTEMBERG<br />
IN LOS ANGELES<br />
During the annual Masterclass “The Hollywood Perspective", twelve<br />
students of the Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg had the opportunity<br />
to meet with leading industry professionals in Hollywood to get<br />
hands-on insight into the American film system. Corina Danckwerts,<br />
U.S. representative of <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>/West Coast, invited the students<br />
to her office, which has become the meeting place and information<br />
center for the continuously growing <strong>German</strong> film community<br />
in Hollywood as well as for U.S. film professionals seeking advice and<br />
guidance for their <strong>German</strong>-oriented endeavors. She shared her experiences<br />
and explained the work of <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> in the U.S. in presenting<br />
and marketing <strong>German</strong> productions.<br />
Following the Masterclass, which was supported by the State<br />
Foundation of Baden-Wuerttemberg, a selection of the students’<br />
short films were presented in an industry screening at Paramount<br />
Pictures.<br />
FINANCING SECURED IN HAMBURG<br />
With its new “Special Program Avale for the Film Industry”, further<br />
financial support is being offered to film producers by Hamburg’s<br />
Agency for Economics & Labor and the Securities Association.<br />
Considering the banks’ stiff criteria for credit, relief in production risks<br />
is more necessary than ever, particularly for smaller production companies.<br />
This new program offers up to 80% deficit guarantees with a<br />
maximum of €1 million per company. This model is intended to help<br />
secure the intermediate financing and cushion risks for commissioned<br />
productions. Hamburg senator Gunnar Uldall comments: “Commissioned<br />
production agreements shouldn’t be doomed to failure due<br />
to temporary liquidity problems.” Only secured financing can guarantee<br />
the completion of a film.<br />
10 YEARS OF SUPPORT FROM<br />
MFG BADEN-WUERTTEMBERG<br />
The MFG Baden-Wuerttemberg can now look back on 10 successful<br />
years of film support in southwestern <strong>German</strong>y. Founded in<br />
1995, the MFG has helped to fund some 1,000 projects: from script<br />
support, project development, production and post-production, to<br />
distribution and sales, film theater support, and development of the<br />
local media industry’s infrastructure. Of the €90 million in funded<br />
projects since 1995, some 300 were feature films which have received<br />
over 2,200 prizes and festival invitations, among them awards from<br />
the renowned “A” festivals in Berlin, Venice, Cannes and Locarno,<br />
including the Silver Leopard 20<strong>05</strong> for Yilmaz Arslan’s Fratricide.<br />
MFG’s shareholders are the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg and the<br />
broadcaster SWR. In 1999, ZDF and ARTE also came on board in an<br />
additional cooperation agreement.<br />
GERMAN DOCUMENTARIES WITH<br />
RECORD PARTICIPATION IN MARSEILLE<br />
Over 30 <strong>German</strong> documentary producers and filmmakers, more than<br />
ever before, participated at the “Sunny Side of the Docs” in Marseille<br />
in June. In cooperation with <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>, the AG DOK organized<br />
a market stand at the unique non-fiction screening event. A video library<br />
offered buyers further documentaries from all genres.<br />
Some 2,000 filmmakers, producers and sales agents came together for<br />
negotiations and sales talks with the 250 attending commissioning editors.<br />
In addition to broadcaster acquisitions, the Sunny Side event also<br />
served as an important contact source for producers and filmmakers<br />
to exchange ideas and make plans for co-productions.<br />
During the numerous presentations given by the television broadcasters,<br />
producers were able to gain insight into the broadcasters’<br />
profiles and programs as well as the short-term and mid-term need<br />
for documentary material.<br />
german films quarterly news<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 26<br />
Yilmaz Arslan’s Silver Leopard winner “Fratricide”<br />
(photo courtesy of MFG Baden-Wuerttemberg)
A Meeting for <strong>German</strong><br />
and French Producers,<br />
Distributors,<br />
Exhibitors<br />
COLOGNE – 18.-19.11.<strong>05</strong><br />
COPRODUCTION CASE STUDIES<br />
ROUND TABLES ABOUT PRODUCTION FACILITIES,<br />
BROADCASTERS’ FEATURE FILMS POLICIES,<br />
MARKETING AND PRESS AT THE CROSSROAD<br />
OF DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION<br />
French contact: helene.conand@unifrance.org<br />
<strong>German</strong> contact: rissenbeek@german-films.de<br />
.<br />
.<br />
.<br />
.<br />
.
IN PRODUCTION<br />
4toechter<br />
Dagmar Manzel, Tanja Schleiff<br />
(photo © Claussen+Woebke/Fabian Roesler)<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Family Drama Production<br />
Company Claussen+Woebke Film/Munich, in co-production<br />
with ZDF/Mainz, ARTE/Strasbourg With backing from<br />
MFG Baden-Wuerttemberg, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, Filmfoerderungsanstalt<br />
(FFA) Producers Jakob Claussen, Uli Putz,<br />
Thomas Woebke Commissioning Editors Daniel Blum, Georg<br />
Steinert Director Rainer Kaufmann Screenplay Gabi Blauert<br />
Director of Photography Klaus Eichhammer Editor Ueli<br />
Christen Music by Anette Focks Production Design Knut<br />
Loewe Principal Cast Dagmar Manzel, Tanja Schleiff, Stefanie<br />
Stappenbeck, Lisa Maria Potthoff, Amelie Kiefer, Barbara Nuesse<br />
Casting An Dorthe Braker Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85, Dolby<br />
Shooting Language <strong>German</strong> Shooting in Stuttgart and surroundings,<br />
August – September 20<strong>05</strong> <strong>German</strong> Distributor<br />
Prokino Filmverleih/Munich<br />
Contact<br />
Claussen+Woebke Filmproduktion GmbH · Uli Putz<br />
Herzog-Wilhelm-Strasse 27 · 80331 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-2 31 10 10 · fax +49-89-26 33 85<br />
email: zentrale@cwfilm.com · www.cwfilm.com<br />
What would happen if it suddenly turned out that the people you<br />
thought were your parents aren’t the real ones after all?<br />
This is the question with which the 30-year-old Hillevi is confronted<br />
when she learns by chance that she was adopted. Driven by the desire<br />
to find out who she really is, she sets off on the quest to find her<br />
birth mother and leaves the idyllic rural security where she had grown<br />
up. She soon manages to find out where her mother and her three<br />
sisters are living. Without giving her identity away, Hillevi observes<br />
Ottilia, her mother, and her sisters Katharina, Lisa and Paula, but the<br />
search for her roots increasingly becomes an encounter with herself<br />
and a journey of dis<strong>cover</strong>ies and decisions where she finally acknowledges<br />
that she must face the future by herself …<br />
The inspiration for 4toechter came from the Swedish bestseller<br />
authoress Inger Alfvén’s novel En Moder Har Fyra Dottrar which producer<br />
Uli Putz had been given as a birthday present. She was so<br />
taken by the family drama that she gave the book to Jakob<br />
Claussen, one of the other two partners in the Munich-based pro-<br />
duction outfit Claussen+Woebke Filmproduktion, to get his<br />
opinion. He was likewise convinced of the book’s potential for the<br />
cinema, and they set about acquiring the film rights from Alfvén. “We<br />
then looked for a screenwriter in <strong>German</strong>y to adapt the novel and<br />
decided on Gabi Blauert,” recalls Putz. “Compared to the screenplay,<br />
the novel is much more complex. We left some characters out<br />
and we don’t have the different time periods.”<br />
Thanks to Blauert’s well-crafted screenplay the production didn’t have<br />
any problems in putting an impressive ensemble of actresses together<br />
for the roles of the mother and four daughters. The mother Ottilia<br />
was a crucial part to cast, but Dagmar Manzel (Willenbrock,<br />
Nachbarinnen) immediately accepted the offer, while the role of Hillevi<br />
was taken by Tanja Schleiff who has recently been part of the<br />
ensemble at the Schauspielhaus Duesseldorf and can be seen in Doris<br />
Doerrie’s Der Fischer und seine Frau and Dominik Graf ’s Der rote<br />
Kakadu. Stefanie Stappenbeck (Barfuss, Im Licht der Nacht) was<br />
cast as Katharina, Lisa Maria Potthoff (Die Bluthochzeit, Am Tag<br />
als Bobby Ewing starb) as Lisa, and 18-year-old Amelie Kiefer, who<br />
has worked in commercials and television from an early age, has her<br />
first feature film role as Paula.<br />
4toechter marks the third collaboration between<br />
Claussen+Woebke Filmproduktion with director Rainer<br />
Kaufmann – the previous two films were Einer meiner aeltesten<br />
Freunde (1993) and Die Apothekerin (1997) – and is Kaufmann’s first<br />
feature film since Kalt ist der Abendhauch (1999). That is not to say that<br />
he has been idle in the intervening years: in 2002, Kaufmann directed<br />
the comedy Der Job seines Lebens for ARD and Die Braut wusste von<br />
nichts for ZDF and followed this a year later with the mini-series Die<br />
Kirschenkoenigin and the TV movie Marias letzte Reise last year.<br />
According to Putz, 4toechter is an attempt to cater to an audience<br />
interested in adult women’s stories. “There is a market for them,” she<br />
argues. “Many women would go to the cinema more often if there<br />
was intelligent entertainment for them to see there.“<br />
MB<br />
eBay World<br />
Type of Project Documentary Cinema Genre Society,<br />
Economics Production Company Filmquadrat/Cologne With<br />
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4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 28<br />
DoP Holger Schueppel on the shoot of<br />
“eBay World” (photo © Filmquadrat 20<strong>05</strong>)
acking from <strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA)<br />
Producer Stefan Tolz Directors Stefan Tolz, Marcus Vetter<br />
Screenplay Stefan Tolz, Marcus Vetter Directors of Photography<br />
Holger Schueppel, Thomas Riedelsheimer, Dieter Stuermer<br />
and others Format DVC Pro 50, HDV, color, 16:9, blow-up to 35<br />
mm, 1:1.85, Dolby Stereo Shooting Languages English, <strong>German</strong>,<br />
Spanish, Chinese Shooting in <strong>German</strong>y, United States, Mexico,<br />
China, UK, June - November 20<strong>05</strong> <strong>German</strong> Distributor Piffl<br />
Medien/Berlin<br />
Contact<br />
Filmquadrat GmbH · Stefan Tolz<br />
Goltsteinstrasse 28/30 · 50968 Cologne/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-2 21-80 04 71 32 · fax +49-2 21-80 04 71 25<br />
email: ebayworld@filmquadrat.de<br />
www.filmquadrat.de<br />
What’s the most basic human transaction? No! Not that! The other<br />
one! That’s right! Except for barter and a recent misguided attempt by<br />
the then Soviet Union to subvert the laws of economics (not to say<br />
human nature), the correct answer is buying and selling.<br />
Now take a look at eBay, a company that in just a few short years has<br />
become more than a global powerhouse, and, along with Google, for<br />
example, one of the defining presences of the Internet, a household<br />
name around the world that has become part of our everyday vocabulary.<br />
eBay World tells five stories from five different countries, looking<br />
at the people behind the phenomenon, reducing the giant company to<br />
the max, to the individuals whose activities form part of the whole.<br />
From the unemployed in the <strong>German</strong> back end beyond of Borna<br />
hoping to become rich, to the hand-workers in the developing world<br />
looking for a way out of poverty, from the super rich so-called<br />
power-sellers to the very center of eBay itself, the film, says producer-director<br />
Stefan Tolz, “sets out to examine the company’s<br />
claim of turning local flea markets into global businesses and whether<br />
its self-proclaimed philosophy of economic democratization is philanthropy<br />
or just a smokescreen!”<br />
Fighting talk, indeed! But as Supersize Me has just proven, documentaries<br />
have the power and pull to punch well above their weight, while<br />
nothing can beat a true story well told for dramatic impact. Co-director<br />
Marcus Vetter, who has a background in Economics and<br />
Media Communication, is a three-time Adolf Grimme Award winner:<br />
most recently for the escape-from-East-<strong>German</strong>y documentary Der<br />
Tunnel (1999), and Wo das Geld waechst – Die EM.TV-Story (2000)<br />
about one of the most spectacular speculative bubbles in <strong>German</strong><br />
business history.<br />
As Tolz says, “Marcus comes from a business-investigation background.<br />
eBay is just the theme for him. He came to us with the idea,<br />
wanting to take a worldwide perspective. We were enthusiastic from<br />
the start!” Tolz himself studied film in Munich and Tbilisi (“The mecca<br />
for poetical and comical films, for depth and tragicomedy with a<br />
smirk,” he says) and has been making documentaries for <strong>German</strong>y’s<br />
major broadcasters for the last fifteen years. His latest feature documentary,<br />
On the Edge of Time, was also released theatrically. Ever<br />
open to the possibilities of ancillary revenue, Filmquadrat is also<br />
planning a DVD release. Among the strategies being considered is<br />
selling the film … Guess where?<br />
SK<br />
Gefangene<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Drama<br />
Production Company Tag/Traum Filmproduktion/Cologne, in<br />
co-production with Fischerfilm/Vienna, ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel/Mainz<br />
With backing from <strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW, RTR<br />
Fernsehproduktionsfonds Producer Gerd Haag Director Iain<br />
Dilthey Screenplay Ulrike Maria Hund Director of Photography<br />
Hans Fromm Music by Marius Lange Production<br />
Design Nicola Schudy Principal Cast Jule Boewe, Andreas<br />
Schmidt, Eva Loebau Casting Tag/Traum Filmproduktion/<br />
Cologne, Fischer Film/Vienna Format Super 16 mm, color, blow-up<br />
to 35 mm, Dolby SR Shooting Language <strong>German</strong> Shooting in<br />
Cologne and surroundings and Linz, September 20<strong>05</strong><br />
Contact<br />
Tag/Traum Filmproduktion GmbH · Anahita Nazemi<br />
Weyerstrasse 88 · 50676 Cologne/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-2 21-6 50 25 90 15 · fax +49-2 21-23 38 94<br />
email: info@tagtraum.de · www.tagtraum.de<br />
“It has been quite difficult to get the next project off the ground,”<br />
admits producer Gerd Haag of Cologne-based Tag/Traum<br />
Filmproduktion who also co-produced Iain Dilthey’s graduation<br />
film Das Verlangen, winner of the Golden Leopard at the 2002<br />
Locarno International Film Festival.<br />
“We thought it would be easier, that we would have a tail wind from<br />
the Leopard,” Haag continues, noting that Dilthey had spent the last<br />
three years also working on the adaptation of Veronique Olmi’s novel<br />
Meeresrand and writing the original screenplay Anita with Silke Parzich.<br />
However, Dilthey’s first feature to go before the camera since graduating<br />
from the Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg<br />
is based on a screenplay he did not write himself. Penned by Ulrike<br />
Maria Hund, who had previously worked with Tag/Traum on the<br />
script for Tamara Staudt’s Swetlana, Gefangene has been structured<br />
as a co-production with Austria’s Fischer Film (co-producer of<br />
Angelina Maccarone’s Fremde Haut) and ZDF’s Das kleine Fernsehspiel<br />
unit for a budget of €900,000.<br />
The chamber piece-like story centers on a young woman named Irene<br />
(played by Jule Boewe) who lives opposite a prison and can look<br />
directly into the cells. One of the inmates Vasile (Andreas<br />
Schmidt) catches her eye and she begins to flirt with him. She lives<br />
german films quarterly in production<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 29<br />
Scene from “Gefangene”<br />
(photo © Paul Kalkbrenner)
out her longings and erotic desires knowing at the same time that she<br />
is in safety. But this game turns serious when the prisoner breaks out<br />
of prison and seeks refuge in the woman’s flat. An ambivalent<br />
relationship marked by fear, hatred and the longing for mutual respect<br />
and love develops between these two totally different people. As<br />
time goes by, Irene increasingly loses control over her feelings. When<br />
the police track the fugitive down to her flat, she is prepared to give<br />
up the life she has led until then and run away with him. And it seems<br />
that a new life will begin for them both …<br />
“The love story develops very slowly with a typical ’Iain Dilthey-female<br />
character’,” Haag explains. “This slow and precise narrative<br />
form will be somewhat more dramatic than in his previous films, but<br />
Gefangene is basically all about the tension between the two main<br />
characters.”<br />
As Haag observes, an important stage began before the actual shooting<br />
when Dilthey spent time with the three actors on the fine-tuning<br />
of the screenplay and rehearsing their parts. Andreas Schmidt is<br />
known to cinema audiences especially from the films of Eoin Moore<br />
like Conemara, Pigs Will Fly or Im Schwitzkasten since he is a regular<br />
collaborator with the Irish-born filmmaker and most recently he<br />
appeared in Andreas Dresen’s Sommer vorm Balkon. Jule Boewe<br />
came to greater prominence in Florian Schwarz’s Katze im Sack which<br />
was shown in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section at this year’s<br />
Berlinale. And Eva Loebau (who appears as a friend of Irene’s) was<br />
in Dilthey’s Ich werde Dich auf Haenden tragen and was the female<br />
lead in Maren Ade’s prize-winning Der Wald vor lauter Baeumen.<br />
Ich bin die Andere<br />
Scene from “Ich bin die Andere”<br />
(photo courtesy of Clasart Filmproduktion)<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Drama, Literature,<br />
Love Story, Psycho-Thriller Production Company Clasart<br />
Filmproduktion/Munich With backing from FilmFernsehFonds<br />
Bayern, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA), HessenInvest Producer<br />
Markus Zimmer Director Margarethe von Trotta Screenplay<br />
Peter Maerthesheimer, Pea Froehlich Director of Photography<br />
Axel Block Editor Corinna Dietz Music by Chris Heyne<br />
Production Design Uwe Max Szielasko Principal Cast Katja<br />
Riemann, August Diehl, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Barbara Auer, Karin Dor<br />
Casting Sabine Schroth Special Effects CA Scanline/Geiselgasteig<br />
Format Super 35 mm, color, cs, Dolby Stereo Shooting<br />
Language <strong>German</strong> Shooting in Munich, Frankfurt am Main,<br />
MB<br />
Asmannshausen, Casablanca, June-July 20<strong>05</strong> <strong>German</strong> Distributor<br />
Concorde Filmverleih/Munich<br />
World Sales<br />
StudioCanal · Muriel Sauzay<br />
5, Boulevard de la Republique<br />
92514 Boulogne-Billancourt/France<br />
phone +33-1-71 75 85 00 · fax +33-1-71 75 89 73<br />
email: msauzay@studiocanal.com<br />
www.studiocanal.com<br />
Five years ago, Clasart Film’s Markus Zimmer met the late<br />
Peter Maerthesheimer – who tragically died from a heart attack at a<br />
session of the Deutsche Filmakademie in June 2004 – at an event dedicated<br />
to Rainer Werner Fassbinder where he heard about<br />
Maerthesheimer’s new novel Ich bin die Andere which centers on a<br />
young woman suffering from schizophrenia.<br />
After reading the novel, Zimmer was enthusiastic about having the<br />
novel adapted for the cinema, but another company had already<br />
optioned the film rights. However, when the rights subsequently<br />
became available again, Clasart wasted no time in acquiring them and<br />
then applied for script funding from the <strong>German</strong> Federal Film Board<br />
(FFA) for Maerthesheimer to work on a screenplay with his regular<br />
partner Pea Froehlich. They had collaborated in the 1980s on the<br />
Fassbinder films Lola and Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss.<br />
With the screenplay on the way, Margarethe von Trotta was<br />
approached to direct this “schizophrenic melodrama” after the<br />
successful collaboration with Tele Muenchen on Rosenstrasse. “It is<br />
quite a different kind of project from what Margarethe has done in<br />
recent years and this was a conscious decision by both of us after<br />
Rosenstrasse,” Zimmer explains. “We wanted to try something completely<br />
different. We didn’t want to do a historical women’s story<br />
such as one would have expected from her after films like Rosa<br />
Luxemburg, Marianne and Juliane or Rosenstrasse. We decided to take<br />
this story which is very unusual and controversial and I think it will be<br />
quite a surprise for everybody.”<br />
In a multi-layered story which touches on such issues as child abuse,<br />
self-mutilation and the splitting of the consciousness, Ich bin die<br />
Andere follows the melodramatic course of events after the young<br />
engineer Robert Fabry (played by August Diehl) spends the night<br />
in a hotel with the mysterious Carlotta (Katja Riemann). The next<br />
day, he meets her again – as the lawyer Dr. Carolin Winter. A confusion<br />
of identities and passions takes its course to the point where<br />
Robert puts his own life on the line …<br />
Once Riemann heard about the project, it was soon clear that she<br />
would play the part of Carlotta/Carolin – she had played the lead in<br />
von Trotta’s Rosenstrasse and was awarded a Coppa Volpi as Best<br />
Actress at the 2003 Venice Film Festival – and internationally renowned<br />
veteran actor Armin Mueller-Stahl was a “clear choice”,<br />
especially since he had worked with Maerthesheimer and Froehlich in<br />
Lola and Veronika Voss. In addition, the film will be the first time that<br />
the 1950s/1960s star Karin Dor – who also worked with<br />
Hitchcock (Topaz) and starred in the James Bond film You Only Live<br />
Twice – appears before the camera again after some 30 years’ absence<br />
from the cinema screens.<br />
Diehl, though, only came to be considered for the role of the young<br />
engineer Robert because the production had to be put back by a year<br />
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4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 30
as the financing was not complete for shooting in summer 2004. But<br />
the delay was fortuitous since Diehl showed in Volker Schloendorff ’s<br />
Der neunte Tag that he has now come to the point in his career where<br />
he can take on more mature roles. “I see Ich bin die Andere as<br />
being another step towards more adult roles for him,“ says Zimmer.<br />
Knallhart<br />
Director Detlev Buck on set (photo ©<br />
BojeBuck/David Gruschka)<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Drama<br />
Production Company Boje Buck/Berlin, in co-production with<br />
WDR/Cologne, ARTE/Strasbourg With backing from BKM,<br />
Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA), Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg<br />
Producer Claus Boje Director Detlev Buck Screenplay Zoran<br />
Drvenkar, Gregor Tessnow Director of Photography Kolja<br />
Brandt Editor Dirk Grau Production Design Udo Kramer<br />
Principal Cast David Kross, Jenny Elvers-Elbertzhagen, Jan Henrik<br />
Stahlberg, Hans Loew, Arnel Taci, Kai Mueller Casting Astrid<br />
Rosenfeld Format 16 mm, color, blow-up to 35 mm, 1:1.85, Dolby<br />
SRD Shooting Language <strong>German</strong> Shooting in Berlin, June -<br />
July 20<strong>05</strong> <strong>German</strong> Distributor Delphi Filmverleih/Berlin<br />
Contact<br />
Boje Buck Produktion GmbH · Sonja Schmitt<br />
Kurfuerstendamm 226 · 10719 Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-8 85 91 30 · fax + 49-30-88 59 13 15<br />
email: info@bojebuck.de · www.knallhart-der-film.de<br />
Based on the critically praised novel of the same title by Gregor<br />
Tessnow, who also co-authors the film, Knallhart (a <strong>German</strong><br />
word which has no exact English equivalent but conveys the idea of<br />
being even tougher than tough, whether a person or fate) is the latest<br />
slice of life from Detlev Buck.<br />
This time Buck (think character observation à la Britain’s Ken Loach)<br />
goes for gritty realism with laconically humorous undertones in the<br />
tale of a woman, Miriam, and her fifteen-year-old son, Michael, who<br />
are forced to leave their villa in the upscale Berlin district of<br />
Zehlendorf and move to the less than salubrious Neukoelln area.<br />
A fish-out-of-water in his new environment, Michael is forced to pay<br />
protection money to a local gang. He breaks into his former home in<br />
an attempt to buy them off but gets into a fight with the ever more<br />
demanding gang leader, Errol. Unfortunately, Michael is rescued by<br />
Hamal, an Afghan pretending to be Italian, and, since this is Neukoelln<br />
MB<br />
where nothing comes for free, Michael now becomes Hamal’s drugs<br />
courier.<br />
All goes well until Errol reappears and throws Michael’s backpack<br />
from a railway bridge. It lands on a passing commuter train which<br />
means Michael is now a liability for Hamal as the boy’s school things<br />
together with the money in the bag will alert the police. It comes, as<br />
it must, to a showdown.<br />
“The film takes its audience with it because it has emotion, laconic<br />
humor and also a hard edge,” say producer Claus Boje. “It has feeling<br />
but is unsentimental.”<br />
“We filmed over a short period, doing the music and editing parallel,<br />
to give Knallhart a sense of energy,” Boje continues. “We make<br />
stories that mean something to us and here we have a 15-year-old, in<br />
a new environment, who has to make hard moral choices. It’s exciting<br />
to observe people in these situations.”<br />
Boje Buck Produktion was founded by Boje (who also founded<br />
distribution Delphi Filmverleih) and Buck in 1991.<br />
Among its many critically and publicly acclaimed films, Maennerpension<br />
(1995), with Til Schweiger, Heike Makatsch, Marie Baeumer and Buck<br />
in the main leads, is still one of the most successful <strong>German</strong> comedies<br />
with over 3 million admissions while Sonnenallee (1999, directed by<br />
Leander Haussmann), which taught former East <strong>German</strong>s how to<br />
laugh at the fall of their own Wall, pulled in over 2.5 million viewers<br />
and has also sold successfully overseas.<br />
In 2003 Herr Lehmann (also directed by Leander Haussmann), a<br />
comedy about a group of total losers whose one ability is to hang<br />
around getting drunk, was nominated for the <strong>German</strong> Film Award,<br />
including for Best Film. It won for Best Filmed Script and Best<br />
Supporting Actor for Buck.<br />
german films quarterly in production<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 31<br />
SK
Lucy<br />
Director Henner Winckler<br />
(photo © Annette Hauschild)<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Drama<br />
Production Company Schramm Film Koerner & Weber/Berlin,<br />
in cooperation with ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel/Mainz With<br />
backing from BKM, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg<br />
Producers Florian Koerner von Gustorf, Michael Weber<br />
Director Henner Winckler Screenplay Henner Winckler, Stefan<br />
Kriekhaus Director of Photography Christine A. Maier Editor<br />
Bettina Boehler Production Design Reinhild Blaschke Principal<br />
Cast Kim Schnitzer, Feo Aladag, Gordon Schmidt Casting Ulrike<br />
Mueller Special Effects Mike Bols Format 16 mm, blow-up 35<br />
mm, color, 1:1.85, Dolby SR Shooting Language <strong>German</strong><br />
Shooting in Berlin, September - October 20<strong>05</strong> <strong>German</strong><br />
Distributor Piffl Medien/Berlin<br />
Contact<br />
Arne Hoehne Presse · Arne Hoehne<br />
Boxhagener Strasse 18 · 10245 Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-29 36 16 16 · fax +49-30-29 36 16 22<br />
email: info@hoehnepresse.de · www.hoehnepresse.de<br />
The fact that both Henner Winckler and his co-author from<br />
Klassenfahrt Stefan Kriekhaus are currently both fathers of toddlers<br />
had more than a passing influence on their new project Lucy,<br />
which cranked up production at locations in Berlin at the beginning of<br />
September.<br />
“Since we both have small children, we tried to organize our writing<br />
around them,” explains Winckler, “and so it was somehow logical that<br />
we should include this subject of raising children into the new film,<br />
especially when you come to the kindergarten with the children and<br />
see other [parents] who are fifteen years younger than yourself who<br />
seem to be managing alright having children. It made us curious to<br />
know what kind of conflicts there could be.”<br />
Lucy focuses on the attempt of the 18-year-old Maggie to live<br />
together with her new boyfriend Gordon who, however, is not her<br />
child’s father. She tries to create a family situation with him, but<br />
comes to realize that the child is a problem for the new relationship.<br />
What should she do with the child? Give her to her mother to look<br />
after? What would be the best solution?<br />
Winckler recalls that he looked for some time for the right person to<br />
play the young mother and was then given a tip by casting director<br />
Ulrike Mueller to look at a short film which featured Kim<br />
Schnitzer. “Initially, I wasn’t so sure because she looks very young<br />
and wondered whether one would believe that she has a child,”<br />
recalls Winckler who enjoys the opportunity to work on a film based<br />
exclusively in Berlin. “I find it much easier to be shooting here,” he<br />
says, while admitting that “it is perhaps a bit more difficult switching<br />
between the roles of the film director and father when I come home<br />
from a day’s shooting. But I really know the places where we are<br />
shooting, I don’t have to drive three hours to have a look at them and<br />
then just get a superficial impression – these are places I drive by<br />
every day.”<br />
Lucy marks the second collaboration with the Berlin production<br />
company Schramm Film after Klassenfahrt and has already secured<br />
theatrical distribution for <strong>German</strong>y through Piffl Medien.<br />
“I always hope that when you come out of the cinema, you’ll have the<br />
feeling of having gotten to know someone,” says producer Florian<br />
Koerner von Gustorf on what the audience could take away<br />
from the film. “I always think that is the nicest thing. It’s something we<br />
managed in Gespenster, Marseille and the other films, getting close to<br />
someone, but not in a pushy way.”<br />
MB<br />
Der Mann von der Botschaft<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Drama<br />
Production Company Tatfilm/Cologne, in cooperation with<br />
ZDF/Mainz, ARTE/Strasbourg With backing from <strong>Films</strong>tiftung<br />
NRW Producer Christine Ruppert Director Dito Tsintsadze<br />
Screenplay Dito Tsintsadze, Zaza Rusadze Director of<br />
Photography Benedict Neuenfels Editor Katja Dringenberg<br />
Production Design Vaja Jalagania, Alexander Scherer Principal<br />
Cast Burghart Klaussner, Lika Martinova, Marika Giorgobiani, Irm<br />
Hermann Format 16 mm, color, blow-up to 35 mm, 1:1.85, Dolby<br />
Digital Shooting Languages <strong>German</strong>, Georgian Shooting in<br />
Tbilisi/Georgia, Cologne, July - September 20<strong>05</strong><br />
World Sales<br />
Sola Media GmbH · Solveig Langeland<br />
Osumstrasse 17 · 7<strong>05</strong>99 Stuttgart/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-7 11-4 79 36 66 · fax +49-7 11-4 79 26 58<br />
email: post@sola-media.net<br />
www.sola-media.net<br />
In Der Mann von der Botschaft (aka Sashka), writer-director<br />
Dito Tsintsadze tells the story of Herbert, a <strong>German</strong> embas-<br />
german films quarterly in production<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 32<br />
Scene from “Der Mann von der Botschaft”<br />
(photo © Tatfilm 20<strong>05</strong>)
sy official in Georgia living an empty existence doing his job by the<br />
numbers. His private life offers him no compensation. It is an encounter<br />
and subsequent relationship with a young girl, twelve-year-old<br />
Sashka, which enables him to redis<strong>cover</strong> laughter and a sense of<br />
responsibility for another person. But it also brings suspicions of<br />
pedophilia, corrupt policemen, burglary and violence. Then the<br />
embassy becomes involved.<br />
“I like it when stories bring not just people but also countries<br />
together,” says producer and Tatfilm founder Christine Ruppert.<br />
“We need to create bridges, not just finance for co-productions or<br />
tax write-offs but story connections.”<br />
“This particular story,” Ruppert explains, “continues our collaboration<br />
with Dito after Schussangst. He’s a very cinematic director, thinking<br />
in pictures. That makes it more exciting for me than, say, some of<br />
the directors who come from a television background because that<br />
has a different language.”<br />
Born in 1957 in Tbilisi, Tsintsadze attended the Tbilisi Theater and<br />
Film Institute, made his first short in 1990 and worked for the<br />
Schvidkatsa film company before coming to Berlin in 1996 to take up<br />
a NIPKOW scholarship. It was here he wrote and directed Lost Killers<br />
(his first film shot in <strong>German</strong>y) that played in, among others, Cannes,<br />
San Sebastian and Torino.<br />
“It’s hard to put Dito into a category,” says Ruppert. “The film is a<br />
drama, it’s melancholic but he always has a sense of humor. It’s a very<br />
human story: The hero is resigned to the negative side of society but<br />
dis<strong>cover</strong>s his feelings and emotions.”<br />
Burghart Klaussner, who won the <strong>German</strong> Film Award 20<strong>05</strong> for<br />
Best Supporting Actor in Hans Weingartner’s Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei,<br />
plays that hero, Herbert. As for Georgia, Ruppert is most effusive.<br />
“It’s a very beautiful country,” she says excitedly. “The people<br />
are warm-hearted and artistic, even though organization is not their<br />
strength! The young generation has great potential and cinematically<br />
they could be up there with Russia and Iran. Tbilisi is only four hours<br />
away by plane and could become the next Prague.”<br />
For collectors of trivia, Tatfilm takes it’s name from the <strong>German</strong><br />
word “Tat”, which means a deed, action or act, and is also an<br />
acronym for “Tuchuss auf dem Tisch”, the Yiddish for “Arse on the<br />
Table!” – a phrase, says Ruppert, “commonly uttered by Jewish producers<br />
a week before a film went into production when it was too<br />
late to back out and one’s posterior was well and truly on the line, or<br />
table!”<br />
SK<br />
Reine Formsache<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Romantic Comedy<br />
Production Company Independent Players/Berlin, in co-production<br />
with Senator Film Produktion/Berlin, SevenPictures/<br />
Unterfoehring With backing from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg,<br />
Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA) Producer Béla Jarzyk Co-<br />
Producers Benjamin Herrmann, Stefan Gaertner, Alicia Remirez<br />
Director Ralf Huettner Screenplay Béla Jarzyk, Ralf Huettner<br />
Director of Photography Hannes Hubach Editor Dirk<br />
Vaihinger Production Design Ingrid Buron Principal Cast<br />
Marc Hosemann, Christiane Paul, Bastian Pastewka, Floriane Daniel,<br />
Oliver Korritke, Petra Schmidt-Schaller, Robert Schupp, Michael<br />
Gwisdek Casting An Dorther Braker Format 35 mm, color,<br />
1:1.85, Dolby Digital Shooting Language <strong>German</strong> Shooting in<br />
Berlin, Ruegen, July – September 20<strong>05</strong> <strong>German</strong> Distributor<br />
Senator Film Verleih/Berlin<br />
Contact<br />
Independent Players GmbH · Béla Jarzyk<br />
Sophienstrasse 21 · 10178 Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-28 51 68 0 · fax +49-30-28 51 68 6<br />
email: mail@players.de<br />
Writer-producer Béla Jarzyk debuts with a romantic comedy that<br />
begins where romance normally ends; in the divorce court! Pola has<br />
had enough of husband Felix’s flings. Not that their friends Wito and<br />
Ada and Gustav and Effi are having an easier time of it. Making matters<br />
better/worse is Felix’s father, desperately trying to fan the flames<br />
of love!<br />
Taking his cues from Britain’s writer-director Richard Curtis and the<br />
U.S.’s Steven Soderbergh, Jarzyk says, he “wanted to tell a story from<br />
life and Reine Formsache is a larger than life story. It’s about problems<br />
I know, told with humor.”<br />
Jarzyk, who had already secured lead Christiane Paul and broadcaster<br />
Sat.1, then sent the script to Senator Film’s managing director<br />
and head of production and distribution, Benjamin Herrmann.<br />
Herrmann says he “found it a classic romantic comedy with a new<br />
touch where most don’t go – with the divorce. It has great dialogue<br />
and I knew it was going to be very entertaining and also touching.<br />
That’s why we took it.”<br />
Now all Jarzyk needed was a director!<br />
german films quarterly in production<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 33<br />
Team of “Reine Formsache”<br />
(photo © Nik Konietzny)
“I knew from my contact network,” says Jarzyk, who founded the<br />
agency Players together with his wife Mechthild Jarzyk-Holter, “that<br />
Ralf was already working on a related subject. I called his agency, sent<br />
him the script and he agreed in 24 hours! Then we worked together<br />
on the script for three months. We orientated ourselves on the<br />
British producers Working Title to make sure we had the light touch.”<br />
<strong>Films</strong> such as the crime comedy Die Musterknaben and the comedy<br />
Mondscheintarif (also co-produced and distributed by Senator), amply<br />
demonstrate that Huettner has “the light touch”.<br />
Jarzyk, who came into film via theater promotion and actor management<br />
via the art trade, left Players to pursue his production ideas. “It’s<br />
untypically <strong>German</strong>,” he says, “but I didn’t want to do the same thing<br />
my whole life!”<br />
Jarzyk is also keen to point out that his production company,<br />
Independent Players, is what it says on the box, independent.<br />
“So the film is even more market compatible and there’s no conflict<br />
of interest! But seriously, we cast the film on its and the actors’<br />
merits. Independent Players is a separate entity. It’s not a pre-packaged<br />
deal like in the U.S.”<br />
And coming next from Independent Players is Der Absacker. “Also a<br />
comedy,” says Jarzyk, “about a man who very quickly loses everything<br />
and only then gets to know what life really is and has to offer.”<br />
Sieben Zwerge – Der<br />
Wald ist nicht genug<br />
SK<br />
On the set with the Seven Dwarves<br />
(photo courtesy of Zipfelmuetzenfilm)<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Family, Comedy,<br />
Family Entertainment Production Company Zipfelmuetzenfilm/<br />
Hamburg, in cooperation with Film & Entertainment VIP Medienfonds<br />
2/Munich, MMC Independent/Cologne, Rialto Film/Berlin, Universal<br />
Pictures Productions/Hamburg, in association with Telepool/Munich<br />
With backing from Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA), FilmFernseh<br />
Fonds Bayern Producers Otto Waalkes, Bernd Eilert, Douglas<br />
Welbat Director Sven Unterwaldt Screenplay Otto Waalkes,<br />
Bernd Eilert, Sven Unterwaldt Director of Photography Peter<br />
von Haller Editor Norbert Herzner Music by Joja Wendt<br />
Production Design Thomas Freudenthal Principal Cast Otto<br />
Waalkes, Mirco Nontschew, Martin Schneider, Ralf Schmitz, Norbert<br />
Heisterkamp, Boris Aljinovic, Gustav Peter Woehler, Nina Hagen,<br />
Cosma Shiva Hagen, Hans Werner Olm, Christian Tramitz, Ruediger<br />
Hoffmann, Heinz Hoenig Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85, Dolby<br />
Digital Shooting Language <strong>German</strong> Shooting in Hamburg,<br />
Bremen, Goslar, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Quedlinburg, Wernigerode,<br />
Bad Harzburg, Braunschweig, July-September 20<strong>05</strong> <strong>German</strong><br />
Distributor Universal <strong>German</strong>y & United International Pictures/<br />
Frankfurt<br />
World Sales<br />
TELEPOOL GmbH<br />
Wolfram Skowronnek, Carlos Hertel<br />
Sonnenstrasse 21 · 80331 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-55 87 60 · fax +49-89-55 87 62 29<br />
email: cinepool@telepool.de · www.telepool.de<br />
Proving you can’t keep a good dwarf down, let alone seven of the<br />
little fellows, those feisty fairy-tale critters, the Seven Dwarves are<br />
back! And this time the forest isn’t big enough to hold ’em!<br />
As created by the multitalented writing, directing, producing, singing,<br />
comedy-performing Otto Waalkes, this time the dwarves Cloudy,<br />
Sunny, Bubi, etc. (who seem much taller than real dwarves should but<br />
explain it away as “a common misconception”) set off to help Snow<br />
White – who has since had a baby – guess the name of the evil dwarf<br />
that has threatened to take her child. Will they succeed? Can you say<br />
“Rumpelstiltskin”? ’Course they will! But that’s only after they’ve gone<br />
about things in their own, highly unique way, together with director<br />
Sven Unterwaldt, doing for (or is it to?) the Brothers Grimm<br />
what the Monty Python team did for King Arthur in Monty Python and<br />
the Holy Grail.<br />
“We decided to make the sequel last May,” says producer Douglas<br />
Welbat, “before the first one was even released. We wanted to<br />
take the story further so while the first film was ninety-percent studio<br />
filmed, this time we’ve gone for locations. Otherwise there have been<br />
few changes. The cast regulars are back but we also have many, many<br />
new surprises!”<br />
Not even the promise to write something nice about him could persuade<br />
Welbat to say what those surprises are, but since the first film<br />
reached more than 7 million viewers in the <strong>German</strong>-speaking territories<br />
he’s certainly not going to let them down. As Welbat says: “We<br />
hit their nerves with the first film and hope it will happen a second<br />
time.”<br />
As already mentioned, this time the production heads outdoors and<br />
Welbat promises “viewers will see a greatly increased production<br />
value. The Seven Dwarves are very valuable and what’s valuable costs<br />
money so we couldn’t afford to be mean. Visually, it will be absolutely<br />
wonderful.”<br />
About the first film, Variety wrote: “When it’s clicking, it’s hilarious ...<br />
Anarchic, satiric and silly enough to ignite a midnight movie-style cult<br />
following, this comedy-as-cudgel from Sven Unterwaldt could, with<br />
appropriate handling, break out of the foreign film/festival forest and<br />
make some real noise at the international box office.”<br />
german films quarterly in production<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 34<br />
SK
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Drama<br />
Production Company Oe Filmproduktion Loeprich &<br />
Schloesser/Berlin, in co-production with SWR/Baden-Baden,<br />
BR/Munich, WDR/Cologne, ARTE/Strasbourg With backing<br />
from Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA), FilmFoerderung Hamburg,<br />
Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, BKM Producers Frank Loeprich,<br />
Katrin Schloesser Director Stefan Krohmer Screenplay Daniel<br />
Nocke Director of Photography Patrick Orth Production<br />
Design Silke Fischer Principal Cast Martina Gedeck, Peter<br />
Davor, Robert Seeliger, Svea Lohde, Lucas Kotaranin Casting Nina<br />
Haun, Anne Schulte Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85, Dolby<br />
Shooting Language <strong>German</strong> Shooting in Schleswig and surroundings,<br />
Namibia, July-September 20<strong>05</strong> <strong>German</strong> Distributor<br />
Alamode Film/Munich<br />
World Sales<br />
Bavaria Film International<br />
Dept. of Bavaria Media GmbH<br />
Thorsten Schaumann<br />
Bavariafilmplatz 8 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86 · fax +49-89-64 99 37 20<br />
email: bavaria.international@bavaria-film.de<br />
www.bavaria-film-international.de<br />
Scene from ”Sommer ’01 an der Schlei“<br />
(photo © Oe Filmproduktion)<br />
Sommer ’01 an der Schlei<br />
The saying goes “Never change a winning team!” and this particularly<br />
applies to the director-screenwriter duo of Stefan Krohmer and<br />
Daniel Nocke after such award-winning films as Barracuda Dancing<br />
(TV, 1999), Ende der Saison (TV, 2000), Familienkreise (TV, 2002) and<br />
Sie haben Knut (2003).<br />
This summer, Krohmer and Nocke came together again for a new feature<br />
film project, Sommer ’01 an der Schlei, produced by<br />
Berlin-based independent production house Oe Filmproduktion with<br />
broadcasters SWR, BR, WDR, and ARTE.<br />
As producer Katrin Schloesser notes, writing the screenplay for<br />
this project had a particular resonance for Nocke since he grew up in<br />
this area. Moreover, there was another unexpected personal touch<br />
with the decision to shoot part of the film in his parents’ house: the<br />
production team had scouted in the region for suitable locations, but<br />
the Nockes’ house proved to be exactly what they were looking for<br />
and the parents were subsequently packed off on holiday for the<br />
duration of the shoot!<br />
Sommer ’01 an der Schlei centers on 40-year-old Miriam’s<br />
growing unease at what she perceives as the beginnings of an affair<br />
between her son’s 13-year-old girlfriend Livia and an older man Bill<br />
during summer holidays on the North <strong>German</strong> coast. Miriam feels<br />
responsible for the teenager’s welfare and wants to stop the questionable<br />
relationship. However, matters become more complicated<br />
when Miriam finds herself falling in love with Bill and they begin a<br />
secret affair. It is not long before she is unable to distinguish between<br />
her sense of responsibility and jealousy – with tragic consequences.<br />
Mostly Martha’s Martina Gedeck and Canadian actor Robert<br />
Seeliger (from Miss Texas) were cast in the lead roles of Miriam and<br />
Bill, while Livia is played by Svea Lohde (Rosenstrasse) and Miriam’s<br />
partner André by Peter Davor (Scherbentanz).<br />
Described by Oe Filmproduktion as “a powerful drama about<br />
the limits of guilt and love, a confrontation with one’s own moral conceptions”,<br />
Sommer ’01 shares common elements with the previous<br />
Krohmer/Nocke collaborations, according to Schloesser. “The subject<br />
of family is definitely something that occupies them,“ she says,<br />
“and there is also this playing with one’s own imagination, playing with<br />
the characters and the audience about their expectations.”<br />
“It’s a wonderful gift that they found one another and work so well<br />
together,” remarks Schloesser about Krohmer and Nocke who have<br />
collaborated since their days as students at the Film Academy Baden-<br />
Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg. “They trust one another and are<br />
really suited to each other.”<br />
MB<br />
The Three Investigators and<br />
the Secret of Skeleton Island<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Action/Adventure,<br />
Family Production Company Studio Hamburg International<br />
Production/Hamburg & Los Angeles, in co-production with<br />
GFP/Berlin With backing from Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA),<br />
FilmFoerderung Hamburg, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, IDC<br />
South Africa Producers Sytze van der Laan, Ronald Kruschak<br />
Director Florian Baxmeyer Screenplay Philip LaZebnik<br />
Director of Photography Peter J. Krause Production<br />
Design Albrecht Konrad Casting Celestia Fox, Jennifer Smith<br />
Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85 Shooting Language English<br />
Shooting in <strong>German</strong>y and Capetown/South Africa, November<br />
german films quarterly in production<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 35<br />
Motive from “The Three Investigators”<br />
(photo © SHIP)
20<strong>05</strong> - March 2006 <strong>German</strong> Distributor Buena Vista<br />
International (<strong>German</strong>y)/Munich<br />
Contact<br />
SHIP – Studio Hamburg International Production<br />
Sytze van der Laan<br />
Jenfelder Allee 80 · 22039 Hamburg/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-40-66 88 48 46 · fax +49-40-66 88 48 66<br />
email: gpegel@studio-hamburg.de<br />
www.studio-hamburg-produktion.de<br />
The Three Investigators and the Secret of Skeleton<br />
Island is based on a worldwide best-selling series of children’s<br />
books, penned by Robert Arthur. The books’ heroes are three young<br />
boys who solve mysteries very much in the manner of Scooby-Doo<br />
(but without the dog) or Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven or Famous Five (but<br />
without the British class-system).<br />
In the first of what according to producer Ronald Kruschak “will<br />
become a major franchise”, our intrepid young detectives head off on<br />
holiday to visit one of their number’s fathers who is busy constructing<br />
a theme park on “Skeleton Island”.<br />
With a name like that and rumors of treasure and ghostly haunting to<br />
boot, it’s only a matter of minutes before Pete, Bob and Jupiter find<br />
themselves up to their necks in a mystery just waiting for them to<br />
solve!<br />
“This is actually our first move into international theatrical feature<br />
production,” says Studio Hamburg’s managing director Sytze van<br />
der Laan, “and we made sure to acquire the sole rights to the<br />
whole series beforehand. What counts these days is having content,<br />
a library, and The Three Investigators is perfect material.”<br />
Directed by Florian Baxmeyer (Das Blut der Templer, TV, 2004),<br />
the film is written by longtime Disney writer Philip LaZebnik<br />
(Pocahontas, Mulan) and is being filmed in English in South Africa. The<br />
Rainbow Nation’s IDC is helping with the financing.<br />
As reported during this year’s Cannes film festival, after a fierce<br />
bidding war all <strong>German</strong>-language rights went to Buena Vista<br />
International (<strong>German</strong>y) for a low- to mid-seven figure sum that is,<br />
says van der Laan “the highest pre-sale price ever paid for a <strong>German</strong><br />
family film.”<br />
SK<br />
TKKG<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Family<br />
Production Company Bavaria Filmverleih- und Produktion/<br />
Geiselgasteig, in co-production with Lunaris Film/Munich, BR/Munich<br />
With backing from FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, Bayerischer<br />
Bankenfonds, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA) Producer Uschi Reich<br />
Director Tomy Wigand Screenplay Marco Petry, Burt<br />
Weinshanker, based on ideas by Rolf Kalmuczak & Stefan Wolf<br />
Director of Photography Egon Werdin Editor Christian<br />
Nauheimer Production Design Uwe Szielasko Principal Cast<br />
Juergen Vogel, Jannis Niewoehner, Jonathan Duemcke, Lukas<br />
Eichhammer, Svea Bein, Hauke Diekamp, Jeanette Hain, Anna<br />
Hausburg Casting An Dorthe Braker Format 35 mm, color, cs,<br />
Dolby Digital Shooting Language <strong>German</strong> Shooting in<br />
Munich, Neubeuern, Wasserburg, Tutzing, August-October 20<strong>05</strong><br />
<strong>German</strong> Distributor Constantin Film Verleih/Munich<br />
Contact<br />
Bavaria Filmverleih- und Produktions-GmbH<br />
Uschi Reich<br />
Bavariafilmplatz 7 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-64 99 28 73 · fax +49-89-64 99 31 43<br />
email: susann.schinkel@bavaria-film.de<br />
www.bavaria-film.de<br />
Producer Uschi Reich has had a busy summer this year: Principal<br />
photography had just cranked up on Vivian Naefe’s Die Wilden<br />
Huehner as preparations for Tomy Wigand’s TKKG came onto the<br />
final straight. This is not the first time that the adventures of the four<br />
young sleuths Tim, Karl, Kloesschen and Gaby, known for short as<br />
TKKG, appeared in the cinema – Ulrich Koenig directed a film TKKG<br />
– Das Drachenauge in 1992 – and author Stefan Wolf’s series of<br />
books and audiocassettes have also spawned a number of spin-offs<br />
including TV live-action and cartoon series since the first books<br />
appeared on the market in 1979. To date, over 26 million TKKG<br />
books, tapes and CD-ROMs have been sold, with the quartet’s<br />
exploits known as far as China where 20 titles were published in<br />
2000.<br />
As producer Reich recalls, Wolf came to see her about making a film<br />
based on the TKKG stories after he had seen Puenktchen & Anton, but<br />
she wanted to carry on with the updates of the Kaestner classics.<br />
Wolf didn’t let up, though; he contacted her again after Bibi Blocksberg<br />
and found Reich was now receptive for the idea of bringing the TKKG<br />
detectives to the big screen.<br />
german films quarterly in production<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 36<br />
“TKKG” (photo © Constantin Film)
While the screenplay for Die Wilden Huehner draws on one of the<br />
Cornelia Funke books (Fuchsalarm), the script for TKKG, penned by<br />
director Marco Petry (Schule) with Burt Weinshanker, is of a<br />
completely new story that has not appeared as a TKKG book or<br />
audiocassette. “What is special about this film and distinguishes it<br />
from the books is that we will be trying to put the characters in the<br />
foreground, while the case they are solving is in the background. In<br />
the books, it tends to be the other way around,” Reich explains.<br />
The four mini-sleuths are faced in this new case with the disappearance<br />
of three children. The strange thing is that there are no<br />
ransom demands made. TKKG eventually find out that the missing<br />
children are being used as guinea-pigs for a mysterious mind machine.<br />
A tricky rescue plan is prepared …<br />
In a clear case of ’never change a winning team’, Reich hired Tomy<br />
Wigand who had helmed the updated version of Erich Kaestner’s<br />
Das fliegende Klassenzimmer for Bavaria Film in 2002. “We have the<br />
same love of cinema and thus understand each other very well,”<br />
Reich says. “Tomy likes this creative triangle between the author,<br />
director and producer which is terribly important for me. I need a<br />
director who – like me – is fighting for the best possible film and not<br />
asserting his ego. Moreover, the children love him. The best prerequisites<br />
then for a new collaboration.”<br />
“The film will be aimed at 9 to 11-year-olds, but we will also be wanting<br />
to appeal to the old fans of TKKG who are now between 18 and<br />
25,” Reich notes. “The important thing is that it is exciting and entertaining.”<br />
MB<br />
Der Untergang der<br />
Pamir<br />
Klaus J. Behrendt, Jan Josef Liefers<br />
(photo © Polyphon / Marion von der Mehden)<br />
Type of Project TV Movie Genre Action/Adventure, Drama,<br />
History Production Company Polyphon Film- und Fernsehgesellschaft/Hamburg,<br />
in cooperation with Degeto Film/Frankfurt,<br />
NDR/Hamburg, ARTE/Strasbourg With backing from<br />
FilmFoerderung Hamburg, Nordmedia, <strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW<br />
Producer Matthias Esche Director Kaspar Heidelbach Screenplay<br />
Fritz Mueller-Scherz Director of Photography Daniel<br />
Koppelkamm Production Design Goetz Weidner Editor Hedy<br />
Altschiller Music by Arno Steffen Principal Cast Klaus J.<br />
Behrendt, Jan Josef Liefers, Herbert Knaup, Max Riemelt, Karoline<br />
Teska, Elena Uhlig Casting Anja Dihrberg-Siebler Special Effects<br />
Peter Wiemker (SFX), Steinmeier & Mohr, Michael Mohr (Stunts)<br />
Format Super 16 mm, Dolby SR Shooting Language <strong>German</strong><br />
Shooting in Hamburg, Cuxhaven, Moenchengladbach, Cologne,<br />
Schleswig-Holstein, Tenerife, Malta, June - October 20<strong>05</strong><br />
World Sales<br />
TELEPOOL GmbH<br />
Sonnenstrasse 21 · 80331 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-55 87 60 · fax +49-89-55 87 61 88<br />
email: telepool@telepool.de · www.telepool.de<br />
Man against nature turned savage, an epic battle for survival against<br />
the elements; that is Der Untergang der Pamir, the true story<br />
of the four-mast, merchant navy training ship, the Pamir, which foundered<br />
on 21 September 1957 in the face of the full-on fury of hurricane<br />
“Carrie”. From her 86 hands, including 52 very young cadets, just<br />
six survived after days in storm-tossed and shattered lifeboats.<br />
“I was twelve when the Pamir sank,” says writer Fritz Mueller-<br />
Scherz, who was himself born on a ship and spent his first eight<br />
years afloat. “I experienced it live on the radio and never forgot it.”<br />
In fact, the nine-day hunt for survivors involved 180 ships and 20<br />
aircraft, making it the then world’s largest search and rescue action.<br />
Told through, among others, the story of boatswain Acki Lueders<br />
(Klaus J. Behrendt), 1st Officer Hans Ewald (Jan Josef<br />
Liefers) and Cadet Carl-Friedrich von Krempin (Max Riemelt),<br />
Mueller-Scherz, who has written with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and<br />
Wim Wenders, adopted the same technique that made the awardwinning,<br />
mining-disaster drama Das Wunder von Lengede (2003) a<br />
national and international success.<br />
“I paint the big picture by looking at the smaller, human one,” he says.<br />
“I look for a main character I can be close to. The drama arises from<br />
the basic situation. Here we have young men on a journey into adulthood<br />
and they die on the very cusp.”<br />
For Kaspar Heidelbach, who also directed Das Wunder von<br />
Lengede and cites great narrative directors such as Ridley Scott and<br />
Michael Mann as his mentors, “Pamir has everything a great filmic<br />
story needs! A big ship, the hard fate of the sailors, action and adventure!<br />
But there is also the emotional story to keep people watching.<br />
The characters develop and there is conflict and friendship; all the elements<br />
to bring them closer to the viewer so they care who lives or<br />
dies.” In a film such as this, technical and special effects matter and,<br />
says Heidelbach, “we’re giving every effort to come close to Titanic<br />
and Master and Commander while also trying to compensate emotionally.<br />
We’re working under very good conditions for a <strong>German</strong> TV<br />
movie, including using the world’s 2nd largest water tank, in Malta.”<br />
For Polyphon, a company whose pedigree stretches back forty<br />
years and which now specializes in high-end drama series, managing<br />
director Matthias Esche “agreed on a handshake after a five minute<br />
pitch! The reaction was the same from our two partners, NDR<br />
and Degeto Film, who were enthusiastic enough to back us from the<br />
start. It has everything a film like this should have! Our philosophy is<br />
to deliver great entertainment but also the unusual, and this, our first,<br />
big TV movie event story, will do that and more.”<br />
SK<br />
german films quarterly in production<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 37
Die Wilden Kerle III<br />
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Children’s Film,<br />
Sports Production Company SamFilm/Munich With backing<br />
from FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA),<br />
Bayerischer Bankenfonds Producers Ewa Karlstroem, Andreas<br />
Ulmke-Smeaton Director Joachim Masannek Screenplay Joachim<br />
Masannek Director of Photography Sonja Rom Editor Dunja<br />
Campregher Music by Bananafishbones Production Design<br />
Manfred Doering Principal Cast Jimi Blue Ochsenknecht, Wilson<br />
Gonzalez Ochsenknecht, Constantin Gastmann, Uwe Ochsenknecht,<br />
Nick Reimann Casting Extras & Actors, Stefany Pohlmann, Anne<br />
Walcher Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85, Dolby Digital Shooting<br />
Language <strong>German</strong> Shooting in Bavaria, August - October 20<strong>05</strong><br />
<strong>German</strong> Distributor Buena Vista International (<strong>German</strong>y)/<br />
Munich<br />
Contact<br />
SamFilm GmbH · Hanna Stoll<br />
Rumfordstrasse 10 · 80469 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-3 39 95 30 · fax +49-89-33 99 53 24<br />
email: contact@samfilm.de · www.samfilm.de<br />
Proving you can’t put a good franchise down, The Wild Soccer<br />
Bunch return for more soccer-related shenanigans!<br />
In their last outing, they defended their hold on the Teufelstopf trophy<br />
and saw off the skater gang, the Flammenmuetzen. But this time<br />
they’re up against their greatest challenge so far, an opponent more<br />
devious, more dangerous, more diabolical than even they had ever<br />
imagined – girls!!!<br />
There is an unwritten law in filmmaking, that of diminishing returns,<br />
that the higher the number after the title, the poorer the film. This is<br />
also known as sequelitis and is something producers Andreas<br />
Ulmke-Smeaton and Ewa Karlstroem, together with writerdirector<br />
Joachim Masannek, have taken great pains to avoid.<br />
“There aren’t many sequels in <strong>German</strong>y,” says Ulmke-Smeaton. “But<br />
we’ve noticed the admissions figures are going up with every film. The<br />
brand is growing and that’s because so many kids identify with ’Die<br />
Wilden Kerle’; girls just as much as boys.”<br />
“That’s why,” Ulmke-Smeaton continues, “we are making sure the<br />
girls are treated equally. In the last film there was a love interest. This<br />
time we’ve got a whole pack of ’em!”<br />
Director Joachim Masannek<br />
“Also what’s new,” says Ulmke-Smeaton “is that ’Die Wilden Kerle’<br />
no longer exist at the beginning of the film. They first have to be<br />
resurrected, hence the new character of Nerv, who ’saves’ them. We<br />
also have a new main actor, Nick Reimann.”<br />
SamFilm are also taking the franchise in another new direction.<br />
“We’re aiming for younger viewers, aged four to ten, as we’ve dis<strong>cover</strong>ed<br />
there is a whole younger fan-base out there,” says Ulmke-<br />
Smeaton.<br />
Since they first hit the shops in 2002, Masannek’s series of children’s<br />
books and audiotapes has sold more than one million copies. And just<br />
to recap: The first film won the Kinder-Medien-Award (2003), the<br />
Bavarian Film Award (2003), the Golden Gryphon in the KIDZ category<br />
at Giffoni – one of Europe’s largest festivals for children’s and youth<br />
films – and was nominated for the <strong>German</strong> Film Award. In July of this<br />
year, the second film also took Giffoni’s Golden Gryphon. The juries,<br />
made up of over 300 children aged six to nine, obviously knew quality<br />
when they saw it.<br />
SamFilm and ’Die Wilden Kerle’ prove it’s possible to go from<br />
strength to strength, even with sequels!<br />
german films quarterly in production<br />
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SK
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FILM UND VIDEO UNTERTITELUNG GERHARD LEHMANN AG<br />
WETZLARER STR. 30 . D-14482 POTSDAM-BABELSBERG . TEL: +49 331 704 74-0 . FAX: +49 331 704 74-99<br />
EMAIL: INFO@UNTERTITEL-AG.DE
24/7 The Passion of Life<br />
24/7 The Passion of Life is about our fear of ourselves,<br />
about the fear of facing our passions in a society ridden<br />
with taboos and double-morals.<br />
Eve, a hotelier’s daughter, and Magdalena, a sociologist<br />
who works as the dominatrix “Lady Maria” in an S & M<br />
studio, meet coincidentally through a motorcycle accident.<br />
Fascinated by the bizarre world of Lady Maria, Eve begins<br />
to search for her own identity and sexuality and goes on<br />
an odyssey through the hidden locations of lust – dominatrix<br />
studio, swinger club, striptease bar – and meets<br />
other people torn between their desires: Dominik, who<br />
wants to empathize with the life and suffering of Jesus, and<br />
Mike, who pretends to be Eve’s travel guide of desire and<br />
falls madly in love with her.<br />
A lyrical study of obsession and loneliness, about secret<br />
desires and public morale: 24 hours a day – 7 days a<br />
week.<br />
Genre Drama, Erotic Category Feature Film Cinema Year of<br />
Production 20<strong>05</strong> Director Roland Reber Screenplay Roland<br />
Reber, Mira Gittner Director of Photography Mira Gittner,<br />
Roland Reber Editor Mira Gittner Music by Wolfgang Edelmayer<br />
Producers Patricia Koch, Marina Anna Eich Production<br />
Company wtp international/Geiselgasteig Principal Cast<br />
Marina Anna Eich, Mira Gittner, Christoph Baumann, Michael<br />
World Sales<br />
wtp international GmbH · Marina Anna Eich<br />
Bavariafilmplatz 7 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-64 98 11 12 · fax +49-89-64 98 13 12<br />
email: marinaeich@wtpfilm.de · www.wtpfilm.de<br />
Burkhardt, Reinhard Wendt Casting wtp international/Geiselgasteig<br />
Length 115 min, 3,146 m Format DV Cam Blow-up 35<br />
mm, color, 1:1.85 Original Version <strong>German</strong> Subtitled<br />
Version English Sound Technology Dolby SR Festival<br />
Screenings Hof 20<strong>05</strong>, Sitges 20<strong>05</strong>, Fantasporto 2006 <strong>German</strong><br />
Distributor wtp international/Geiselgasteig<br />
Roland Reber has worked as a director, actor and writer around<br />
the world since the 70s. In 1989, he founded the Welt Theater<br />
Projekt (within the framework of the World Decade for Cultural<br />
Development of the United Nations and UNESCO) and worked as<br />
a director, writer and head of WTP in India, Moscow, Cairo, Mexico<br />
City and in the Caribbean. He also has been a cultural advisor to different<br />
countries and institutes and taught Acting and Directing in<br />
Moscow and the Caribbean. He received the Cultural Prize of<br />
Switzerland (1976) and the Caribbean award Season of Excellence<br />
(1991 and 1993) as a director and writer. For his direction of the<br />
feature The Room (Das Zimmer, 2001) he was awarded the<br />
Emerging Filmmaker Award 2001 in Hollywood and the President’s<br />
Award 2000 in Ajijic/Mexico, among others. WTP was named<br />
Producer of the Year by the Bavarian Film Center in 2000. His other<br />
films include: Ihr habt meine Seele gebogen wie einen<br />
schoenen Taenzer (1979), Manuel (short, 1998), Der<br />
Fernsehauftritt (short, 1998), Der Koffer (short, 1999),<br />
Zwang (short, 2000), Sind Maedchen Werwoelfe? (short,<br />
2002), Pentamagica (2003), The Dark Side of Our Inner<br />
Space (2003), and 24/7 The Passion of Life (20<strong>05</strong>). Since<br />
2003, he has been the official <strong>German</strong> representative of the Cairo<br />
Film Festival and since 20<strong>05</strong> the official European representative of<br />
the Damascus Film Festival. He has also served as a jury member at<br />
festivals in Alexandria, Cairo and Dhaka.<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 40<br />
Scenes from “24/7 The Passion of Life” (photo © wtp international)
Berlin Nights<br />
Berlin Nights: a mixture of painting and literature<br />
brought to vivid life on screen.<br />
One night in Berlin approaching the year 2000 – a portrayal<br />
of the city’s youth experiencing the excesses of the<br />
Berlin nightlife. Driven by a shared need to escape the<br />
monotony of their daily lives, Lutz, Nana, Luise and Dick<br />
Tracey are drawn into a nightclub. Inside, their day-to-day<br />
sorrows are drowned in the decadence of this artificial<br />
world. Dick Tracey, a TV-host, gets caught up in the constant<br />
search for sensations. He must ultimately confront<br />
the shocking truth about the dangers of this nightlife, to<br />
which his best friend has already surrendered.<br />
Genre Art, Drama, Experimental Category Short Year of<br />
Production 20<strong>05</strong> Director Gabriela Tscherniak Screenplay<br />
Gabriela Tscherniak Director of Photography Uwe Mann<br />
Editor Martin Granata Music Supervisor Evan Franco<br />
Production Design Pierre Brayard Producers Rose Marie<br />
Couture, Gabriela Tscherniak Production Company Cohen<br />
Sisters Entertainment/Berlin Principal Cast Milton Welsh,<br />
Natascha Paulick, Nicole Weissbrodt, Dirk Borchardt Length 45<br />
min Format DigiBeta, color Original Version <strong>German</strong><br />
Subtitled Version English Sound Technology Dolby SR<br />
World Sales (please contact)<br />
Furat al Jamil<br />
Krossenerstrasse · 10245 Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone/fax +49-30-27 57 36 77<br />
email: furat@cohensisters.com<br />
Gabriela Tscherniak, of <strong>German</strong>-Jewish origin and Latvianborn,<br />
started her career as a director’s assistant in theater productions<br />
in Berlin and as a photographer for bands, society magazines<br />
and fashion labels. Through her focus in Industrial Design and<br />
Photography she became interested in experimental filmmaking,<br />
which she first strongly pursued during her studies and work in<br />
London at Central St. Martins and during the Pratt Institute Erasmus<br />
exchange program in New York. She also attended classes at the<br />
“Konrad Wolf ” Academy of Film & Television in Potsdam and the<br />
M.F.A. program at the American Film Institute, during which time<br />
she directed several shorts. Currently she is creative producing and<br />
directing the series Everybody Has a Secret for the Latvian TV<br />
channel LNT. Her other films include: the shorts The Tramp,<br />
The Pimp & The Policeman, Willy & Ute, Rebecca,<br />
Bird’s Eye View, Homefront, and Berlin Nights.<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 41
Breaking The Rules – Across American Counterculture<br />
The history of counterculture has never been told in a<br />
cohesive way: neither in a form that appeals equally to all<br />
generations, nor has anyone explored the links between<br />
the different movements more intensively. Breaking The<br />
Rules aspires to close this gap.<br />
Breaking The Rules is a cineastic journey through time<br />
across the history of American counterculture, from the<br />
Beat Generation in New York and San Francisco all the<br />
way to the beginnings of Hip Hop in the Bronx. Always<br />
searching for the key moments that gave each movement<br />
its name, the film travels from coast to coast, encountering<br />
important eye-witnesses of the times. Enhanced by a captivating<br />
soundtrack (including studio and concert performances<br />
by Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Jimi<br />
Hendrix, Janis Joplin and others), compelling snapshots<br />
and exclusive archive material, their stories make counterculture<br />
come alive once again.<br />
World Sales (please contact)<br />
NEUZEITFILM · Angie J. Koch<br />
Hanauer Landstrasse 139 · 60314 Frankfurt/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-69-4 <strong>05</strong> 63 90 · fax +49-69-40 56 39 39<br />
email: contact@neuzeitfilm.com · www.neuzeitfilm.com<br />
Genre Art, History, Music Category Documentary Cinema<br />
Year of Production 20<strong>05</strong> Director Marco Mueller Screenplay<br />
Angie J. Koch, Marco Mueller Director of Photography<br />
Roland Breitschuh Editor Dietmar Deissler Music by Reinhard<br />
Besser Producer Angie J. Koch Production Company NEU-<br />
ZEITFILM/Frankfurt, in co-production with ZDF/Mainz, ARTE/<br />
Strasbourg With Peter Fonda, Ray Manzarek, Wavy Gravy, Anne<br />
Waldman, and others Length 94 min Format 16 mm/<br />
DVCPro/DigiBeta, color, 16:9 Original Version English Sound<br />
Technology Stereo Festival Screenings Ghent-Flanders<br />
20<strong>05</strong> With backing from IBH FilmInvest<br />
Marco Mueller was born in 1969 in Guetersloh. After Theater<br />
Studies, he enrolled at the Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg to<br />
study Directing and Scriptwriting. Also active as a writer<br />
(Spaetzuender, Die Anrheiner, and Yetiskin), his films include: Life’s<br />
Ready to Happen (short, 1994), Grit und Hansel – Ein<br />
Maerchen ’95 (short, 1995), Second Hand (short, 1997), and<br />
Breaking The Rules (20<strong>05</strong>).<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 42<br />
Scene from “Breaking The Rules“<br />
(photo © David Sleek/NEUZEITFILM)
Brudermord<br />
FRATRICIDE<br />
Semo, a Kurdish immigrant and pimp living in <strong>German</strong>y,<br />
offers to pay for his younger brother Azad to come and<br />
join him. Reluctantly, Azad accepts his brother’s offer and<br />
makes the long journey from his poverty-stricken homeland.<br />
He moves in to an asylum for refugees where, amidst<br />
hopeless squalor he befriends Ibo, an eleven-year-old<br />
Kurdish orphan. A powerful and tender bond grows between<br />
the two boys, but the odds are against them.<br />
Ahmet and Zeki are young second-generation Turks.<br />
Frustrated, unemployed, alienated from their heritage and<br />
with no place in <strong>German</strong> society, their anger simmers at<br />
fever pitch. Meanwhile they devote themselves to petty<br />
crime and their savage pit bulls. When these four doomed<br />
exiles meet, their encounter unleashes a nightmarish cycle<br />
of violence they believed they had left behind.<br />
Boasting astonishing performances from a largely non-professional<br />
cast, Fratricide is an explosive tale of desperate<br />
conflict and bloody revenge, a savage, furious, and heartbreaking<br />
portrait of raw humanity struggling for safety, for<br />
dignity, for survival in the face of violence, exile and the<br />
brutal indifference of a society that wants no part of them.<br />
Genre Drama Category Feature Film Cinema Year of<br />
Production 20<strong>05</strong> Director Yilmaz Arslan Screenplay Yilmaz<br />
Arslan Director of Photography Jean-François Hensgens<br />
Editor André Bendocchi-Alves Music by Evgueni Galperine<br />
Production Design Régine Constant Producers Donato<br />
Rotunno, Eddy Géradon-Luyckx, Eric Tavitian, Yilmaz Arslan<br />
Production Companies Tarantula/Luxemburg, Tarantula/<br />
Paris, Yilmaz Arslan Film/Mannheim, in co-production with Rhône-<br />
Alps Cinema/Lyon Principal Cast Xewat Gectan, Erdal Celik,<br />
Nuretin Celik, Buelent Bueyuekasik, Taies Farzan Casting<br />
Valentina Christova-Katina, Jean-Luc Ristic, Cécile Navarro, Mai<br />
Seck, Yusuf Gectan Length 96 min, 2,627 m Format 35 mm,<br />
color, 1:1.85 Original Version Kurdish/Turkish/<strong>German</strong><br />
Subtitled Versions English, French, <strong>German</strong> Sound<br />
Technology Dolby Surround Festival Screenings Locarno<br />
20<strong>05</strong> (In Competition) Awards Silver Leopard Locarno 20<strong>05</strong><br />
With backing from Filmfund Luxemburg, MFG Baden-<br />
Wuerttemberg, Hessische Rundfunk Filmfoerderung (HFF-HR),<br />
MEDIA, Cinegate<br />
Yilmaz Arslan was born in Kazanli/Turkey in 1968 and emigrated<br />
to <strong>German</strong>y in 1975. He founded the theater group “Summer-<br />
Winter” in 1988. His directorial debut Passages (Langer Gang,<br />
1992) won Best First Film at San Sebastian and received a Silver Rose<br />
in Bergamo and a nomination to the <strong>German</strong> Film Awards in 1993.<br />
His other award-winning films include: Yara, which premiered at<br />
Venice in 1998, Angst isst Seele auf (short) which also premiered<br />
at Venice in 2002, and Fratricide (Brudermord, 20<strong>05</strong>).<br />
World Sales<br />
Exception Wild Bunch · Lucie Kalmar<br />
99, rue de la Verrerie · 75004 Paris/France<br />
phone +33-1-53 01 50 26 · fax +33-1-53 01 50 49<br />
email: lkalmar@exception-wb.com · www.exception-wb.com · www.fratricide-movie.com<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 43<br />
Scene from “Fratricide” (photo © Yilmaz Arslan Film/Jean-François Hensgens)
Du hast gesagt, dass Du mich liebst<br />
YOU TOLD ME YOU LOVE ME<br />
Johanna Perl, a seven-time swimming champion, lives her<br />
retired life isolated and lonely. Constant thoughts about<br />
death and the meaning of her existence torture her.<br />
Except for her memories of previous victories and her<br />
daughter, she has nothing left in life. But her days of senseless<br />
vegetation come to an end when she stumbles upon<br />
a lonely hearts ad in the newspaper. Drawn to it as though<br />
it were a sign from God, she arranges to meet the man.<br />
And it’s love at first sight.<br />
Johannes is a writer and not until he meets Johanna does<br />
his luck strike. Finally he is able to finish his novel – You<br />
Told Me You Love Me – and it becomes a bestseller. Johanna<br />
too dis<strong>cover</strong>s new talents in photography and is finally<br />
able to make peace with her dead mother. But Johannes’<br />
success soon casts a dark cloud over their relationship. He<br />
starts to distance himself from Johanna and gets tangled up<br />
in an affair, not yet realizing that Johanna is indeed the<br />
love of his life.<br />
And after a turbulent odyssey, the two find their way back<br />
to each other, thus proving the fate and destiny of their<br />
love for one another …<br />
Genre Drama, Love Story Category Feature Film Cinema Year<br />
of Production 20<strong>05</strong> Director Rudolf Thome Screenplay<br />
Rudolf Thome Director of Photography Ute Freund Editor<br />
World Sales<br />
Cine-International Filmvertrieb GmbH & Co. KG · Lilli Tyc-Holm, Susanne Groh<br />
Leopoldstrasse 18 · 80802 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-39 10 25 · fax +49-89-33 10 89<br />
email: email@cine-international.de · www.cine-international.de<br />
Doerte Voelz Music by Katia Tchemberdji Production Design<br />
Susanna Cardelli Producer Rudolf Thome Production Company<br />
Moana-Film/Berlin Principal Cast Hannelore Elsner,<br />
Johannes Herrschmann, Anna de Carlo, Bastian Trost Length 117<br />
min, 3,201 m Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85 Original Version<br />
<strong>German</strong> Subtitled Version English Sound Technology<br />
Dolby Digital<br />
Rudolf Thome was born in Wallau/Lahn in 1939 and studied<br />
<strong>German</strong>, Philosophy and History in Munich and Bonn. He began<br />
writing film reviews in 1962 for various newspapers and magazines.<br />
In 1964, he collaborated with Max Zihlmann and Klaus Lemke on his<br />
first short film, Die Versoehnung. He then became managing<br />
director of the Munich Film Critics’ Club in 1965 and founded his<br />
own production company, Moana-Film, in 1977. He received the<br />
2nd place Guild Award in the category Best <strong>German</strong> Film for Berlin<br />
– Chamissoplatz in 1981, and the International Film Critics’ Award<br />
in Montreal in 1989 for his film The Philosopher. In 1993, he<br />
went on to establish his own distribution company, Prometheus. His<br />
film Paradiso (1999) won a Silver Bear at Berlin in 2000. His other<br />
films include: Stella (1966), Red Sun (Rote Sonne, 1969),<br />
Supergirl (1971), Made in <strong>German</strong>y and USA (1974),<br />
Love at First Sight (Liebe auf den ersten Blick, 1991),<br />
Das Geheimnis (1995), Just Married (1998), Venus<br />
Talking (2001), Red and Blue (Rot und Blau, 2002),<br />
Woman Driving, Man Sleeping (Frau faehrt, Mann<br />
schlaeft, 2003), and You Told Me You Love Me (Du hast<br />
gesagt, dass Du mich liebst, 20<strong>05</strong>), among others.<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 44<br />
Scene from ”You Told Me You Love Me“ (photo © Moana-Film GmbH/Berlin)
Die Grosse Stille<br />
INTO GREAT SILENCE<br />
Silence. Repetition. Rhythm.<br />
Into Great Silence is a very strict, next to silent meditation<br />
on monastic life in a very pure form. No music except<br />
the chants in the monastery, no interviews, no commentaries,<br />
no extra material. Changing of time, seasons, and<br />
the ever repeated elements of the day, of the prayer. A<br />
film to become a monastery, rather than depict one. A<br />
film on awareness, absolute presence, and the life of men<br />
who devoted their lifetimes to God in the purest of form.<br />
Contemplation. An object in time.<br />
Genre Art, Religion Category Creative Documentary Year of<br />
Production 20<strong>05</strong> Director Philip Groening Screenplay Philip<br />
Groening Director of Photography Philip Groening Editor<br />
Philip Groening Producers Philip Groening, Michael Weber,<br />
Andres Pfaeffli, Elda Guidinetti Production Company Philip<br />
Groening Filmproduktion/Duesseldorf, in co-production with<br />
Venturafilms/Meride, Bavaria Film/Munich, Cine Plus/Berlin,<br />
BR/Munich, ZDF/Mainz, in cooperation with ARTE/Strasbourg,<br />
TSI Televisione Svizzera/Lugano Length 162 min, 4,510 m<br />
Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85 Original Version French/Latin<br />
Subtitled Versions English, Italian Sound Technology<br />
Dolby SRD Festival Screenings Venice 20<strong>05</strong>, Toronto 20<strong>05</strong><br />
With backing from <strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW, Filmfoerderungsanstalt<br />
(FFA), Filmbuero NW <strong>German</strong> Distributor X Verleih/Berlin<br />
Philip Groening was born in Duesseldorf in 1959 and was<br />
raised in Duesseldorf and the United States. He studied Medicine<br />
and Psychology before enrolling at the Munich Academy of<br />
Television & Film (HFF/M) in 1982. Groening developed a passion<br />
for screenwriting and began to work as an actor for Peter Keglevic<br />
and Nicolas Humbert. He also worked as a sound assistant, propmaster<br />
and assistant director. His film credits include the awardwinning<br />
and critically acclaimed films The Swimmer (1983),<br />
The Last Picture Taken (1983), Summer (1986, Main Prize<br />
Bergamo 1988), Stachoviak! (1988, Silver Hugo Chicago), The<br />
Terrorists! (1992, Bronze Leopard Locarno), Victims.<br />
Witnesses (1993), L’Amour, L’Argent, L’Amour (2000,<br />
Bronze Leopard Locarno, Swiss Film Award, Silver Camera Bitola), and<br />
Into Great Silence (Die Grosse Stille, 20<strong>05</strong>).<br />
World Sales<br />
Bavaria Film International / Dept. of Bavaria Media GmbH · Thorsten Schaumann<br />
Bavariafilmplatz 8 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86 · fax +49-89-64 99 37 20<br />
email: bavaria.international@bavaria-film.de · www.bavaria-film-international.de · www.diegrossestille.de<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 45<br />
Scene from “Into Great Silence” (photo © 20<strong>05</strong> Philip Groening/VG Bild Kunst)
Jungle Spirit<br />
60 years after World War 2, an aging former officer of the<br />
Japanese Imperial Army travels to Malaysia to exorcise<br />
horrible memories that have tortured him for the past 60<br />
years. Towards the end of the war, he, as a member of a<br />
military command, participated in the execution of 5<br />
young innocent locals. One nightmare has followed him<br />
from that time but is never completed and drives him<br />
mad. He needs to find out what really happened back<br />
then …<br />
He returns to the place where it happened with unexpected<br />
consequences. He visits the horrible island and gets<br />
involved in mystical time travel with an American tourist,<br />
who until the end doesn't want to believe in what he had<br />
seen. The psychedelic meeting of the past, and reincarnated<br />
figures from the massacre in the tropical jungle,<br />
bring them both to the unexpected dis<strong>cover</strong>y of who they<br />
really are.<br />
The belief in reincarnation, mysticism, the casualties of<br />
war, the tropical psychedelic drugging effect of the jungles<br />
and time travel brings the two different mentalities<br />
together as friends, supporting each other to overcome<br />
their post-war trauma.<br />
World Sales (please contact)<br />
2nd Life Film Production · Ingo Storm c/o Landwehr<br />
Sudetenstrasse 121 · 87600 Kaufbeuren/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-83 41-6 88 15 · fax +49-83 41-63 91<br />
email: film@ingostorm.de · www.ingostorm.de<br />
Genre Drama, Fantasy, Psycho Thriller Category Feature Film<br />
Cinema Year of Production 20<strong>05</strong> Director Ingo Storm<br />
Screenplay Ingo Storm Director of Photography John Goh<br />
Editors John Goh, Gregory Keenan Music by Barry Ryerson, Sai<br />
Khuan Production Design John Goh, Joseph Wong, Adeline<br />
Ong Producer Ingo Storm Production Company 2nd Life<br />
Film Production/Kaufbeuren Principal Cast Lynzabel Lee, Tui<br />
Shin Kae, Jack Chuang, Hiroki Onishi, and others Casting Dianah<br />
Goh, Cheok Ching Wan Special Effects Gregory Keenan<br />
Length 90 min, 2,565 m Format DVPRO Blow-up 35 mm,<br />
color Original Version English/Japanese/Cantonese Subtitled<br />
Versions English, Japanese Sound Technology Dolby<br />
Surround 5.1<br />
Ingo Storm was initially a nuclear physicist before he became a<br />
writer on environmentally related topics and moral issues. His<br />
contact with DoP John Goh inspired him to start making films based<br />
on his own books. Jungle Spirit (20<strong>05</strong>) marks his film debut.<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 46<br />
Scene from “Jungle Spirit” (photo © 2nd Life Film Production)
Die letzten Tage<br />
THE LAST DAYS<br />
April 1945.<br />
An American B-17 bomber is shot down over <strong>German</strong>y<br />
and three crew members parachute out.<br />
Gunner David Feingold and navigator Ben Rayment watch<br />
from a distance as a <strong>German</strong> patrol kills one of their crewmates<br />
in cold blood, a shocking act that makes them realize<br />
how badly they need a place to hide.<br />
The Allies will soon take over the country, and <strong>German</strong>y<br />
has ordered its teenagers and old men to patrol near the<br />
front and execute any deserters on the spot.<br />
David and Ben find <strong>cover</strong> in an abandoned farmhouse.<br />
They are surprised by the presence of the <strong>German</strong> deserter<br />
Anton Kreetz who is hiding there.<br />
Hate, distrust and the will to survive the last days of war<br />
will put the relationship of the three men to the ultimate<br />
test.<br />
World Sales (please contact)<br />
Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg · Eva Steegmayer<br />
Mathildenstrasse 20 · 71638 Ludwigsburg/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-71 41-96 91 03 · fax +49-71 41-96 95 51 03<br />
email: eva.steegmayer@filmakademie.de · www.filmakademie.de<br />
Genre Drama, History Category Short Year of Production<br />
20<strong>05</strong> Director Oliver Frohnauer Screenplay Oliver Frohnauer,<br />
Sebastian Feld Director of Photography Thomas Bergmann<br />
Editors Stephan Roth, Oliver Frohnauer Music by Philipp E.<br />
Kuempel, Andreas Moisa Production Design Jan Jericho<br />
Producer Martin Liebig Production Company Filmakademie<br />
Baden-Wuerttemberg/Ludwigsburg, in co-production with SWR/<br />
Stuttgart, ARTE/Strasbourg Principal Cast Clayton Nemrow,<br />
Jeff Burrell, Sebastian Rueger, Christian Gaul Special Effects<br />
Michael Landgrebe Length 35 min, 1,049m Format HD<br />
DVCPro Blow-up 35 mm, color, 1:1.85 Original Version<br />
<strong>German</strong>/English Subtitled Version English/<strong>German</strong> Sound<br />
Technology Dolby SRD<br />
Oliver Frohnauer was born in 1977 and studied Audio-Visual<br />
Media Sciences at the University of Hildesheim. During an internship<br />
at ZDF, he trained as a camera assistant. From 1999-20<strong>05</strong>, he<br />
studied Feature Film Directing at the Film Academy Baden-<br />
Wuerttemberg. His films include: the shorts Operation<br />
Durante (2001), Superstar (2002), Welcome to Estonia<br />
(2003), and his graduation film The Last Days (Die letzten<br />
Tage, 20<strong>05</strong>).<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 47<br />
Scene from “The Last Days” (photo © Thomas Moeller, Stuttgart)
Making of ZEPPELIN!<br />
6 May 1937: While approaching Lakehurst/New Jersey<br />
the <strong>German</strong> blimp “LZ 129 Hindenburg” explodes. The<br />
causes of the accident, which unlike the sinking of the<br />
Titanic, were recorded but have to this day still not been<br />
entirely resolved. The writer Alexander Haeusser and<br />
director Gordian Maugg tell their own version of the catastrophe<br />
in the film Zeppelin!.<br />
How is the archive material integrated in a story which<br />
spans a time frame of almost an entire century, from 1909<br />
to the present? How do past and present come together?<br />
What role does fiction play in the interpretation of facts?<br />
And how can fantasy and the fertile imaginations of a film<br />
crew replace the time, effort and expense that otherwise<br />
only Hollywood can afford? Hans Guenther Pflaum observed<br />
the principle photography, spoke to many of the<br />
crew and illustrates in detail just how actors can be planted<br />
into historic photos by use of digital means.<br />
Genre History Category Documentary TV Year of Production<br />
20<strong>05</strong> Director Hans Guenther Pflaum Director of<br />
Photography Manuel Lommel Editor Petra Scherer<br />
Producer Loy W. Arnold Production Company Transit<br />
Film/Munich Length 59 min Format DV, color/b&w, 4:3<br />
Original Version <strong>German</strong> Sound Technology Stereo<br />
Hans Guenther Pflaum was born in 1941. Also active as a<br />
freelance journalist and writer in Munich for the Sueddeutsche<br />
Zeitung and various radio and television broadcasters, a selection of<br />
his films includes: Ich will nicht nur, dass ihr mich liebt<br />
(1992, about Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Der Niemandslandstreicher<br />
(1996, about Herbert Achternbusch), Aufbruch<br />
der Traeumer (2002, about the cinema of the 60s), and Von<br />
Sex bis Simmel (2004, about the cinema of the 70s).<br />
World Sales<br />
Transit Film GmbH · Loy W. Arnold, Susanne Schumann<br />
Dachauer Strasse 35 · 80335 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-5 99 88 50 · fax +49-89-59 98 85 20<br />
email: loy.arnold@transitfilm.de, susanne.schumann@transitfilm.de · www.transitfilm.de<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 48<br />
Scene from "Making of ZEPPELIN!" (photo © Transit Film/Munich)
Die Megaklinik<br />
THE MEGAHOSPITAL<br />
The Megahospital is not your usual nurses-doctors-patients<br />
dramolet, but a cinematic and realistic narrative<br />
about Europe’s largest communal hospital, the “Klinikum<br />
Nuernberg”, with 39 clinics and institutes. 8,000 people<br />
work and live there. The film shows how this microcosm<br />
works, what is necessary to keep the machinery running;<br />
in its impressive dimensions a synergetic system meshing<br />
people and technology in diverse ways. The film concentrates<br />
on a specialized clinic. Gradually, an institution<br />
with an immense infrastructure invisible to the outside<br />
world is revealed before the viewer’s eyes: Europe’s largest<br />
hospital laundry, a goods depot of enormous dimensions,<br />
an underground labyrinth of utility corridors stretching for<br />
miles. An almost endless row of operating theaters with<br />
simultaneous operations going on.<br />
The Megahospital resumes a documentary tradition of<br />
institutional analyses, films that try to make transparent<br />
social institutions which have become incomprehensible<br />
for the individual.<br />
Genre Social Category Documentary Cinema Year of Production<br />
2004 Director Hans Andreas Guttner Screenplay<br />
Hans Andreas Guttner, Werner Petermann Director of<br />
Photography Ralph Klamert Editor Jean André Music by<br />
World Sales (please contact)<br />
Sisyphos Film · Hans Andreas Guttner<br />
Wagmuellerstrasse 21 · 8<strong>05</strong>38 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-22 95 <strong>05</strong> · fax +49-89-50 14 64<br />
email: guttner@t-online.de · www.guttner.de<br />
Lars Kurz Producer Jutta Malin Production Company<br />
Sisyphos Film/Munich, in co-production with BR/Munich<br />
Principal Cast Christian Bornhof, Guenter Vorwerk, Reimund<br />
Walther Length 90 min Format DigiBeta, color Original<br />
Version <strong>German</strong> Subtitled Version English Sound<br />
Technology Dolby Festival Screenings Amsterdam 2004,<br />
MipDOC 20<strong>05</strong>, Marseille 20<strong>05</strong> <strong>German</strong> Distributor Sisyphos<br />
Film/Munich<br />
Hans Andreas Guttner completed Theater, Jounalistic and<br />
Law Studies. With his own production company (Sisyphos Film,<br />
founded in 1976), he made numerous films for cinema and television.<br />
In 1985 he initiated the Munich International Documentary<br />
Film Festival. His most important work is the five-part Europe –<br />
A Transnational Dream (Europa – Ein transnationaler<br />
Traum, 1979-1999) which received numerous national and international<br />
awards. A selection of his other films includes: Labyrinth<br />
(1976), Kiosk (1977), The Kings of the Whole Wide<br />
World (1983), Fuersprecher (1986), Eine Erfolgsgeschichte<br />
(1990), Die Fuhre (1991), A Candle for the<br />
Madonna (1996), Weichen fuer die Zukunft (2002), and<br />
Die Megaklinik (2004).<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 49<br />
Scene from “The Megahospital“ (photo © Sisyphos Film)
Obaba<br />
Young Lurdes takes on a trip to the Pyrenean Obaba<br />
territories, all along the ’87 curves’, to the place full of<br />
riddles and mysteries. With her video camera she sets out<br />
to capture Obaba’s reality and its people, but she will find<br />
much more, maybe her inner self and meaning.<br />
In Merche, Ismael, Tomás or Miguel she finds friends but<br />
she sees also that they seem trapped in a past they cannot<br />
escape. Gradually, she learns about them diving into their<br />
childhood and brings about the common threads that<br />
link them together. But as Lurdes tries to solve the puzzle,<br />
there is always something missing, something that escapes<br />
that neither she nor her video camera can hold or explain,<br />
like the mysterious behavior of the lizards that live<br />
there …<br />
Genre Drama Category Feature Film Cinema Year of<br />
Production 20<strong>05</strong> Director Montxo Armendáriz Screenplay<br />
Montxo Armendáriz Director of Photography Javier<br />
Aguirresarobe Editor Rori Sáinz de Rozas Production Design<br />
Julio Esteban, Julio Torrecilla Producers Puy Oria, Montxo<br />
Armendáriz, Karl Baumgartner, Michael Eckelt Production<br />
Companies Oria <strong>Films</strong>/Madrid, Pandora Film/Cologne, Neue<br />
Impuls Film/Hamburg Principal Cast Pilar López de Ayala, Juan<br />
Diego Botto, Bárbara Lennie, Eduard Fernández, Peter Lohmeyer,<br />
Mercedes Sampietro, Héctor Colomé, Pepa López, Lluis Homar,<br />
Txema Blasco, Iñake Irastorza, Juan Sanz, Ryan Cameron, Christian<br />
Tardío Length 107 min, 2,943 m Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85<br />
Original Version Spanish Subtitled Version English Sound<br />
Technology Dolby Digital Festival Screenings Toronto 20<strong>05</strong><br />
(Masters), San Sebastian 20<strong>05</strong> (Opening Film/In Competition)<br />
With backing from Televisión Espagñola, Canal+, EITB,<br />
Gobierno de Navarra, Eurimages, Ministero de Cultura/ICAA,<br />
MEDIA, FilmFoerderung Hamburg, ICO<br />
Montxo Armendáriz’s other films include: Tasio (1984), 27<br />
Hours (1986), Letters from Alou (1990), Stories from<br />
the Kronen (1995), Secrets of the Heart (1997), Broken<br />
Silence (2001), and Escenario móvil (2004).<br />
World Sales<br />
Bavaria Film International / Dept. of Bavaria Media GmbH · Thorsten Schaumann<br />
Bavariafilmplatz 8 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86 · fax +49-89-64 99 37 20<br />
email: bavaria.international@bavaria-film.de · www.bavaria-film-international.de<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 50<br />
Scene from “Obaba” (photo © José Luis López de Zubiría)
Peladão – Elf Freunde und eine Koenigin<br />
PELADÃO – SOCCER TEAMS AND BEAUTY QUEENS<br />
In the Brazilian city of Manaus, deep in the heart of the<br />
Amazon, more than 1,000 soccer teams converge every<br />
year to battle each other for the most glorious honor of all<br />
– the Peladão Championship title.<br />
Mostly unknown to the world’s soccer fans, this highly<br />
unusual competition is woven deeply into the fabric of<br />
Amazonian culture. However, it’s not merely the excitement<br />
generated by the games that makes the Peladão one<br />
of the most exiting soccer tournaments in the world. Each<br />
team is represented by a beauty queen who can enable<br />
her defeated team to return to the competition if she succeeds<br />
in the tournament’s beauty contest. These sparkling<br />
Amazon beauties account for at least half of the excitement.<br />
A documentary which un<strong>cover</strong>s a completely unique<br />
world of soccer, Peladão is also a colorful introduction to<br />
a delightful people and their zealous enthusiasm for the<br />
sport.<br />
Genre Culture, Sports Category Documentary Cinema Year<br />
of Production 20<strong>05</strong> Director Joern Schoppe Screenplay<br />
Joern Schoppe, Stefan Deutschmann Director of Photog-<br />
World Sales<br />
Beta Cinema / Dept. of Beta Film GmbH · Andreas Rothbauer<br />
Gruenwalder Weg 28 d · 82041 Oberhaching/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-67 34 69 80 · fax +49-89-6 73 46 98 88<br />
email: ARothbauer@betacinema.com · www.betacinema.com<br />
raphy Stefan Deutschmann Editor Joern Schoppe Animation<br />
Merlin Durst Producers Stefan Deutschmann, Lorenz Harms,<br />
Roland Meise, Joern Schoppe, Detlef Schwarte, Stefan Vorbeck<br />
Production Company Lunacy Film/Hamburg, in cooperation<br />
with imFilm - film services agency/Hamburg With Simone de<br />
Nazaré da Silva, Butch Wright, Meyre Jane Martins, Jaynne Stephany<br />
Martins, Jovane Machado de Souza, Gleidiane da Silva e Silva, Rayssa<br />
Cid da Silva, and others Length 86 min, 2,350 m Format 35 mm,<br />
color, 1:1.77 Original Version Portuguese with <strong>German</strong> subtitles<br />
Subtitled Version English Sound Technology Dolby<br />
Stereo With backing from deli pictures postproduction/<br />
Hamburg<br />
Joern Schoppe was born in Hamburg in 1969 and studied Media<br />
Technology at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. After<br />
working as a technician on numerous films and commercials (among<br />
others as lighting technician for Fatih Akin’s award-winning feature<br />
Short Sharp Shock in 1998), he began writing screenplays and directing<br />
short films, commercials and music videos in 2000. In 2004 he<br />
founded the production company Lunacy Film to produce his first<br />
documentary. A selection of his films includes the shorts<br />
Doppelpass (2000), Freistosstrick (2001), Noodles (2003)<br />
and his documentary debut Peladão – Soccer Teams and<br />
Beauty Queens (20<strong>05</strong>).<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 51<br />
Scene from “Peladão”<br />
(photo © Lunacy Film)
Sommer vorm Balkon<br />
SUMMER IN BERLIN<br />
Hot summer. Nike has a balcony, Katrin has a son, Ronald<br />
drives a truck, Tina’s a waitress, Oskar and Helene are old<br />
and alone. At the beginning, middle or end of their lives –<br />
they all ask the same question: Can love last through the<br />
seasons? Or is it something affecting the brain that just<br />
comes and goes?<br />
Summer in Berlin is the story of two girlfriends, who,<br />
from their balcony – between heaven and earth – gaze<br />
down at their turbulent and difficult universe, where the<br />
right men are all too often exactly wrong, and to get ahead<br />
even a good-looking woman had better be strong.<br />
An enchanting comedy, full of human warmth, sincerity<br />
and delightful humor – a film about life.<br />
Genre Tragicomedy Category Feature Film Cinema Year of<br />
Production 20<strong>05</strong> Director Andreas Dresen Screenplay<br />
Wolfgang Kohlhaase Director of Photography Andreas<br />
Hoefer Editor Joerg Hauschild Music by Pascal Comelade<br />
Production Design Natalja Meier, Susanne Hopf Producers<br />
Peter Rommel, Stefan Arndt Production Company Peter<br />
Rommel Productions/Berlin, in co-production with X Filme<br />
Creative Pool/Berlin Principal Cast Nadja Uhl, Inka Friedrich,<br />
Andreas Schmidt, Stefanie Schoenfeld Casting Doris Borkmann<br />
World Sales<br />
X Filme World Sales · Bruno Niederpruem, Andro Steinborn<br />
Buelowstrasse 90 · 10783 Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-23 08 33 11 · fax +49-30-23 08 33 22<br />
email: bruno.niederpruem@x-filme.de · www.x-filme.de<br />
Length 107 min, 2,955 m Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85<br />
Original Version <strong>German</strong> Subtitled Versions English,<br />
Spanish, French Sound Technology Dolby Festival<br />
Screenings Toronto 20<strong>05</strong>, San Sebastian 20<strong>05</strong> (In Competition),<br />
Hof 20<strong>05</strong> With backing from Medienboard Berlin-<br />
Brandenburg, <strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA),<br />
BKM <strong>German</strong> Distributor X Verleih/Berlin<br />
Andreas Dresen was born in 1963 and started shooting amateur<br />
films in 1979. From 1984 to 1985 he worked as a sound technician<br />
at the theater in Schwerin, and then apprenticed at the DEFA<br />
studios, working as an assistant director with Guenter Reisch. He<br />
then studied Direction at the "Konrad Wolf" Academy of Film &<br />
Television in Potsdam. Since 1992, he has been working as a writer<br />
and director for television, cinema, and theater. A selection of his<br />
award-winning films includes: Silent Country (Stilles Land,<br />
1992, <strong>German</strong> Critics’ Award), Night Shapes (Nachtgestalten,<br />
1998, Silver Bear Berlin for Best Actor, <strong>German</strong> Critics’<br />
Award, <strong>German</strong> Film Award in Silver), The Policewoman (Die<br />
Polizistin, 2000, Grimme Award), Grill Point (Halbe<br />
Treppe, 2001, Silver Bear Berlin for Best Director, <strong>German</strong> Critics’<br />
Award, <strong>German</strong> Film Award in Silver), Vote for Henryk! (Herr<br />
Wichmann von der CDU, 2003), Willenbrock (2004), and<br />
Summer in Berlin (Sommer vorm Balkon, 20<strong>05</strong>).<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 52<br />
Scene from "Summer in Berlin" (photo © X Verleih)
Was lebst du?<br />
WHATZ UP?<br />
Ali, Kais, Ertan and Alban are good friends. They are<br />
youths who feature in the picture of our daily lives and of<br />
whom there are hundreds of thousands in <strong>German</strong>y.<br />
Nevertheless, we hardly have contact with them on an<br />
every day basis. With their macho behavior and “street<br />
talk” they confirm prejudices that we rarely question. But<br />
on second view, they break the cliché. Self-projection and<br />
poses disappear and are made fun of with a knowing<br />
irony. What is revealed then are the boys’ natures, full of<br />
conflict but also profound and warm-hearted. The four<br />
friends meet regularly at the Cologne ’Youth Center<br />
Klingelpuetz’ where they have found a second home since<br />
their early youth. They come from Moroccan, Tunisian,<br />
Turkish and Albanian backgrounds. But being part of a<br />
minority in <strong>German</strong>y ties them together and is stronger<br />
than the differences of their nationalities. Loyalty and respect<br />
predominate their being together despite the often<br />
rough manner.<br />
Genre Coming-of-Age Story Category Documentary Cinema<br />
Year of Production 2004 Director Bettina Braun<br />
Screenplay Bettina Braun Director of Photography Bettina<br />
Braun Editors Gesa Martens, Bettina Braun Music by Ali El.<br />
Mkllaki, Amin Aman Saleh Producers Herbert Schwering,<br />
World Sales (please contact)<br />
Icon Film · Herbert Schwering<br />
Breite Strasse 118-120 · 50667 Cologne/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-2 21-32 20 53 · fax +49-2 21-32 20 54<br />
email: info@icon-film.de · www.icon-film.de<br />
Christine Kiauk Production Company Icon Film/Cologne<br />
Principal Cast Ali El. Mkllaki, Kais Setti, Ertan Dinc, Alban Kadiri<br />
Length 84 min, 2,394 m Format DV Blow-up 35 mm, color,<br />
1:1.66 Original Version <strong>German</strong> Subtitled Version English<br />
Sound Technology Stereo Festival Screenings Duisburg<br />
2004, Berlin 20<strong>05</strong> (Perspectives <strong>German</strong> Cinema), Cologne<br />
Conference 20<strong>05</strong>, Filmfestival Deutschland-Tuerkei/Nuremberg<br />
20<strong>05</strong> Awards Audience Award Duisburg 2004, Phoenix Prize 20<strong>05</strong>,<br />
Best Documentary Nuremberg 20<strong>05</strong> With backing from<br />
<strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW <strong>German</strong> Distributor Real Fiction/Cologne<br />
Bettina Braun studied Graphic Design at Central St. Martins<br />
College of Art & Design in London and pursued post-graduate studies<br />
at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) in Cologne. Since 1993,<br />
she has been working as a freelance director and designer for<br />
various broadcasters in England and <strong>German</strong>y and since 2004 has<br />
been instructing Audio-Visual Media Design. A selection of her films<br />
includes: Bodies & Borders (experimental short, 1996),<br />
Sprech ens aanstaendich (documentary essay, 1997),<br />
Women’s Nature is Different (Frauen sind im Wesen<br />
anders …, documentary, 1999), Behind the Camera is in<br />
Front of the Camera (Hinter der Kamera ist vor der<br />
Kamera, documentary, 2000), and Whatz up? (Was lebst<br />
du?, documentary, 2004).<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 53<br />
Scene from ”Whatz up?“ (photo © ICON FILM/Bettina Braun)
Weltverbesserungsmassnahmen<br />
MEASURES TO BETTER THE WORLD<br />
The world is in need of ideas, visions, utopias and perspectives<br />
– the world is in need of new measures. Be it the<br />
improvement of the regional economy and identity by<br />
money with a best-before date, regulating energy consumption<br />
by minimizing the body’s need of energy and<br />
making better use of the superfluous energy or finding the<br />
right measure – “eye to eye” is the motto. Finding new<br />
solutions for old problems and not taking yourself too<br />
seriously – fake documentary is the word. In eight episodes<br />
solutions, constructs and thinking models are presented,<br />
ideas which could be part of our lives in the near<br />
future.<br />
Genre Comedy, Mockumentary Category Feature Film Cinema<br />
Year of Production 20<strong>05</strong> Directors Joern Hintzer, Jakob<br />
Huefner Screenplay Joern Hintzer, Jakob Huefner Directors of<br />
Photography Volker Mai, Daniela Knapp, Aleksander Kerkovic,<br />
Volker Gerling, Matthias Schellenberg Editors Dan Loghin, Carolin<br />
Ernstling, Andrea Huebers, Vanessa Rossi, Jessica Ehlebracht, Olli<br />
Weiss, Andreas Wodraschke Music by Tonbuero Berlin<br />
Production Design Katrin Hieronymus, Arndt Muehe, Andre<br />
Ceada Cruhl Producers Joern Hintzer, Jakob Huefner<br />
Production Company Datenstrudel/Berlin Principal Cast<br />
Andreas Nickl, Peter Berning, Katja Rosin, Patrick Gueldenberg,<br />
Torsten Schlosser, Christoph Bach, Jan Schuette, Matthias<br />
World Sales (please contact)<br />
Datenstrudel · Joern Hintzer, Jakob Huefner<br />
Borsigstrasse 33 · 10115 Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-28 04 57 83 · fax +49-30-28 04 58 60<br />
email: sales@datenstrudel.de · www.datenstrudel.de<br />
Breitenbach, Charlotte Crome, Jakob Huefner, Vera Teltz, Michael<br />
Gabat, Cornelius Schwalm, Samuel Finzi, Gianni Meurer, Harald<br />
Schrott, Claudia Geisler Casting Uwe Buenker, Interfacecasting,<br />
Pedro Solár Ferrer Special Effects Jan Bormann, Florian Eberle,<br />
Florian Obrecht Length 88 min, 2,408m Format DV Blow-up<br />
35 mm, color, 1:1.85 Original Version <strong>German</strong> Subtitled<br />
Version English Sound Technology Dolby SR Festival<br />
Screenings Berlin 20<strong>05</strong> (Perspectives <strong>German</strong> Cinema), Karlovy<br />
Vary 20<strong>05</strong> (Variety Critics’ Choice) With backing from<br />
<strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW, Kunststiftung NRW, Filmfoerderungsanstalt<br />
(FFA) <strong>German</strong> Distributor Concorde Filmverleih/Munich<br />
Joern Hintzer was born in 1966. He is a Masterclass student of<br />
the Academy of Arts in Muenster and finished a post-graduate program<br />
at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. He recently created<br />
the teaser for Hans Weingartner’s The Edukators.<br />
Jakob Huefner was born in 1971 and studied at the Academy of<br />
Media Arts Cologne. He has made several short films and worked<br />
as an actor, writer and director. Measures to Better the<br />
World (Weltverbesserungsmassnahmen, 20<strong>05</strong>) is his first<br />
feature film.<br />
german films quarterly new german films<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 54<br />
Scene from “Measures to Better the World” (photo courtesy of Datenstrudel)
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Das Boot<br />
THE BOAT<br />
Wolfgang Petersen's elaborate and internationally acclaimed<br />
film The Boat is based on an authentic submarine<br />
operation during 1941. Leaving harbor from La Rochelle,<br />
the <strong>German</strong> submarine U96 takes off to torpedo British<br />
freighters.<br />
On board the submarine is the young war reporter<br />
Werner, who doesn’t seem to make friends with any of the<br />
crew. After gruelingly boring days out at sea, suddenly a<br />
British fleet appears. But the men overlook one hugely<br />
important detail in their plan of attack: the freighter’s highly<br />
armed security escort …<br />
Genre Drama, History Category Feature Film Cinema Year of<br />
Production 1981 Director Wolfgang Petersen Screenplay<br />
Wolfgang Petersen, based on the book by Lothar-Guenther<br />
Buchheim Directors of Photography Ernst Wild, Theodor<br />
Nischwitz, Jost Vacano, Franz Rath, Wolfgang Treu, Peter Maiwald,<br />
Ernst Stritzinger, Leander R. Loosen, Ernst Schmid, Egil S. Woxholt<br />
Editor Hannes Nikel Music by Klaus Doldinger Production<br />
Design Bernhard Neureiter, Rolf Braun, Heinz Schaefer, Erhard<br />
Hose, Pius Huengerl, Joseph Teppert Producer Guenter<br />
Rohrbach Production Companies Bavaria Film/Munich,<br />
WDR/Cologne, SDR/Stuttgart, in co-production with Constantin<br />
Film/Munich, BBC/London, ORF/Vienna, RAI Cinema/Rome<br />
Principal Cast Juergen Prochnow, Herbert Groenemeyer, Klaus<br />
Wennemann, Hubertus Bengsch, Martin Semmelrogge, Bernd<br />
Tauber, Erwin Leder, Claude-Oliver Rudolph, Jan Fedder, Heinz<br />
Hoenig, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Guenter Lamprecht, Otto Sander<br />
Length 149 min, 4,069 m Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.66<br />
Original Version <strong>German</strong> Dubbed Versions English, French,<br />
Italian Awards <strong>German</strong> Film Awards 1982 for Production and<br />
Sound, Bavarian Film Awards 1981 for Direction & Cinematography,<br />
Golden Screen 1982, <strong>German</strong> Record Award 1982 for Best Score,<br />
Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing 1983 <strong>German</strong><br />
Distributor Constantin Film Verleih/Munich<br />
Wolfgang Petersen was born in 1941 in Emden. After studying<br />
Theater in Berlin and Hamburg, he attended the <strong>German</strong> Film &<br />
Television Academy (dffb) in Berlin from 1966-1970. He first made<br />
his mark in the film world with The Boat (Das Boot) in 1981.<br />
Although he had been making feature films in <strong>German</strong>y since 1973,<br />
and television productions before that, it was Petersen’s success<br />
with this anti-war U-boat epic, along with several OSCAR nominations,<br />
that bought him his ticket to Hollywood. A selection of his<br />
other films includes: One or the Other (Einer von uns beiden,<br />
1973), The Never Ending Story (1984), Enemy Mine<br />
(1985), In the Line of Fire (1993), Outbreak (1995), Air<br />
Force One (1997), The Perfect Storm (2000), and Troy<br />
(2004).<br />
World Sales<br />
Bavaria Film International / Dept. of Bavaria Media GmbH · Thorsten Schaumann<br />
Bavariafilmplatz 8 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86 · fax +49-89-64 99 37 20<br />
email: bavaria.international@bavaria-film.de · www.bavaria-film-international.de<br />
german films quarterly the 100 most significant german films – no. 95<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 56<br />
Scene from “The Boat”<br />
(photo courtesy of Filmmuseum Berlin/Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek)
Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern<br />
HUNTING SCENES FROM BAVARIA<br />
Barbara’s son Abram, a twenty-year-old mechanic, is<br />
homosexual. In the small Bavarian village where he lives<br />
this cannot be hidden for long. Wherever Abram goes, he<br />
is abused and driven away. At the beginning he takes it<br />
calmly, but when Hannelore tells everyone that she is<br />
pregnant with Abram’s child, the situation escalates. In a fit<br />
of rage, the young man strangles Hannelore and is consequently<br />
chased like an animal by the villagers.<br />
Genre Drama Category Feature Film Cinema Year of<br />
Production 1969 Director Peter Fleischmann Screenplay<br />
Peter Fleischmann Director of Photography Alain Derobe<br />
Production Design Guenter Naumann Producer Rob<br />
Houwer Production Company Rob Houwer Film &<br />
TV/Munich Principal Cast Martin Sperr, Angela Winkler, Else<br />
Quecke, Michael Strixner, Maria Stadler, Gunja Seiser, Johann<br />
Brunner, Hanna Schygulla, Renate Sandner, Ernst Wagner, Johann<br />
Lang, Johann Fuchs, Erika Wackernagel, Hans Elwenspoek, Eva<br />
Berthold Length 85 min, 2,315 m Format 35 mm, b&w, 1:1.37<br />
Original Version <strong>German</strong> Subtitled Version English Sound<br />
Technology Mono Festival Screenings Locarno 1969,<br />
World Sales (please contact)<br />
Rob Houwer Film & Television GmbH & Co. KG · Rob Houwer<br />
Viktoriastrasse 34 · 80803 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-39 90 21 · fax +49-89-33 83 18<br />
email: edisonfilm@aol.com<br />
Malaga 1969 Awards 2 <strong>German</strong> Film Awards 1969, First Prize Jury of<br />
Youth Locarno 1969, Spanish Film Club Prize & FIPRESCI Award Malaga<br />
1969, Preis der 15 for Best Contemporary <strong>German</strong> Film & Best <strong>German</strong><br />
Debut 1969, among others<br />
Peter Fleischmann was born in 1937 in Zweibruecken. He studied<br />
at the Deutsches Institut fuer Film und Fernsehen (DIFF) in<br />
Munich as well as at the Institut des Hautes Etudes<br />
Cinematographiques (IDHEC) in Paris. In 1969, he founded the production<br />
company Hallelujah Film together with Volker Schloendorff.<br />
A selection of his films includes: Hunting Scenes from<br />
Bavaria (Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern, 1969), Das<br />
Unheil (1972), Die Hamburger Krankheit (1979), Frevel<br />
(1983), Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein (1989) and<br />
Deutschland, Deutschland (1991).<br />
german films quarterly the 100 most significant german films – no. 96<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 57<br />
Scene from “Hunting Scenes from Bavaria”<br />
(photo courtesy of Filmmuseum Berlin/Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek)
Lebenslaeufe<br />
BIOGRAPHIES – THE STORY OF THE CHILDREN OF GOLZOW<br />
Winfried and Barbara Junge’s long-term observation of<br />
“The Children of Golzow” presents a series of nine individual<br />
biographies in which the pupils of the East <strong>German</strong><br />
town Golzow are featured, both in observation and with<br />
their own comments. The filming took place in regular<br />
intervals from 1961 to 1980. The resulting recordings<br />
show the portrayed individuals at very distinctive<br />
moments in their lives, for example at school enrolment,<br />
youth initiation ceremony and graduation. At their school<br />
reunion in 1975, we then see which direction they went<br />
in, both privately and professionally.<br />
Genre Biopic, Drama Category Documentary Cinema Year of<br />
Production 1981 Directors Winfried Junge, Barbara Junge<br />
Directors of Photography Hans Dumke, Hans-Eberhard<br />
Leupold, Harald Klix Editors Christel Gass-Hemmerling,<br />
Charlotte Beck Music by Kurt Grottke, Peter Gotthardt, Gerhard<br />
Rosenfeld Production Company DEFA/Berlin Length 257<br />
min, 7,031 m Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.37 Original Version<br />
<strong>German</strong> Voice Over English Sound Technology Optical<br />
Sound Festival Screenings Leipzig 1981, Berlin 1982 Awards<br />
Honorary Golden Dove Leipzig 1981, FIPRESCI Award & Otto-Dibelius-<br />
Award Berlin 1982 <strong>German</strong> Distributor Progress Film-<br />
Verleih/Berlin<br />
World Sales<br />
Progress Film-Verleih GmbH · Christel Jansen<br />
Immanuelkirchstrasse 14 · 104<strong>05</strong> Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-24 00 32 25 · fax +49-30-24 00 32 22<br />
email: c.jansen@progress-film.de · www.progress-film.de<br />
Winfried Junge was born in 1935 in Berlin. After studies in<br />
<strong>German</strong> at the Humboldt University in Berlin, he transferred to the<br />
<strong>German</strong> Film Academy in Potsdam-Babelsberg in 1954. Graduating<br />
in 1958, he began work at the DEFA studios. A selection of his films<br />
includes: When I Finally Go to School (Wenn ich erst<br />
zur Schule geh’, 1961), Observations in a First Class<br />
(Nach einem Jahr, 1962), Eleven Years Old (Elf Jahre<br />
alt, 1966), Anmut sparet nicht noch Muehe (1979),<br />
Biographies – The Story of the Children of Golzow<br />
(Lebenslaeufe, 1981), Diese Golzower – Umstandsbestimmung<br />
eines Ortes (1984), Drehbuch: Die Zeiten<br />
(1992), The Life of Juergen from Golzow (Das Leben<br />
des Juergen von Golzow, 1994), The Story of Uncle<br />
Willy from Golzow (Die Geschichte des Onkel Willy<br />
aus Golzow, 1995), Was geht euch mein Leben an. Elke<br />
(1996), Da habt ihr mein Leben. Marieluise (1997),<br />
Brigitte & Marcel (1998), A Guy Like Dieter – Native of<br />
Golzow (Ein Mensch wie Dieter – Golzower, 1999), and<br />
Jochen – A Golzower from Philadelphia (2001), which<br />
was the eighth Golzow-film to be presented at the Berlinale Forum.<br />
Barbara Junge was born in 1943 in Neunhofen and graduated<br />
from Karl-Marx-University in Leipzig as an English and Russian translator.<br />
From 1969 she worked at the DEFA studio for documentary<br />
film in charge of foreign language versions. Since 1978 she has been<br />
the archivist of the Golzow-project, has edited all of Winfried<br />
Junge’s films since 1983 and since 1993 has also co-directed.<br />
german films quarterly the 100 most significant german films – no. 97<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 58<br />
Scene from "Biographies - The Story of the Children of Golzow"<br />
(photo © Progress Film-Verleih)
Berliner Ballade<br />
THE BALLAD OF BERLIN<br />
The Ballad of Berlin is a satire of post-war reality in<br />
<strong>German</strong>y, presented as a flashback in the year 2048.<br />
Otto Normalverbraucher, an average <strong>German</strong> citizen,<br />
returns from captivity in 1949 to Berlin and has to come<br />
to terms with the new post-war situation. He meets bootleggers<br />
and reactionaries, looks for work and food, and in<br />
the end even finds his “dream woman”.<br />
Genre Tragicomedy Category Feature Film Cinema Year of<br />
Production 1948 Director Robert A. Stemmle Screenplay<br />
Guenter Neumann Director of Photography Georg Krause<br />
Editor Walter Wischniewsky Music by Werner Eisbrenner,<br />
Guenter Neumann Production Design Gabriel Pellon<br />
Producer Alf Teichs Production Company Comedia<br />
Film/Munich & Berlin Principal Cast Gert Froebe, Aribert<br />
Waescher, Tatjana Sais, Ute Sielisch, O.E. Hasse, Werner<br />
Oelschlaeger, Hans Deppe, Erwin Biegel, Brigitte Mira Length 92<br />
min, 2,499 m Format 35 mm, b&w, 1:1.37 Original Version<br />
<strong>German</strong> Sound Technology Mono Festival Screenings<br />
Venice 1948 Awards Special Prize Venice 1948 <strong>German</strong><br />
Distributor Deutsches Filminstitut - DIF/Wiesbaden<br />
World Sales (please contact)<br />
Dr. Bertold Jakob<br />
Sendlinger Strasse 29 · 80331 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-23 00 18 58 · fax +49-89-23 07 79 98<br />
email: info@jakob-jakob.de<br />
Robert A. Stemmle was born in 1903 in Magdeburg and died<br />
in 1973 in Baden-Baden. He began his career in the late 1920s with<br />
puppet theater. From the 1930s on, he worked in various areas,<br />
including radio, theater, as a director’s assistant, and director and<br />
dramaturg for Tobis and Ufa. Particularly specializing in thrillers and<br />
crime stories, a selection of his films includes: Es tut sich was<br />
um Mitternacht (1934), Kleiner Mann – ganz gross!<br />
(1938), Berliner Ballade (1948), … und die Liebe lacht<br />
dazu (1957), Majestaet auf Abwegen (1958), Rasputin<br />
(TV, 1966), Der Fall Kaspar Hauser (TV mini series, 1966),<br />
and Der Fall Mariotti (TV, 1970).<br />
german films quarterly the 100 most significant german films – no. 98<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 59<br />
Scene from “The Ballad of Berlin”<br />
(photo courtesy of Filmmuseum Berlin/Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek)
GERMAN FILMS<br />
SHAREHOLDERS & SUPPORTERS<br />
Arbeitsgemeinschaft<br />
Neuer Deutscher Spielfilmproduzenten<br />
Association of New Feature Film Producers<br />
Muenchner Freiheit 20, 80802 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-2 71 74 30, fax +49-89-2 71 97 28<br />
email: mail@ag-spielfilm.de, www.ag-spielfilm.de<br />
Filmfoerderungsanstalt<br />
<strong>German</strong> Federal Film Board<br />
Grosse Praesidentenstrasse 9, 10178 Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-27 57 70, fax +49-30-27 57 71 11<br />
email: presse@ffa.de, www.ffa.de<br />
Verband Deutscher Filmexporteure e.V. (VDFE)<br />
Association of <strong>German</strong> Film Exporters<br />
Tegernseer Landstrasse 75, 81539 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49- 89-6 42 49 70, fax +49-89-6 92 09 10<br />
email: mail@vdfe.de, www.vdfe.de<br />
Verband Deutscher Spielfilmproduzenten e.V.<br />
Association of <strong>German</strong> Feature Film Producers<br />
Beichstrasse 8, 80802 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-39 11 23, fax +49-89-33 74 32<br />
Bundesverband Deutscher Fernsehproduzenten e.V.<br />
Association of <strong>German</strong> Television Producers<br />
Brienner Strasse 26 · 80333 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-28 62 83 85 · fax +49-89-28 62 82 47<br />
email: post@tv-produzenten.de · www.tv-produzenten.de<br />
Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek<br />
Potsdamer Strasse 2 · 10785 Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-30 09 03-0 · fax +49-30-30 09 03-13<br />
email: info@filmmuseum-berlin.de · www.filmmuseum-berlin.de<br />
Arbeitsgemeinschaft Dokumentarfilm e.V.<br />
<strong>German</strong> Documentary Association<br />
Schweizer Strasse 6 · 6<strong>05</strong>94 Frankfurt am Main/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-69-62 37 00 · fax +49-61 42-96 64 24<br />
email: agdok@agdok.de · www.agdok.de<br />
Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kurzfilm e.V.<br />
<strong>German</strong> Short Film Association<br />
Kamenzer Strasse 60 · 01099 Dresden/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-3 51-4 04 55 75 · fax +49-3 51-4 04 55 76<br />
email: info@ag-kurzfilm.de · www.ag-kurzfilm.de<br />
Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung<br />
fuer Kultur und Medien<br />
Referat K 35, Graurheindorfer Strasse 198<br />
53117 Bonn/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-18 88-6 81 36 43, fax +49-18 88-68 15 36 43<br />
email: Hermann.Scharnhoop@bkm.bmi.bund.de<br />
FilmFernsehFonds Bayern<br />
Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Medien<br />
in Bayern mbH<br />
Sonnenstrasse 21, 80331 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-54 46 02-0, fax +49-89-54 46 02 21<br />
email: filmfoerderung@fff-bayern.de, www.fff-bayern.de<br />
FilmFoerderung Hamburg GmbH<br />
Friedensallee 14–16, 22765 Hamburg/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-40-39 83 70, fax +49-40-3 98 37 10<br />
email: filmfoerderung@ffhh.de, www.ffhh.de<br />
<strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW GmbH<br />
Kaistrasse 14, 40221 Duesseldorf/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-2 11-93 <strong>05</strong> 00, fax +49-2 11-93 <strong>05</strong> <strong>05</strong><br />
email: info@filmstiftung.de, www.filmstiftung.de<br />
Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH<br />
August-Bebel-Strasse 26-53, 14482 Potsdam-Babelsberg/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-3 31-74 38 70, fax +49-3 31-7 43 87 99<br />
email: info@medienboard.de, www.medienboard.de<br />
Medien- und Filmgesellschaft<br />
Baden-Wuerttemberg mbH<br />
Breitscheidstrasse 4, 70174 Stuttgart/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-7 11-90 71 54 00, fax +49-7 11-90 71 54 50<br />
email: filmfoerderung@mfg.de, www.mfg.de/film<br />
Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung GmbH<br />
Hainstrasse 17-19, 04109 Leipzig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-3 41-26 98 70, fax +49-3 41-2 69 87 65<br />
email: info@mdm-online.de, www.mdm-online.de<br />
nordmedia – Die Mediengesellschaft<br />
Niedersachsen/Bremen mbH<br />
Expo Plaza 1, 3<strong>05</strong>39 Hanover/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-5 11-1 23 45 60, fax +49-5 11-12 34 56 29<br />
email: info@nordmedia.de, www.nordmedia.de<br />
german films quarterly shareholders & supporters<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 60
ASSOCIATION OF GERMAN FILM EXPORTERS<br />
Verband deutscher Filmexporteure e.V. (VDFE) · please contact Lothar Wedel<br />
Tegernseer Landstrasse 75 · 81539 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-6 42 49 70 · fax +49-89-6 92 09 10 · email: mail@vdfe.de · www.vdfe.de<br />
ARRI Media Worldsales<br />
please contact Antonio Exacoustos<br />
Tuerkenstrasse 89<br />
80799 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-38 09 12 88<br />
fax +49-89-38 09 16 19<br />
email: aexacoustos@arri.de<br />
www.arri-mediaworldsales.de<br />
Atlas International<br />
Film GmbH<br />
please contact<br />
Dieter Menz, Philipp Menz<br />
Candidplatz 11<br />
81543 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-21 09 75-0<br />
fax +49-89-22 43 32<br />
email: mail@atlasfilm.com<br />
www.atlasfilm.com<br />
ATRIX <strong>Films</strong> GmbH<br />
please contact Beatrix Wesle,<br />
Solveig Langeland<br />
Nymphenburger Strasse 79<br />
80636 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-64 28 26 11<br />
fax +49-89-64 95 73 49<br />
email: atrixfilms@gmx.net<br />
www.atrix-films.com<br />
Bavaria Film International<br />
Dept. of Bavaria Media GmbH<br />
please contact Thorsten Schaumann<br />
Bavariafilmplatz 8<br />
82031 Geiselgasteig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86<br />
fax +49-89-64 99 37 20<br />
email: marketing@bavaria-film.de<br />
www.bavaria-film-international.de<br />
Beta Cinema<br />
Dept. of Beta Film GmbH<br />
please contact Andreas Rothbauer<br />
Gruenwalder Weg 28d<br />
82041 Oberhaching/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-67 34 69 80<br />
fax +49-89-6 73 46 98 88<br />
email: ARothbauer@betacinema.com<br />
www.betacinema.com<br />
cine aktuell<br />
Filmgesellschaft mbH<br />
please contact Ralf Faust, Axel Schaarschmidt<br />
Werdenfelsstrasse 81<br />
81377 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-7 41 34 30<br />
fax +49-89-74 13 43 16<br />
email: mail@cine-aktuell.de<br />
www.cine-aktuell.de<br />
Cine-International Filmvertrieb<br />
GmbH & Co. KG<br />
please contact Lilli Tyc-Holm, Susanne Groh<br />
Leopoldstrasse 18<br />
80802 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-39 10 25<br />
fax +49-89-33 10 89<br />
email: email@cine-international.de<br />
www.cine-international.de<br />
Exportfilm Bischoff & Co. GmbH<br />
please contact Jochem Strate,<br />
Philip Evenkamp<br />
Isabellastrasse 20<br />
80798 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-2 72 93 60<br />
fax +49-89-27 29 36 36<br />
email: exportfilms@exportfilm.de<br />
www.exportfilm.de<br />
german united distributors<br />
Programmvertrieb GmbH<br />
please contact Silke Spahr<br />
Breite Strasse 48-50<br />
50667 Cologne/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-2 21-92 06 90<br />
fax +49-2 21-9 20 69 69<br />
email: silke.spahr@germanunited.com<br />
Kinowelt International GmbH<br />
Futura Film Weltvertrieb<br />
im Filmverlag der Autoren GmbH<br />
please contact Stelios Ziannis, Anja Uecker<br />
Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse 10<br />
04107 Leipzig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-3 41-35 59 60<br />
fax +49-3 41-35 59 61 19<br />
email: sziannis@kinowelt.de,<br />
auecker@kinowelt.de<br />
www.kinowelt.de<br />
Media Luna Entertainment<br />
GmbH & Co.KG<br />
please contact Ida Martins<br />
Hochstadenstrasse 1-3<br />
50674 Cologne/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-2 21-8 01 49 80<br />
fax +49-2 21-80 14 98 21<br />
email: info@medialuna-entertainment.de<br />
www.medialuna-entertainment.de<br />
Progress Film-Verleih GmbH<br />
please contact Christel Jansen<br />
Immanuelkirchstrasse 14<br />
104<strong>05</strong> Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-24 00 32 25<br />
fax +49-30-24 00 32 22<br />
email: c.jansen@progress-film.de<br />
www.progress-film.de<br />
Road Sales GmbH<br />
Mediadistribution<br />
please contact Frank Graf<br />
Clausewitzstrasse 4<br />
10629 Berlin/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-30-8 80 48 60<br />
fax +49-30-88 04 86 11<br />
email: office@road-movies.de<br />
www.road-movies.de<br />
RRS Entertainment Gesellschaft<br />
fuer Filmlizenzen GmbH<br />
please contact Robert Rajber<br />
Sternwartstrasse 2<br />
81679 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-2 11 16 60<br />
fax +49-89-21 11 66 11<br />
email: info@rrsentertainment.de<br />
www.rrsentertainment.de<br />
TELEPOOL GmbH<br />
please contact Wolfram Skowronnek<br />
Sonnenstrasse 21<br />
80331 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-55 87 60<br />
fax +49-89-55 87 62 29<br />
email: cinepool@telepool.de<br />
www.telepool.de<br />
Transit Film GmbH<br />
please contact Loy W. Arnold, Mark Gruenthal<br />
Dachauer Strasse 35<br />
80335 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-59 98 85-0<br />
fax +49-89-59 98 85-20<br />
email: loy.arnold@transitfilm.de,<br />
mark.gruenthal@transitfilm.de<br />
www.transitfilm.de<br />
uni media film gmbh<br />
please contact Irene Vogt, Michael Waldleitner<br />
Bavariafilmplatz 7<br />
82031 Geiselgasteig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-59 58 46<br />
fax +49-89-54 50 70 52<br />
email: info@unimediafilm.com<br />
german films quarterly association of german film exporters<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 61
GERMAN FILMS: A PROFILE<br />
<strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> Service + Marketing is the national information<br />
and advisory center for the promotion of <strong>German</strong> films worldwide.<br />
It was established in 1954 under the name Export-Union of<br />
<strong>German</strong> Cinema as the umbrella association for the Association of<br />
<strong>German</strong> Feature Film Producers, the Association of New <strong>German</strong><br />
Feature Film Producers and the Association of <strong>German</strong> Film<br />
Exporters, and operates today in the legal form of a limited company.<br />
In 2004, new shareholders came on board the Export-Union which<br />
from then on operated under its new name: <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> Service +<br />
Marketing GmbH.<br />
Shareholders are the Association of <strong>German</strong> Feature Film<br />
Producers, the Association of New <strong>German</strong> Feature Film Producers,<br />
the Association of <strong>German</strong> Film Exporters, the <strong>German</strong> Federal Film<br />
Board (FFA), the Association of <strong>German</strong> Television Producers, the<br />
Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, the <strong>German</strong> Documentary<br />
Association, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern and <strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW representing<br />
the seven main regional film funds, and the <strong>German</strong> Short<br />
Film Association.<br />
Members of the advisory board are: Alfred Huermer (chairman),<br />
Peter Dinges, Antonio Exacoustos, Dr. Hermann Scharnhoop, Michael<br />
Schmid-Ospach, and Michael Weber.<br />
<strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> itself has 13 permanent members of staff:<br />
Christian Dorsch, managing director<br />
Mariette Rissenbeek, public relations<br />
Petra Bader, office manager<br />
Kim Behrendt, PR assistant<br />
Danilo Braun, accounts<br />
Sandra Buchta, project coordinator/documentary film<br />
Myriam Gauff, project coordinator<br />
Angela Hawkins, publications & website editor<br />
Nicole Kaufmann, project coordinator<br />
Julia Rappold, assistant to the managing director<br />
Martin Scheuring, project coordinator/short film<br />
Konstanze Welz, project coordinator<br />
Stephanie Wimmer, project coordinator/television<br />
In addition, <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> has nine foreign representatives in eight<br />
countries.<br />
<strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>’ budget of presently €5.7 million comes from film<br />
export levies, the office of the Federal Government Commissioner<br />
for Culture and the Media, and the FFA. In addition, the seven main<br />
regional film funds (FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, FilmFoerderung<br />
Hamburg, <strong>Films</strong>tiftung NRW, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, MFG<br />
Baden-Wuerttemberg, Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung, and<br />
Nordmedia) make a financial contribution, currently amounting to<br />
€300,000, towards the work of <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>.<br />
<strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> is a founding member of the European Film Promotion,<br />
a network of national film agencies in 25 European countries (including<br />
Unifrance, Swiss <strong>Films</strong>, Austrian Film Commission, Holland Film,<br />
among others) with similar responsibilities to those of <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>.<br />
The organization, with its headquarters in Hamburg, aims to develop<br />
and realize joint projects for the presentation of European films on an<br />
international level.<br />
<strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>’ range of activities includes:<br />
Close cooperation with major international film festivals, including<br />
Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Locarno, San<br />
Sebastian, Montreal, San Francisco, Karlovy Vary, Moscow,<br />
Tribeca, Shanghai, Rotterdam, Sydney, Goteborg, Warsaw,<br />
Thessaloniki, and Turin, among others<br />
Organization of umbrella stands for <strong>German</strong> sales companies<br />
and producers at international television and film markets<br />
Staging of ”Festivals of <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong>“ worldwide (Rome,<br />
Madrid, Paris, London, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney,<br />
Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Budapest, Cracow,<br />
Moscow, Scandinavia, Tokyo)<br />
Providing advice and information for representatives of the<br />
international press and buyers from the fields of cinema, video,<br />
and television<br />
Providing advice and information for <strong>German</strong> filmmakers and<br />
press on international festivals, conditions of participation, and<br />
<strong>German</strong> films being shown<br />
Organization of the annual ”Next Generation“ short film program,<br />
which presents a selection of shorts by students of<br />
<strong>German</strong> film schools and is premiered every year at Cannes<br />
Publication of informational literature about current <strong>German</strong><br />
films and the <strong>German</strong> film industry (<strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> Quarterly and<br />
<strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> Yearbook), as well as international market analyses<br />
and special festival brochures<br />
An Internet website (www.german-films.de) offering information<br />
about new <strong>German</strong> films, a film archive, as well as information<br />
and links to <strong>German</strong> and international film festivals<br />
and institutions<br />
Organization of the selection procedure for the <strong>German</strong> entry<br />
for the OSCAR for Best Foreign Language Film<br />
Collaboration with Deutsche Welle’s DW-TV KINO program<br />
which features the latest <strong>German</strong> film releases and international<br />
productions in <strong>German</strong>y<br />
Organization of the ”Munich Previews“ geared toward<br />
European arthouse distributors and buyers of <strong>German</strong> films<br />
Selective financial support for the foreign releases of <strong>German</strong><br />
films<br />
On behalf of the association Rendez-vous franco-allemands du<br />
cinéma, organization with Unifrance of the annual <strong>German</strong>-<br />
French film meeting<br />
In association and cooperation with its shareholders, <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong><br />
works to promote feature, documentary, television and short films.<br />
german films quarterly german films: a profile<br />
4 · 20<strong>05</strong> 62
FOREIGN REPRESENTATIVES<br />
Argentina<br />
Gustav Wilhelmi<br />
Ayacucho 495, 2º ”3“<br />
C1026AAA Buenos Aires/Argentina<br />
phone +54-11-49 52 15 37<br />
phone/fax +54-11-49 51 19 10<br />
email: wilhelmi@german-films.de<br />
Eastern Europe<br />
Simone Baumann<br />
L.E. Vision Film- und<br />
Fernsehproduktion GmbH<br />
Koernerstrasse 56<br />
04107 Leipzig/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-3 41-96 36 80<br />
fax +49-3 41-9 63 68 44<br />
email: baumann@german-films.de<br />
France<br />
Cristina Hoffman<br />
33, rue L. Gaillet<br />
94250 Gentilly/France<br />
phone +33-1-40 4108 33<br />
fax +33-1-49 8644 18<br />
email: hoffman@german-films.de<br />
IMPRINT<br />
published by:<br />
<strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong><br />
Service + Marketing GmbH<br />
Sonnenstrasse 21<br />
80331 Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
phone +49-89-5 99 78 70<br />
fax +49-89-59 97 87 30<br />
email: info@german-films.de<br />
www.german-films.de<br />
ISSN 1614-6387<br />
Credits are not contractual for any<br />
of the films mentioned in this publication.<br />
© <strong>German</strong> <strong>Films</strong> Service + Marketing GmbH<br />
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of<br />
this publication may be made without written permission.<br />
Italy<br />
Alessia Ratzenberger<br />
Angeli Movie Service<br />
Piazza San Bernardo 108a<br />
00187 Rome/Italy<br />
phone +39-06-48 90 22 30<br />
fax +39-06-4 88 57 97<br />
email: ratzenberger@german-films.de<br />
Japan<br />
Tomosuke Suzuki<br />
Nippon Cine TV Corporation<br />
Suite 123, Gaien House<br />
2-2-39 Jingumae, Shibuya-Ku<br />
Tokyo/Japan<br />
phone +81-3-34 <strong>05</strong> 09 16<br />
fax +81-3-34 79 08 69<br />
email: suzuki@german-films.de<br />
Spain<br />
Stefan Schmitz<br />
C/ Atocha 43, bajo 1 a<br />
28012 Madrid/Spain<br />
phone +34-91-3 66 43 64<br />
fax +34-91-3 65 93 01<br />
email: schmitz@german-films.de<br />
Editors<br />
Production Reports<br />
Contributors for this issue<br />
Translations<br />
Design Group<br />
Art Direction<br />
Printing Office<br />
Cover Photo<br />
United Kingdom<br />
Iris Ordonez<br />
Top Floor<br />
113-117 Charing Cross Road<br />
London WC2H ODT/Great Britain<br />
phone +44-20-74 37 20 47<br />
email: ordonez@german-films.de<br />
USA/East Coast & Canada<br />
Oliver Mahrdt<br />
c/o Hanns Wolters International Inc.<br />
211 E 43 rd Street, #5<strong>05</strong><br />
New York, NY 10017/USA<br />
phone +1-2 12-7 14 01 00<br />
fax +1-2 12-6 43 14 12<br />
email: mahrdt@german-films.de<br />
USA/West Coast<br />
Corina Danckwerts<br />
Capture Film International, LLC<br />
1726 N. Whitley Avenue<br />
Los Angeles, CA 90028/USA<br />
phone +1-3 23-9 62 67 10<br />
fax +1-3 23-9 62 67 22<br />
email: danckwerts@german-films.de<br />
Angela Hawkins, Mariette Rissenbeek<br />
Martin Blaney, Simon Kingsley<br />
Martin Blaney, Felix Moeller, Tilmann P. Gangloff,<br />
Marco Schmidt, Ruediger Suchsland<br />
Lucinda Rennison<br />
triptychon · agentur fuer design<br />
und kulturkommunikation, Munich/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
Werner Schauer<br />
ESTA DRUCK GMBH,<br />
Obermuehlstrasse 90, 82398 Polling/<strong>German</strong>y<br />
Printed on ecological, unchlorinated paper.<br />
Scene from “Summer in Berlin”<br />
(photo © X Verleih)<br />
german films quarterly foreign representatives · imprint<br />
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