ANIMATION – MADE IN GERMANY

2/2002
AT CANNES
in Competition
RUSSIAN ARK
by Alexander Sokurov
in Un Certain Regard
TEN MINUTES OLDER
by Werner Herzog,
Wim Wenders, et al
GERMAN FILM AWARD
… and the nominees are …
SPECIAL REPORT
Animation –
Made in Germany
Charles Esten in Wim Wender’s episode of ”Ten Minutes Older“
(an Odyssey Film London, Matador Pictures & Road Movies Production)
Kino
EXPORT-UNION
OF GERMAN CINEMA
GERMAN
CINEMA
German Films
IN THE
in Competition
Russian Ark
(Germany/Russia)
by Alexander Sokurov
World Sales:
Celluloid Dreams, Paris/France
phone +33-1-49 70 03 70
fax +33-1-49 70 03 71
in Competition
The Man
Without a Past
(Finland/Germany/France)
by Aki Kaurismaeki
German co-producer: Pandora Film,
Cologne/Germany
phone +49-2 21-97 33 20
fax +49-2 21-97 33 29
World Sales: Bavaria Film International,
Geiselgasteig/Germany
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86
fax +49-89-64 99 37 20
in Competition
The Pianist
(Germany/France/Poland/United Kingdom)
by Roman Polanski
German co-producer:
Studio Babelsberg, Potsdam/Germany
phone +49-3 31-7 21 30 01
fax +49-3 31-7 21 25 25
in Competition
Sweet Sixteen
(United Kingdom/Germany/Spain)
by Ken Loach
German co-producer:
Road Movies, Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-8 80 48 60
fax +49-30-88 04 86 11
OFFICIAL PROGRAM OF THE
Cannes Festival
in Un Certain Regard
Ten
Minutes Older
by By Aki Kaurismaeki,
Víctor Erice, Werner Herzog,
Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders,
Spike Lee, Chen Kaige, et al
World Sales: Road Sales,
Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-8 80 48 60
fax +49-30-88 04 86 11
in Directors’ Fortnight / En avant !
Phantom
by Matthias Mueller
World Sales: Matthias Mueller,
Bielefeld/Germany
phone/fax +49-5 21-17 83 67
in Directors’ Fortnight
Deux
(France/Germany)
by Werner Schroeter
German co-producer:
Road Movies, Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-8 80 48 60
fax +49-30-88 04 86 11
(Credits not contractual)
K I N O
6
Animation – Made in Germany
On the History and Current Situation of
Animation Films in Germany
16
2 / 2 0 0 2
33 Der Laufbursche
Yueksel Yavuz
34 Nach Haus in die Fremde
Andreas Kleinert
The Unbearable Lightness of Film
Director’s Portrait Andreas Dresen
34 Olgas Sommer
Nina Grosse
35 Die Paepstin
Volker Schloendorff
17
”I’m Interested in People Who
Cross Over Boundaries“
36 SimsalaGrimm – The Movie
Director’s Portrait Elfi Mikesch
36 Die Suenderin
Gerhard Hahn
Sherry Hormann
20 Cinepool’s Dream Team
37 Sugar Orange
Andreas Struck
World Sales Portrait Cinepool
22 Creating a Quality Brand
38
The 100 Most
Significant German Films (Part 5)
Producers’ Portrait MTM Medien &
Television Muenchen
38 Liebelei
Max Ophuels
24
30
39 Wintergartenprogramm
KINO news
Max Skladanowsky
40 Lola Montez
Max Ophuels
In Production
41 Madame Dubarry
PA S S I O N
30 Der alte Affe Angst
Oskar Roehler
30 Das fliegende Klassenzimmer
Tomy Wigand
31 Gate to Heaven
Veit Helmer
32 Gruesse aus Dachau!
Bernd Fischer
32 Das Jesus Video
Sebastian Niemann
Ernst Lubitsch
C O N T E N T S
42
M
NNES
GS
AT C A
EENIN
T SC R
ARKE
M
NNES
GS
AT C A
ENIN
C
S RE
T
E
K
AR
M
NNES
GS
AT C A
EENIN
T SC R
ARKE
New German Films
42 Anansi
Fritz Baumann
43 Annas Sommer
M
NNES
GS
AT C A
EENIN
T SC R
ARKE
I N S E A RC H O F A N I M P OT E N T M A N
A N NA’ S S U M M E R
John Henderson
Jeanine Meerapfel
44 Berlin – Sinfonie
einer Grossstadt
55 Suche impotenten Mann
fuers Leben
UN
NNES
D
AT C A
EGAR
AI N R
C E RT
56 Ten Minutes Older
Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, et al
57 Verrueckt nach Paris
B E RLI N SYM PHONY
C R A ZY A B O U T PA R I S
Thomas Schadt
Pago Balke, Eike Besuden
45 Die Datsche
HOM E TRUTH S
58 Westend
Markus Mischkowski, Kai Maria Steinkuehler
Carsten Fiebeler
46 Dream Dream Dream
Anne Alix
47 Gold Cuts – eine poetische
Reise durch die Gegensaetze
GOLD C UTS – A POETIC TRAI L
62
Film Exporters
66
Foreign Representatives
66
Imprint
T H RO U G H C O N T R A D I CT I O N
Ernst Handl, Team Gold Cuts
48 Grosse Maedchen weinen nicht
B I G G I R L S D O N ' T C RY
Maria von Heland
49 Herz im Kopf
MAR
NNES
AT C A
I NG S
REEN
C
KET S
H E A RT OV E R H E A D
Michael Gutmann
50 Nichts Bereuen
M
NNES
GS
AT C A
EENIN
T SC R
ARKE
NO REG RETS
Benjamin Quabeck
51 Poem – ”Ich setzte den Fuss
in die Luft, und sie trug“
POE M
Ralf Schmerberg
52 Ein Produzent hat Seele
oder er hat keine
Volker Schloendorff
NNES
AT C A
ITION
M PET
I N CO
53 Russian Ark
Alexander Sokurov
54 Sternzeichen
ZO D I AC S I G N
Peter Patzak
”Ring of Fire“ by Andreas Hykade
Key European Market
If one wanted proof that the German animation industry has
become a force to be reckoned with in Europe, this was
convincingly delivered last year when two of the industry’s
top international events – March’s CARTOON Movie and
September’s CARTOON Forum – were both staged in
Germany.
In fact, it was the third time that the CARTOON Movie
co-production market had assembled at the Babelsberg Studios
Going back to the days of the silent movies, before the First
World War, the first German animation films were made by
Julius Pinschewer (Corsets Gebr. Lewandowski, 1910)
and Guido Seeber (Die geheimnisvolle Streichholzdose, 1909/10).
In the 1920s, their involvement in abstract and dadaist art attracted Walther Ruttmann (Der Sieger, 1921) and Hans
Richter (Rhythmus series, 1921-1925) to make outings into
animation, but a unique figure from this time who built up an
unchallenged international reputation was the animator Lotte
ANIMATION
(returning for a fourth time this spring). And the Bavarian
alpine town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen was the latest stop in
CARTOON Forum’s trail across Europe, which brought
more than 700 delegates together for the pitching of projects for
animated TV series and web-based productions.
The significance of the German animation sector was also brought
out by the fact that 240 of the delegates accredited at the Forum
were from Germany, including 60 potential investors, with
German animation production outfits involved as lead producer in
18 of the market’s 88 projects.
While France is still the leading center for the production of animation in Europe, Germany has now developed in a matter of
only a few years into the second largest European market, with
production said to be worth US$130 million annually and new
animation studios popping up in some corner of the country
every month.
Long Tradition in Animation
However, before we look at the current situation of the animation industry in Germany, let’s have a brief glance back at some of
the past highlights in German animation.
6
Reiniger, who became famous for her silhouette films created
from back-lit paper cut-outs.
She made her first animation film in 1919 (The Ornament of
the Lovestruck Heart/Das Ornament des verliebten
Herzens) and animated a dream sequence for Fritz Lang’s
1924 epic Die Nibelungen, which was widely screened despite
being removed from the completed version of the film. Reiniger’s
classic The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Die
Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed, 1926) – which was
credited by some as being the first feature-length animation film –
consisted of 250,000 single images and had a ”multi-plane“ camera specially designed and built for the production.
In addition to shooting experimental shorts and silhouette films
from the late 20s to the mid 1930s, Reiniger also contributed silhouette sequences for such live-action features as Georg
Wilhelm Pabst’s Don Quixote (Don Quichotte, 1933)
and Jean Renoir’s La Marseillaise (1937). In 1936,
Reiniger emigrated with her husband to Great Britain where she
lived and worked (Hansel & Gretel, 1955) – among other
things, for the Crown Film Unit and General Post Office Unit –
until 1980 before returning to her native country a year before
her death.
Kino 2/2002
”Hansel & Gretel“ by Lotte Reiniger
Animation During the Third Reich
Any development of artistic dimensions to animation was nipped
in the bud by the draconian measures of the Nazi regime from
1933 onwards even though there was a (failed) attempt in 1942
by the Film Ministry to establish an official Deutsche Zeichenfilm
GmbH. The Film Ministry did command however the most distinguished animators still in Germany to step up their production and
concentrate on theatrically viable animation features.
One figure working during the 30s was Wolfgang Kaskeline
(Zwei Farben, 1933, and Der blaue Punkt, 1936), who,
despite the general restriction of artistic freedom, was mainly
active in the field of advertising and ran his own studios in Berlin
and Bonn-Bad Godesberg after the war until his death in 1973.
Another important figure was the avant-garde animator and painter Oskar Fischinger who co-owned an animation company in
Munich by the age of 22 and produced a number of experimental
films. In an attempt to combine his two passions of music and
the graphic arts, Fischinger experimented with photographing
multiple forms – melting wax, cardboard cutouts, swirling liquids.
According to Fischinger historian William Moritz, he devised
”a machine that would slice very thin layers from a prepared block
of wax, with a camera synchronized to take one frame of the
remaining surface of the block. Any kind of image could be built
into the wax block – a circle getting smaller would be a simple
cone, for example.“
Fischinger worked at the UFA studios in Babelsberg on the
special effects for Fritz Lang’s silent science fiction film
Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond) in 1928, and some
of his shorts took the form of advertisements. Muratti Gets
in the Act (Muratti greift ein, 1934), for example, was for
a popular cigarette company and had cigarettes marching in mad
goose-stepping formation – as a precursor to his later work with
Short animated commercials were the focus of the work at this
time by the three Diehl brothers – Paul, Hermann and
Ferdinand Diehl – who initially started in classical animation
and silhouette films before moving into puppet animation when
they set up their studio in Graefelfing, near Munich, in 1929.
Their film work specialized on fables and fairytales, but their
greatest success was with the tales spun around the figure of
”Mecki“ (1937) who captured children’s (and adults’) hearts
from the 1950s onwards and spawned a veritable flood of toys
and books, even to this day. Until 1970, the Diehls made more
than 60 films – some combining puppet animation with liveaction – and over 100 commercials.
Meanwhile, ”audience darling“ Hans Fischer – also known as
Fischerkoesen – directed and produced animated fairy tale
fantasies -– such as Schall und Rauch (1933), Das blaue
Wunder (1935) and Snowman (Der Schneemann, 1944)
– which some observers deemed could hold their own with the
likes of Disney. As a result of Fischerkoesen’s success in advertising films, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels ordered him to
move his staff and studio from the Leipzig area to Potsdam to
make himself available for consultations and special effects on
features and documentaries.
”Capt’n Bluebear“ by Hayo Freitag
– MADE IN
GERMANY
Walt Disney on Fantasia (1940) where broomsticks did
the marching in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice episode.
Fischinger’s pioneering use of multiple overlapping projected images and light shows alongside his abstract animation won him a
following outside of Germany at film festivals around the world
for bringing the last word in modernism. But the Nazis didn’t
share the same enthusiasm declaring his work as ”degenerate“
in 1936. Forced to leave Germany, Fischinger created shorts
for Paramount and MGM, worked for a year at Disney on
Fantasia and at Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater on a
project that was never realized. As Moritz notes, ”he was the
only avant-garde filmmaker of the 20s who also continued his
work in the 30s and 40s in his new home of Los Angeles and so
helped to spur on the experimental film movement in America“.
Kino 2/2002
7
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MADE
”Konferenz der Tiere“ by Curt Linda
ANIMATION
IN
GERMANY
In the 1970s, Winzentsen and his first wife Ursula made many
animation films for children’s television at NDR and WDR,
continuing this work into the 1980s after their separation with
such children’s films as Hin- und Rueckfahrt (1984/85) and
Telefonfieber (1984/85), playing with the possibilities of the
medium.
A previous film, Flamingo – Aus meinem Animationstagebuch (1982), had seen Winzentsen – who has been
serving as professor for animation at the Academy of Fine Arts in
Hamburg since 1987 – combining various animation techniques
with photographs he had collected or taken. This approach was
continued in a collaboration with Thomas Mitscherlich on
the feature Der Fotograf (1990).
After 1945, Germany was flooded with animated films from the
US, particularly from Walt Disney. People who had just lived
under 12 years of terror wanted to catch up on all of the pleasures forbidden them by the Nazis and this included films from
Hollywood.
As Albrecht Ade, founder of the internationally-renowned
animation festival in Stuttgart, pointed out in an touring exhibition
brochure of the new generation of animators in 1984, Disney et
al then set the agenda for a long while regarding the audiences’
tastes, and it was only in the second half of the 1960s that new
efforts came from art academies and individual enthusiasts to give
space once more to experimentation in animation and find new
forms of expressions and new audiences.
In the fifties, animation in (West) Germany was – with a few
exceptions – more about mannered style and perfect animation
technique than the quality of the drawing and imagination in the
dramaturgy. Any prospects for a continuity in the development of
the animation sector withered away when the tax incentives for
cultural films (Kulturfilme)– and thus for animated shorts – were
abolished. For many years, animation was alive and well in
Germany – but only in the world of advertising.
The Oberhauseners and Animation
In February 1962, a group of young filmmakers signed the
Oberhausen Manifesto, including a handful of animators.
One of the signatories, Wolfgang Urchs had made the short
Die Gartenzwerge in 1961, pointing up social aspects of life
in the young Federal Republic. At the time, the press described it
as ”the first competitive West German animated short“ and
Urchs followed with highly political short films like Die Pistole
(1963) and Kontraste (1964).
Doyen of German Animation:
Curt Linda
Back in 1969, the first German feature-length animation film was
produced in color – Die Konferenz der Tiere – by Curt
Linda who was awarded a Honorary German Film Award last year
for his outstanding services to German cinema. ”I unfortunately
didn’t invent any Mickey Mouse“ was what Curt Linda is
supposed to have said when asked why he hadn’t become as
famous as his US colleague Disney.
But generations of German children have been nevertheless
enchanted by the magical figures coming from his Linda-Film
Produktion animation studio since its launch in December
1961 with such features as Shalom Pharao (1982), Harold
und die Geister (1988, with live-action sequences), Das
kleine Gespenst (1992) and Die kleine Zauberfloete
(1998).
”What distinguished Linda’s works was not the conveyor belt
work of hundreds of animators or lots of computers, but the
handicraft of a few possessed souls who pottered about in his
Munich studio between sketches, overflowing files and full shelves,
between prizes, certificates and cluttered up desks“, the German
Film Award organizers declared last year. Linda and his team
wanted, above all, to offer an alternative to the “American style
of over-dynamic movements and the mad hectic pace of the
characters“ with imaginative stories, the soft and gentle approach
and careful drawing. Often, more than 400,000 individual drawings were needed for just one 90-minute film.
Trixter & Magma Film’s ”Lilly the Witch“
Disney Dominance
It was over two decades, though, before Urchs embarked on his
first animated feature for Michael Schoemann’s studio, In
der Arche liegt der Wurm, which was made between 1985
and 1987 and known as Stowaway in the Ark in the US. He
followed this in 1990 with Peterchens Mondfahrt.
Meanwhile, fellow Oberhausener Helmut Herbst, who later
progressed to live action features, brought the Axel Springer concern into his sights with Schwarz-Weiss-Rot (1963/1964).
He then established the animation studio Cinegrafik in
Hamburg which worked on animation sequences for industrial
films and for Time Life as well as promotional trailers for the
third channel of local public broadcaster NDR. One of the studio’s collaborators was Franz Winzentsen who had cofounded an experimental puppet theater in 1960 and worked on
animation films at Cinegrafik until 1973.
8
Apart from his feature films, Linda also worked for television with
such series as Sensationen unter der Zirkuskuppel
(1971-1974), Spass an der Freud’ (1973-1974) and Opera
Presto (1976-1977).
Kino 2/2002
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MADE
DEFA Animation Studio
Meanwhile, over in the former German Democratic Republic
(GDR), the DEFA Animation Studio was founded in
Dresden in 1955 and became a gathering place for artists from a
variety of related disciplines including graphic design, commercial
graphics, puppetry and information films, as well as production
groups specializing in puppet animation films, silhouette films and
the ”classic“ 2-cell animation.
”Werner“ by Michael Schaack
As a Goethe Institute brochure accompanying a GDR
animation retrospective in 1992 observed, ”their love for the
very special art of animation, this unique combination of the
visual and the dramatic, formed a common bond which lasted
for decades“.
Until 1990, over 2,000 films were made – for the cinema, television and other institutions. Each year saw about 15 films and
series with episodes of between five and thirty minutes being
made for the Children’s General Program (Kindersammelprogramm) to be shown to kindergarten and nursery school groups.
Often, the films served as supporting films before the main feature in the cinemas, and some of them served an educational purpose for both children and adults. One series of 30 episodes,
Theo, for example, was on the issue of safety at the workplace,
while the figure of ”Kundi“ appeared in another series on behalf
of the German Hygiene Museum to teach children about
healthy living.
IN
GERMANY
In 1991 however, all of the studio staff were laid off and the studios closed down, bringing the production of puppet animation
films to a halt. In December of the same year, though, some of
the animators banded together to found Hylas Trickfilm
Dresden to produce and distribute puppet films for children and
adults. The following year, production began with support from
the state of Saxony on the making of Von der Fee, die
Feuer speien konnte. The arts authorities in Dresden helped
the new group set up a studio outside of the former DEFA infrastructure, and they also produced the puppet film Wie der
Mistkaefer Bernhard zum Verstand kommt (1995).
German Animation from the 1990s
Animation films are traditionally targeted first and foremost at
children, but this changed at the beginning of the 1990s in
Germany when producers, in particular Michael Schaack,
came upon the idea of bringing movement to the characters in
the cult Werner comic strips by Roetger ”Broesel“
Feldmann. Director/producer Schaack’s animated feature
Werner – Beinhart! (1990) was the result, and the beginning
of a highly successful franchise which has now entered into production on its fourth edition with Hayo Freitag’s Werner –
Ein Volk, Ein Koenich (2002).
The German animation industry has since become the envy of the
rest of the European animation community for being able to score
box-office success with ”adult“ features such as Gerhard
Hahn’s Werner – Volles Roaaa! (2.7 million admissions)
and Schaack’s The Little Bastard (Kleines Arschloch,
3 million admissions), as well as with ”traditional“ animation for
children such as Schaack’s Pippi Langstrumpf, and Thilo
Graf Rothkirch and Piet de Rycker’s The Little Polar
Bear (Der kleine Eisbaer, 2001).
Animation targeted mainly at children is naturally at a disadvantage
because such films normally can only secure afternoon and,
possibly, early evening screening slots in the cinemas and will have
lower takings since the bulk of the box-office comes from the
lower priced tickets for children. Films aimed at a wider, adult
audience, however, will also have access to evening slots
and thus have the potential for higher box-office returns.
”The Little Polar Bear“ by Thilo Rotkirch & Piet de Rycker
ANIMATION
Among the leading figures from the DEFA Animation Studio
were co-founder Kurt Weiler and Sieglinde Hamacher,
whose works were celebrated in retrospectives at last year’s
Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and
Animation Film.
While 80-year-old Weiler is known for his puppet animation on
such films as Die Geschichte von Kalif Storch and Vom
faulen Toepfer und dem fleissigen Waescher, 65-yearold Hamacher is known for her artistically challenging and politically non-conformist films, such as Kontraste (1982) and The
Solution (Die Loesung, 1988), made when the days were
numbered for the East German state.
The Dresden studio was also a stage in the career of 1961-born
Heinrich Sabl, one of the most innovative figures of German
animation in the 1990s, whose films include the shorts Wolf
bleibt Wolf (1994), The Cock (1994), and 100 Jahre
Kino (1995), as well as Père Ubu (1997) and Mère Ubu
(1998). In 1989, the Filmfest Dresden was established on the
grounds of the DEFA studios, focusing on the city’s long
tradition of animation film. Since then, the festival has developed
into and remains a leader in the specialized area of animation.
Kino 2/2002
It is no surprise then that European animation producers are
increasingly adopting the moniker of ”family entertainment“ to
describe their output so as to escape the ”children’s film ghetto“.
As Michael Schmetz, consultant to studio Hahn Film and
Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg among others, observes in a study
of animation feature films in Germany since 1997, one point to
remember about the comedies à la Werner and Arschloch
is that they may ”have not only refinanced themselves in the
9
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MADE
German-speaking market, but have also generated good profits
for the producers“; however, their ”specifically German humor“
means that these comedies are not great shakes in the export
department.
Top German Animation
Features 1997-2001
Title
Prod Company
Admissions
Kleines Arschloch
Senator/TFC
3,071,042
Werner – Volles Rooaaa! Achterbahn/Hahn
2,774,908
Der kleine Eisbaer
Cartoon Film/Warner
2,612,679
Kapt’n Blaubaer
Senator/TFC
1,371,115
Pippi Langstrumpf
Kirch Media/Svensk
1,106,033*
Film (Sweden)
TV Loonland/Happy
1,029,554*
Life Animation (Sweden)
800,736
Munich Animation
Pettson & Findus
Die furchtlosen Vier
Hilfe! Ich bin ein Fisch
Die Story von Monty
Spinneratz
Pippi Langstrumpf in
der Suedsee
Munich Animation/
696,737*
AFilm (Denmark)/Terra Glyph (Ireland)
Monty Film/
692,111
Warner Bros.
Kirch Media/TFC/
574,171*
Svensk Film (Sweden)
* international co-productions. Source: FFA/Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg
Diverse Studio Landscapes
Unlike France – where the industry is very much based in Paris –
Germany’s lack of one main production center is something of a
problem. But the federal structure does have its benefits since, as
with live-action production, the German states vie with each
other to attract animation studios to locate to their region by
providing attractive incentives. This is reflected in the seven
leading animation studios for the production of features: Hahn
Film and Cartoon Film Rothkirch are based in Berlin,
TFC Trickompany and Animationsstudio Ludewig in
Hamburg, Motion Works in Halle, and Trixter Film and
Munich Animation Film in Munich.
IN
GERMANY
According to Schmetz, around three animation features have been
produced in Germany each year since 1997, although he argues
that ”a volume of annually seven to ten German films could be
well managed by the local cinema market and would also give the
studios the possibility to hold on to their valuable creative personnel and occupy them on a continuous basis. Three films annually,
however, are not enough to keep the existing studio capacities
busy. All feature film producers are therefore also producers of
TV series at the same time“.
New Entrants
Interestingly, animation has also cast its spell on producer
colleagues from the live-action fiction segment.
One of the highest profile ”converts“ to the animation world was
veteran producer Eberhard Junkersdorf who set up his own
animation studio Munich Animation Film from scratch in
1995 to produce an animated version of an updated story of the
Bremen Town Musicians in The Fearless Four (Die furchtlosen Vier, 1997), distributed by Warner Bros.
Since then, the studio has worked with Thilo Graf Rothkirch
on Tobias Totz und sein Loewe (1999); on Help! I’m a
Fish (2000) with Danish and Irish production partners; and is
now preparing a feature based on the adventures of Jester Till
(Till Eulenspiegel) with British and Belgian partners. ”The animation scene didn’t really exist before in Bavaria“, Junkersdorf
recalls. ”We really triggered off a lot and many other companies
then followed“.
Meanwhile, down at the Bavaria Film-Studios, Odeon
Film is preparing to diversify into animation programming
through subsidiary Lunaris Film’s animation film rights to the
classic children’s books by Erich Kaestner. First up is a 13-part
series of Emil and the Detectives (Emil und die
Detektive) together with the Cologne-based animation studio
Juergen Egenolf Productions (J.E.P.) using the famous
Kaestner illustrations by Walter Trier as the basis for the
animation.
What’s more, the Leipzig outpost of Berlin producer Alexander Ris’ Mediopolis Film – producer of films by Fred
Kelemen and Seyhan Derin – has joined forces with Tony
”Tobias Totz und sein Loewe“ by Thilo Rotkirch & Piet de Rycker
ANIMATION
Added to these players are the production companies active in
the animation sector who do not have their own physical studio,
ranging from Senator Filmproduktion and Greenlight
Media through ndF neue deutsche Filmgesellschaft and
RTV Family Entertainment to Warner Bros. Film and
TV-Loonland.
Not to mention the many small outfits dotted around the country
who work primarily for television or advertising such as Toons
’n’ Tales, Scopas Medien and Studio Film Bilder.
”The German animation film studios also work in part as networks since, on the one hand, they often don’t have the capacity
for the production of a feature film“, Schmetz explains, ”and, on
the other, there are components like 3D animation which are only
available in certain studios“. Thus, The Little Polar Bear
involved the cooperation of four German animation studios:
Cartoon Film Rothkirch, Motion Works, Animationsfabrik Hamburg, and Animationsstudio Ludewig.
10
Kino 2/2002
ANIMATION
–
MADE
GERMANY
But German studios are also much sought-after partners for productions from other European territories. As Fredrik Zander
of Stockholm-based Happy Life Animation points out:
”Many of our projects have been co-produced with Germany
because the German funding programs are more flexible with coproduction deal structures. It is more difficult to co-produce with
French or Canadian partners because their quota system forces us
to place production in places where we might not think there was
the best talent“.
A recent case of a German animation studio being involved in an
international feature was Animationstudio Ludewig in
Hamburg working on the compositing for Jimmy Murakami’s
Christmas Carol – The Movie (2001), featuring the voices
of Kate Winslet and Nicolas Cage.
Show Me the Money
And Berlin is the base for an animation subsidiary launched by
Hofmann & Voges Entertainment – Punchhole Film
– to produce for cinema and TV. The first fruits of this collaboration are the animated linking sequences in the Erkan & Stefan
headnut TV show, which will prepare fans for the release of an
animated feature film based on the ”krass krauts“, currently entitled Erkan & Stefan und das Doenertier.
European Dimension
Given the size of the budgets animation features command – an
estimated average of Euro 6.5 million –, it is not surprising that
European co-production has increasingly become the name of
the game.
In the past five years, German public funds – i.e. the regional
economically-oriented bodies and the national German
Federal Film Board (Filmfoerderungsanstalt/FFA) –
have, on average, put up 50%-60% of the production costs for
German animation features via conditionally repayable loans.
”In many cases, animation can be more successful than live-action
films because it can get distribution not only nationally but also
internationally“, argues FilmFernsehFonds (FFF) Bayern
president Klaus Schaefer.
Indeed, the regional funds’ intention is also to help support the
creation of a lasting infrastructure for the animation sector, and
FFF Bayern’s Euro 7 million worth of investment over the last
five years in such animation projects as The Fearless Four,
Help! I’m a Fish and Pettson & Findus created an
economic ”effect“ of Euro 50 million in the region.
”Co-production is a necessity“, declares Stephan Schesch,
formerly of Ellipse Deutschland, ”but also an opportunity to
combine stories and talents from different markets. Instead of
being narrow-minded, it enables us to make products which are
geared to a global market“.
”Erkan & Stefan“ character sheet (© Punchhole)
”The Fearless Four“ by M. Coldewey, E. Junkersdorf, J. Richter
Loeser’s Motion Works to develop a 26-part series,
Count Mocca, centered on the figure of the colorful inventor
and adventurer for the six to eleven age group.
IN
Someone who would agree with this is German-born Ralph
Christians, whose company Magma Films is based on the
west coast of Ireland in Galway and has worked with Schesch on
the Loggerheads and Norman Normal series and is now
collaborating with Trixter Film on the Lilly the Witch
series and the feature Moby Dick – The Legend Returns.
”I think we have created a network here in Europe where people
come together with different skills“, Christians explains. ”If you
look at Greenlight, they are very good at marketing and merchandising. Our main skill is to create and write stories by inhouse writing teams for other studios, and others are very good
at voice recording or post-production“.
This ”European dimension“ to the German animation scene
operates in both directions: foreign animation studios come
onboard German productions – as in the case, say, of Tobias
Totz und sein Loewe and Pettson & Findus.
Indeed, Michael Schmetz’s line up of 20 German animation
features planned for production from now until 2004 shows that
13 - i.e. 65% - will be international co-productions (this figure was
40% between 1997-2001). They include Motion Works’
Globi – der gestohlene Schatten with partners from
Switzerland and Luxembourg; Lenard Krawinkel’s Gaya
with a Spanish production partner; and three projects between
Greenlight Media and OSCAR-winning producer John
Williams (Shrek, 2001).
Kino 2/2002
Similarly, the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and its regional fund
Medien- und Filmgesellschaft (MFG) have made the animation sector a priority given the concentration of talents coming
out of the Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg
and the presence of companies in the region like Studio Film
Bilder which handled the animation sequences in Tom
Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (Lola rennt, 1998).
But not all is hunky dory as producer Thilo Graf Rothkirch
explained in an open letter to the finance ministries of Berlin and
Brandenburg this spring, calling on them to make a clear commitment to the region’s media industry by increasing the financial
resources available to Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg.
”We should not allow well-trained animators and operators to
move away to other regions just because we are on a weak
11
–
MADE
”Help! I’m a Fish“ by Stefan Fjeldmark & Michael Hegner
ANIMATION
IN
GERMANY
Festival of Animated Film which has been held every two
years since 1982.
The Film Academy in Ludwigsburg has gained the expertise of
Jochen Kuhn as professor for film design. Kuhn has taught
widely in Germany, Great Britain, Austria and Australia and has
received numerous awards for his films, such as Der lautlose
Makubra, 1980, Die Beichte, 1990, Die Stimme des
Igels, Vol. I & Vol. 2, (1994), Just Messing About
(Fisimatenten, 2000), and the Neulich series (1998-2002),
to name but a few. And in January of 2002, the Film Academy
launched its own Institute for Animation, Visual Effects and
Digital Post-Production. The Institute – under the direction of
Professor Thomas Haegele – is not only responsible for
courses such as Storytelling/Artistic Animation, Character
Animation and Visual Effects, but also for a development pool
for animation series with the focus on content design and
technical design.
footing in the financing of our projects, or whole projects leave
the region“, Rothkirch argued. ”We want to realize our visions
at the place where we live and not in foreign parts“.
According to Eberhard Junkersdorf, more money could be
generated for German animation films (and other genres) on top
of the public funds through the introduction of financial incentives
based on models in other countries such as the UK sale and
leaseback scheme, or the tax schemes operating in Ireland,
Luxembourg and Canada.
As it is, Germany’s private media funds have already identified
animation features and series as a lucrative business with the promise of a long shelf-life and broad exploitation of ancillary rights.
Some – such as Berlin Animation Film (BAF), Festival
Film and Scopas Family Entertainment have specialized
solely in animation.
Moreover, recent developments have also seen the establishment
of an Animation Master Class at the Fernsehakademie Mitteldeutschland (FAM) in Halle in central Germany in cooperation
with the local animation studio Motion Works and MDM
Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung to offer courses on
VFX and animation. And here are some of the ”ones to watch“ in
the new generation of animators in Germany:
Susanne Fraenzel teaches film animation at the Art
Academy in Stuttgart and makes films illustrating a successful
symbiosis of live action and colorful drawings, such as Bravo
Papa 2040 (1989).
Felix Goennert has been studying at the ”Konrad Wolf“
Academy of Film & Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg since 1997
and made Bsss in 1999, which was shown in the Export-Union’s
”Next Generation“ student film showcase in 2000.
”Die Stimme des Igels“ by Jochen Kuhn
Others have boarded certain projects with international potential
such as MBP (Internationale MedienbeteiligungsFilm- & TV-Produktionsgesellschaft)’s backing of the
UK production house Illumination Films’ Christmas
Carol – The Movie and CP Medien’s involvement in
Jester Till to be produced by Munich Animation with
Nik Powell’s Scala Productions and Belgium’s Stupid
Studio.
And Berlin-based Target Media was recently set up by Thilo
Graf Rothkirch’s Cartoon Film and The Little
Vampire-producer Comet Film to produce at least 15
animation and live-action features and TV series with Warner
Bros. as a distribution partner.
German Animation’s Up-andComing Generation
During the 1980s, several film and art schools in Germany,
particularly in Hamburg, Kassel, Stuttgart and Braunschweig,
became centers of animated film experimentation, which have
since served as a wellspring of ideas and development laboratory
for commercial film productions.
Albrecht Ade, who launched the animation studies course at
the Art Academy in Stuttgart in 1979, has played a pivotal role in
the development of a new generation of animators and of the
public perception of animation in Germany. Animation was high
on the agenda during the founding of the Film Academy in
Ludwigsburg, where Ade served as artistic director (Dr. Arthur
Hofer succeeded him in this post in 2000). Ade also provided a
national and international forum for the latest trends in animation
with the establishment of the Stuttgart International
12
Thomas Meyer-Hermann teaches at the Art Academy in
Stuttgart and is founder of Studio Film Bilder, which produced Gil Alkabetz’ animated sequences for Tom Tykwer’s
international hit Run Lola Run.
Andreas Hykade is a director and animator at Studio Film
Bilder in Stuttgart and the recipient of numerous awards.
His films include: We Lived in the Grass (Wir lebten im
Gras, 1995) employing a very individual drawing style to explore
the human psyche, and Ring of Fire (2000).
Kino 2/2002
–
MADE
IN
GERMANY
”Quest“ by T. Stellmach & T. Montgomery
(photo courtesy of Hessische Filmfoerderung)
ANIMATION
Vuk Jevremovich studied Architechture in Belgrade before
moving to Munich in 1991 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts.
His films include: Era (1995), The Wind Subsides (1996),
Panther (1998), which was shown in Venice, and Diary
(Tagebuch, 2000), shown in competition in both Montreal and
Biarritz.
Vera Lalyko studied Music and Sound Engineering before taking
up Animation at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in 1996.
She graduated with the film Window with a View (Fenster
mit Aussicht, 2001), which is being presented in this year’s
Export-Union ”Next Generation“ program. She works as a freelance animator for music clip productions, commercials, TV series,
and Internet projects.
The brothers Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein
brought home a much-cherished OSCAR for their film Balance
in 1989 and have created advertising spots in their Hamburg
studio for such companies as Sega, Nike and Coca-Cola.
”Balance“ by Christoph & Wolfgang Lauenstein
Daniel Nocke studied Animation and Direction at the Film
Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg from 1994-1999, graduating with
the film Die Troesterkrise, which won a prize at the International Festival for Animated Film in Stuttgart and was nominated
for the First Steps Award in 2000. He has also written screenplays
for Stefan Krohmer’s (live action) films Barracuda
Dancing, Ende der Saison and Sie haben Knut.
Arvid Uibel and colleague Heidi Wittlinger. Rocks
is dedicated to Arvid Uibel.
Kirsten Winter teaches at the Academy for Design and
Media in Hanover and has participated in numerous media art
festivals with such films as Clocks (1995), a powerful synthesis of
sound and painting and winner of the Short Film Award at Montreal
in 1995, and Escape (2001), which was shown in competition at
Montreal in 2001. She also collaborated with Gerd Gockell on
the documentary Muratti & Sarotti (2000), a documentary
on early German animation using cut-outs, objects, and archival
material.
Heidi Wittlinger has worked in design studios in Stuttgart
and Israel and has been studying Animation at the Film Academy
Baden-Wuerttemberg since 1998. In addition to her co-direction
on Rocks, her other films include Lockvogel, Auf Herz
und Nieren, Ei and Headless.
”Christmas Carol – The Movie“ by Jimmy Murakami
Martin Blaney
Ingo Panke studied Sociology and Political Science before
attending to the ”Konrad Wolf“ Academy of Film & Television in
Potsdam-Babelsberg. During his studies he made two cartoons –
including the 1999 ”Next Generation“ film Trompe L’Oeil –
and an experimental film.
Jan Thuering made his first short – The Battle of
Waterloo – at the age of 10 and studied Visual Communication
at the Niederrhein Academy of Communication from 1995-1997.
His animated short Terminal: Paradise (Endstation:
Paradies 2000) was shown in the ”Next Generation“ program
in 2001.
Thomas Stellmach and Tyron Montgomery are young
filmmakers teaching at the Academy in Kassel and working independently. They received an OSCAR in 1996 for Quest, a tragic
tale of a sand person searching for water in a world of sand.
Chris Stenner has worked as a programmer and 3D artist and
has been studying Animation at the Film Academy BadenWuerttemberg since 1998. He co-directed the animation short
Mann im Mond (1999) with fellow student Arvid Uibel
(1978-2000), and Rocks (Das Rad, 2001), together with
Kino 2/2002
13
ANIMATION – MADE IN GERMANY (useful contacts)
PRODUCTION COMPANIES & STUDIOS
Mediopolis Film- und Fernsehproduktion GmbH
Abrafaxe Trickfilm AG
Buelowstrasse 66 · 10783 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-2 35 56 00 · fax +49-30-23 55 60 66
www.mediopolis.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Alexander Ris
Lindenallee 5 · 14050 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-30 69 27 0 · fax +49-30-30 69 27 29
www.abrafaxe.com
Contact: Klaus D. Schleiter
Motion Works GmbH
Animationsfabrik Hamburg
Donnerstrasse 20 · 22763 Hamburg/Germany
phone +49-40-3 98 41 50 · fax +49-40-34 98 15 35
www.animationsfabrik.de
email: [email protected]
Contact: Joern Radel
An der Waisenhausmauer 11 · 06110 Halle/Germany
phone +49-3 45-20 56 90 · fax +49-3 45-2 05 69 22
www.motionworks-halle.com
email: [email protected]
Contact: Tony Loeser
Munich Animation Film GmbH
ASL – Animationsstudio Ludewig GmbH
Hamburger Strasse 205 · 22083 Hamburg/Germany
phone +49-40-2 00 01 90 · fax +49-40-20 00 19 19
www.asl-studios.com · email: [email protected]
Contact: Gert Ludewig
Rosenheimer Strasse 143d · 81671 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-3 83 88 20 · fax +49-89-38 38 82 22
www.munich-animation.com
email: [email protected]
Contact: Eberhard Junkersdorf
Comet Film
ndF neue deutsche Filmgesellschaft mbH
Otto-Hahn-Strasse 136 · 40591 Duesseldorf/Germany
phone +49-2 11-75 79 80 · fax +49-2 11-75 79 81
Contact: Gernot Nitschke
Kanalstrasse 7 · 85774 Unterfoehring/Germany
phone +49-89-95 82 60 · fax +49-89-95 81 60
www.ndf.de · email: [email protected]
Greenlight Media AG
NFP animation film GmbH
Gormannstrasse 22 · 10119 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-7 26 20 00 · fax +49-30-7 26 20 02 22
www.greenlightmedia.com
email: [email protected]
Contact: André Sikojev
Unter den Eichen 5 · 65195 Wiesbaden/Germany
phone +49-6 11-1 80 83 10 · fax +49-6 11-1 80 83 79
www.nfp.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Stefan Thies
Odeon Film AG
H5B5 Media GmbH
Rosenheimer Strasse 145f · 81671 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-45 25 45 00 · fax +49-89-45 25 45 55
www.h5b5.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Hendrik Hey
Bavariafilmplatz 7 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/Germany
phone +49-89-64 95 80 · fax +49-89-64 95 81 03
www.odeonfilm.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Reinhard Kloos
PunchHole GmbH & Co. KG
Hahn Film AG
Schwedter Strasse 36a · 10435 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-4 43 54 90 · fax +49-30-4 43 54 92 53
www.hahnfilm.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Gerhard Hahn
Schoenhauser Allee 8 · 10119 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-44 03 97 40 · fax +49-30-44 03 97 80
www.punch-hole.com · email: [email protected]
Contact: Peter Thaler
Rothkirch Cartoon-Film
Hylas Trickfilm Dresden
Meissner Landstrasse 54 · 01157 Dresden/Germany
phone/fax +49-3 51-4 54 01 37
Contact: Rolf Hofmann
Bergmannstrasse 68 · 10961 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-6 98 08 40 · fax +49-30-69 80 84 29
www.cartoon-film.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Thilo Graf Rothkirch
Juergen Egenolf Productions (J.E.P.)
RTV Family Entertainment AG
Schillerstrasse 6 · 50968 Cologne/Germany
phone +49-2 21-9 34 74 50 · fax +49-2 21-93 47 45 11
email: [email protected]
Contact: Dorothea Meersmann
Rheinstrasse 4c · 55116 Mainz/Germany
phone +49-61 31-97 31 90 · fax +49-61 31-9 73 19 10
www.rtv-ag.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Ulrike Willner
Linda-Film Produktion
Senator Entertainment AG
Roemerstrasse 60 · 85609 Aschheim/Germany
phone/fax +49-89-9 03 40 65
Contact: Curt Linda
Kurfuerstendamm 65 · 10707 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-88 09 17 00 · fax +49-630-88 09 17 23
www.senator.de · email: [email protected]
Lunaris Film GmbH & Co KG
Studio Film Bilder
Kurfuerstenplatz 4 · 80796 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-39 00 26 · fax +49-89-39 55 69
email: [email protected]
Contact: Peter Zenk
Ostendstrasse 106 · 70188 Stuttgart/Germany
phone +49-7 11-48 10 27 · fax +49-7 11-4 89 19 25
www.filmbilder.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Thomas Meyer-Hermann
14
Kino 2/2002
ANIMATION – MADE IN GERMANY (useful contacts)
TFC Trickompany Filmproduktion
Hohenesch 13 · 22765 Hamburg/Germany
phone +49-40-3 98 81 90 · fax +49-40-3 98 81 92 00
email: [email protected]
Contact: Michael Schaack
Toons ’N’ Tales Filmproduktion
Lerchenstrasse 16c · 22767 Hamburg/Germany
phone +49-40-43 13 34 70 · fax +49-40-43 13 34 75
www.toons-n-tales.com · email: [email protected]
Contact: Sunita Struck
PRIVATE MEDIA INVESTMENT FUNDS
BAF – Berlin Animation Film GmbH
Gormannstrasse 22 · 10119 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-7 26 20 04 30 · fax +49-30-7 26 20 04 44
www.baf-film.com · email: [email protected]
Contact: Patricia Schaefer, Markus Bruning
CP Medien
Schorndorfer Strasse 42 · 71638 Ludwigsburg/Germany
phone +49-71 41-2 42 01 10 · fax +49-71 41-2 42 01 30
Trixter Film GmbH
Festival Film Group
Oberfoehringer Strasse 186 · 81925 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-95 99 55 90 · fax +49-89-95 99 55 99
www.trixter.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Michael Coldewey
Bavariafilmplatz 7 · 82031 Gruenwald/Germany
phone +49-89-64 98 11 05 · fax +49-89-64 98 13 05
www.festival-film.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Claudia Tauchen
TV-Loonland AG
MBP - Internationale Medienbeteiligungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG
Muenchner Strasse 16 · 85774 Unterfoehring/Germany
phone +49-89-20 50 80 · fax +49-89-20 50 81 99
www.tv-loonland.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Peter Voelkle
Nymphemburger Strasse 121 · 80636 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-1 25 55 50 · fax +49-89-12 55 55 55
www.mbp-medien.de · email: [email protected]
Warner Bros. Film GmbH
Scopas Medien AG
Jarrestrasse 4 · 22303 Hamburg/Germany
phone +49-40-22 65 00 · fax +49-40-22 65 02 59
www.warnerbros.de
Westerbachstrasse 28 · 60489 Frankfurt/Germany
phone +49-69-78 99 20 · fax +49-69-78 99 22 23
www.scopas.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Thomas Schneider, Sandra Neumann
Target Media Entertainment GmbH & Co.
Filmproduktion KG
Filmfest Dresden – International Festival
for Animation & Short Films
Alaunstrasse 62 · 01099 Dresden/Germany
phone +49-3 51-82 94 70 · fax +49-3 51-8 29 47 19
www.filmfest-dresden.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Robin Mallick, Ines Seifert
Leipzig International Festival for
Documentary and Animated Film
c/o DOK - Filmwochen GmbH
Grosse Fleischergasse 11 · 04109 Leipzig/Germany
phone +49-3 41-9 80 39 21 · fax 3 41-9 80 61 41
www.dokfestival-leipzig.de
email: [email protected]
Contact: Fred Gehler
Almazeile 6g · 13505 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-88 91 33 55 · fax +49-30-88 91 33 56
www.targetmediaentertainment.de
email: [email protected]
Contact: Karin Stammer
”Pettson & Findus“ by A. H. Kaminski
ANIMATION FESTIVALS
Stuttgart International Festival of
Animated Film
c/o Film- und Medienfestival GmbH
Breitscheidstrasse 4 (Bosch Areal)
70174 Stuttgart/Germany
phone +49-7 11-92 54 60 · fax +49-7 11-92 54 61 50
www.itfs.de · email: [email protected]
Contact: Albrecht Ade
Kino 2/2002
15
D i re c t o r ’ s Po r t ra i t
Andreas Dresen
Andreas Dresen was born in Gera, Saxony in 1963. His father was the eminent theater director Adolf
Dresen. While still at school, he led a drama group, and began making amateur films in 1979. He worked as a
sound technician at the theater in Schwerin and as an assistant director at the DEFA studios before taking up
his studies at the ”Konrad Wolf“ Academy of Film & Television (HFF/B) in Potsdam-Babelsberg. A member
of the Academy of the Arts Berlin-Brandenburg since 1998, he received the Andrzej Wajda/Philip Morris
Freedom Prize in February of this year. Still active in the theater, his production of Akte Boehme was premiered
in December of last year at the Schauspielhaus Leipzig. His most important films include Silent Country
(Stilles Land, 1992, Hessen Film Award, German Critics’ Award), Das andere Leben des Herrn
Kreins (TV, 1994, DAG Television Award in Gold), Changing Skins (Raus aus der Haut, TV, 1997,
main prize at the Filmkunstfest Schwerin), Night Shapes (Nachtgestalten, 1998, several prizes
including a Silver Bear at Berlin for Best Actor and the German Film Critics’ Award), The Policewoman
(Die Polizistin, 2000, several prizes including the Adolf Grimme Award in Gold and the German Camera
Award) and Grill Point (Halbe Treppe, 2001, Silver Bear and Special Jury Award at the 2002 Berlinale).
Andreas Dresen lives in Potsdam.
THE UNBEARABLE
LIGHTNESS OF FILM
A Silent Country and not ”a blossoming country“.
Night Shapes and not ”heroes of the day“.
believes, and a film is not worth starting on. Some people have
been alienated by this. One critic wrote in the mid-nineties: ”In
their first takes, east German films make it obvious that they are
This is what his films are called. Lack of faith in the
new German light of day transformed into cinema.
And now Halbe Treppe: half a staircase.
So he even halves stairs. Where do half staircases
lead? Never to a center, that’s for certain. And definitely more likely down than up. One senses that it is
impossible to stay in places where ”half staircases“
appear.
Unless that place is the cinema. Perhaps there are no
better vantage points for film. After all, his is one of
the leading names among the not very many of new
German cinema. Andreas Dresen’s Grill Point
(Halbe Treppe) was the only one of four German
films in competition at the 2002 Berlinale, which,
according to most critics, could not be seen as a half
measure in any sense. Although it only consists of four
people, half-forgotten by life, living in a half-forgotten
eastern German town and having various difficulties
with each other. For they were careless enough to
remind life of their existence. The directness of Grill
Point countenances no reserve. It shoots us – and
we ourselves are also made up of reserve – into the
midst of a maelstrom which must, then, be life itself.
Dresen likes that sort of effect. He had already tried
it out in Night Shapes and The Policewoman.
All of these films are about the man on the street.
There are few other German directors who lend such
importance to the man on the street.
Cinema as an injection of reality. Driving truth to the
point where it hurts. Anything less than that, Dresen
Michael Hammon, Andreas Dresen (photo © WDR)
16
Kino 2/2002
D i re c t o r ’ s Po r t ra i t
Andreas Dresen
cultural products of the old type, with basic conflicts, with pretensions and a message“. The critic did not bother to conceal a certain dismay at such cultural fundamentalism. And it’s true, when
the German comedy volcano was already in the midst of erupting
ten years ago, Dresen was very careful not to let himself be
touched by either its lava or its rain of ash, consistently demanding
the return of the socially critical film. Sounds like organized gloom.
Films which offer us nothing to laugh about, about people who
have nothing to laugh about? But Dresen corrected this. Weighty
material simply has to learn to fly! Perhaps it is the tremendous
lightness of his films which repeatedly renders us speechless. And
indeed, why do people dress up laughter in extra ”laughter films“?
That is trivial. Andreas Dresen has not yet made a single
comedy, and yet his films are amusing and grotesque all in one.
He was not necessarily destined for success. Andreas Dresen
belongs to a generation in the East which could easily have gone
under during the change from east to west. On the one hand, he
was still young – twenty-seven years old at the end of the German
Democratic Republic (GDR) – but the period which had shaped
him was irrevocably over. It was a development under the auspices of the DEFA. The DEFA, the feature film studio of the GDR,
stood for ”cultural products of the old type“, for content, message
and pretensions. As yet without his own DEFA films, in 1990 this
quasi-DEFA director found himself in a new anti-DEFA reality. An
idiotic beginning, when you think about it.
But he had already noticed something. His film academy in
Potsdam had sent its students out into the streets. They were to
D i re c t o r ’ s Po r t ra i t
observe the fall of the GDR with the camera, and Dresen did
just this. He made a few very fine, short ”fall-of-the-GDR-films“
and then a wonderful, longer one (Silent Country), and in the
process he became aware of something remarkable: naturally,
decline and fall are always a bit sad in some way – this lies in the
nature of decline as a metaphysical fact – but above all, they can
also be terribly funny. Dresen has never forgotten this. The fact
that true metaphysics lie in the profane and that in reality they are
funny. The fact that from the outside, the best tragedies appear
fundamentally ”untragic“. And that the most successful comedies
have to be tragedies anyway. Andreas Dresen makes this kind
of film - Andreas-Dresen-films. An Andreas-Dresen-film comes
about when skilled DEFA technique and the weight of truth meet
up with the imperative of becoming lighter. Shake it off! Why
cameras on rails when you can carry them on your shoulders?
Why floodlights when it is light outside anyway? One is aware of
the techniques in order to know what can be done without.
Generally speaking, ”becoming lighter“ in this way is a sign of
maturity. This is when the social worker’s view begins to dance
and is drawn with a magical certainty into what sociologists have
decided to call ”social reality“.
In the case of Grill Point, Dresen’s attention was finally drawn
to the screenplay. Isn’t a screenplay far too weighty? And so
Andreas Dresen abandoned the screenplay, too.
Kerstin Decker writes for the Tagesspiegel,
die tageszeitung and Die Zeit, among others
Elfi Mikesch
”I’M INTERESTED
IN PEOPLE WHO
CROSS OVER
BOUNDARIES“
One simple conviction forms the basis for all of Elfi Mikesch’s
films: ”I believe in life, in the energy and intensity of a life that
breaks out of protected spheres, striving towards the unknown.“
Neither her experimental short films, nor her documentaries and
feature films are inventions with which to visualize abstract ideas
or to stage routine narratives. They are images and creations of
life, focusing on real people. Her films are journeys of discovery
into the secret heart of what is human; they are full of poetry, it is
true, but at the same time they are permeated by an intense experience of reality.
Her first documentary film Ich denke oft an Hawaii already
demonstrated the direction Mikesch’s film work was to take.
Kino 2/2002
Imagination, a willingness to take risks and a desire for freedom
are the decisive landmarks in both Mikesch’s life and her films.
All the people featured in her work, whether they are presented
in a documentary manner or brought to the screen as fictional
characters, are ”people of opportunity“. In Marocain (TV,
1989), Eva Lehmann leaves her northern German home and
enters the risk of a new life in Marrakesh. Mind the Gap is a
documentary telling the life story of Thorsten Ricardo Engelholz,
who emerges from a dark, handicapped childhood into a life of
creativity. The Markus Family is about the energy of a
person who can scarcely see, but who is able to devise a life for
himself as an artist.
17
D i re c t o r ’ s Po r t ra i t
Elfi Mikesch
Elfi Mikesch was born on 31 May 1940 in Judenburg/Austria. After leaving
school, she trained as a photographer. She has lived in Berlin since 1965 and works
as a photographer, camerawoman and director. In 1968, she published her first
German photo novel under the pseudonym Oh Muvie. She received a German Film
Award in 1978 for her first long documentary film Ich denke oft an Hawaii,
and again in 1979 for her dynamic, cinematic photo series in black and white
Execution: A Study of Mary concerning the life and death of Mary Stuart.
Besides documentary films about people with the courage to risk a life crossing
over boundaries – most recently Mind the Gap (Verrueckt bleiben, verliebt bleiben, 1996) and The Markus Family (2000) –, she has made
several short films, including Das Fruehstueck der Hyaene (1983) and
Soldaten Soldaten (1993). Her first feature film Macumba was realized in
1982. During 1985 she made Seduction: The Cruel Woman in collaboration with Monika Treut. Elfi Mikesch has worked as a camerawoman together
with various directors, nationally and internationally, including Rosa von Praunheim
(The Einstein of Sex - Dr. M. Hirschfeld, 1999), Werner Schroeter (Malina, 1991,
and Poussières d’Amour, 1996), Monika Treut (Die Jungfrauenmaschine, 1988), Peter
Woditsch (Hey Stranger, 1994) and Teresa Villaverde (A idade maior, 1991) to name
but a few.
Elfi Mikesch (photo © Lilly Grote)
It is no coincidence that Mikesch’s films are often concerned
with artists. For on the basis of her own destiny, it is possible to
show in an exemplary way how significant a role in life is played by
imagination and reverie. ”And this reverie is also playful“,
Mikesch adds: ”Our soul plays with all those ideas that it is not
permitted to play with during the day. That is why I do the same
with my films.“ But these playful games are not entertainment with
which to divert our attention away from life. They determine life
itself, whether in the shape of memories when facing death as in
Was soll’n wir denn machen ohne den Tod? (1980) or
in the shape of scenarios as in the feature film Seduction: The
Cruel Woman, where masochistic reveries are staged as a
form of life and artistic action.
Elfi Mikesch loves documentary film. ”I love this way of working, approaching other people and working together with them,
this mutual play with all our possibilities.“ She becomes involved
with people and their situations, in a reciprocal process of give and
take in which something new may always be discovered,
both before and behind the camera. This joy in discovery
derives its energy from a precise viewpoint; one which
also takes its time. Often "silent" images are the ones
characteristic of Mikesch’s style. By contrast to the
flood of images in the media – over-stimulating our perception and threatening to cripple it –, she works with
camera angles and editing techniques which facilitate
attentive contemplation. Intensity and precision are the
ideals of her cinematic aesthetics.
Her camera work for other directors radiates the same
concentration. It does not make any essential difference
to Mikesch whether she is working as a director herself
or wielding the camera for others, as long as there is
productive harmony. In this respect, too, rich interplay
with characters prepared to take on risks is central to
her work. ”I can learn by working together with others.
I am stimulated to develop my own conceptions and
ideas. It is a fruitful communicative process.“ But it can
only be successful if there is that energy which crosses
over boundaries, an energy from which Mikesch derives
her strength.
Elfi Mikesch spoke to Manfred Geier, writer for the
Sueddeutsche Zeitung, among others, and professor
for German Literature and Language at the
University of Hanover
18
Kino 2/2002
Film und Video
Untertitelung Gerhard Lehmann AG
NEED WE SAY MORE?
Laser Subtitling on Film • Video Subtitling in Broadcast Quality • DVD Subtitling with specially developed fonts,
such as DVD Script Hardy • Subtitling for all Computer Programmes (or other disc-based systems)
Translation to and from all Languages • Final Check and In-House Editing of all Subtitles and Translations • Voice-overs
• Digital Editing in PAL and NTSC • Standard Conversions • 3D Graphics in PAL and NTSC • Telecine
• Video Transfer into all Standard Formats • Inspection of Broadcast Material
• Audio and Video for the Internet and Multimedia
…and many other services!
•
TM
•
FILM UND VIDEO UNTERTITELUNG GERHARD LEHMANN AG
.
WETZLARER STR. 30 D-14482 POTSDAM-BABELSBERG . TEL: +49 331 704 74-0 . FAX: +49 331 704 74-99
EMAIL: [email protected]
Wo rl d S a l e s Po r t ra i t
CINEPOOL
Established in 1989 as TELEPOOL’s theatrical department TELEPOOL’s shareholders
German public broadcasters Bayerischer Rundfunk, SWR Holding GmbH, Mitteldeutscher
Rundfunk and Swiss Television Offices in Munich, Zurich, Los Angeles Head of
Theatrical Sales CINEPOOL Dr. Cathy Rohnke Additional contact Wolfram
Skowronnek Main fields of activity world-wide distribution of feature films Regular
attendance of the following film markets Berlin, Cannes, MIFED Number of
titles on offer 75 Percentage of German titles on offer 90% Buyers include
Alliance Atlantis, Artificial Eye, Best Film, Columbia Tristar, Fine Line Features, Gaga
Communications, Mikado, Musidora, Orler, Pandora Most well-known titles currently
on offer Anansi, Berlin Symphony, Help, I’m a Boy!, NOGO, The White
Sound Best-selling titles currently on sale Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,
Enlightenment Guaranteed, Now or Never, Gloomy Sunday
CINEPOOL · A Dept. of Telepool Europaeisches
Fernsehprogrammkontor GmbH
Sonnenstrasse 21 · 80331 Munich/Germany · phone +49-89-55 87 60 · fax +49-89-55 87 62 29
www.telepool.de · email: [email protected], [email protected]
CINEPOOL’S
DREAM TEAM
”Going to the movies means, for me, going to a magical and wonderful place,“ says Cathy Rohnke, head of CINEPOOL. ”It
means visiting my dreams. The cinema is where my dreams, good
and bad, come alive on the big screen and I can share them with
others. You can happily call me a movie maniac! If I were down to
my last dime, I’d still spend it on a ticket!“
”There is not such a thing as a typical CINEPOOL film.
Important for us is less the film’s nationality and more its direction.
We sell to the world. It’s not set in stone that it has to be
German-language. We also have titles from Robert Altman,
Chen Kaige, Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Zanussi
in our portfolio.“
Rohnke, whose CV includes music, dance and theater, studied at
Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilian-University and the city’s film school.
At the same time, she says, “I did everything that’s possible to do
in the film scene – carrying cables, director’s assistant-ing, whatever.“
For a woman who proudly boasts, ”I go to the cinema to watch
everything!“, and who numbers Fargo, The Full Monty,
Night of the Hunter and Touch of Evil among her
favorites, it is the cinemagoer who counts.
After working in New York and San Francisco, she returned home
and opened a sponsorship company, ”meeting many people with
good ideas and no money and bringing them together with people
who could realize them.“ Which is how she came to her next job;
banking! For the next six years, she headed the HypoVereinsbank’s
marketing communications department.
”Whenever somebody asked,“ she says, ”I’d say it was everything
bright which flickered! I was involved with multimedia and interactivity, and together with Bavaria Film Interactive, I built the
first business-TV association in Germany.“
But Rohnke just couldn’t leave the cinema alone, so ”alongside
the bank I took on a teaching position at Leipzig University in
Dramaturgy and Script Development. And last year I told myself
I had to think seriously about where my emphasis is. I decided
it was with the cinema. I met up with TELEPOOL, CINEPOOL’s owners, and since January 2002 I’ve been the new
head.“
20
”For me, and that goes for CINEPOOL, too, the film has to
be entertaining. People pay money to see it and they expect
something for it. They want a performance and the film has to
deliver one.“
CINEPOOL is a company keen, says Rohnke, ”to work with
movies that travel world-wide. There is a new generation of
filmmakers in Europe waiting to be discovered. Usually we take
on movies on a rough cut basis. But there are exceptions, such as
the new Doris Doerrie film, Nackt (Naked), where we
stepped in after reading the wonderful script.“
Like many, she sees ”the new media providing new possibilities of
viewing films, new ways of delivering them. But it doesn’t mean
that the Internet is the end of the cinema. Quite the opposite; it
will help increase the audience, especially as a marketing tool.
However, I prefer going to a cinema to devour films and popcorn.
I like the idea of being able to put together my own film evening.
But then I want to watch that on my large-screen TV in my living
room, not on the PC.“
Kino 2/2002
CINEPOOL
Dr. Cathy Rohnke, Wolfram Skowronnek (photo © Kathrin Stetter), photographed at the ARRI cinema in Munich
Wo rl d S a l e s Po r t ra i t
CINEPOOL’s current Cannes catalogue covers a wide range,
from the renowned German documentary maker Thomas
Schadt’s Berlin Symphony (Berlin – Sinfonie einer
Grossstadt cf. p.44) – a remake of the Walther Ruttmann
1920s masterpiece – to Anansi (cf. p.42), a heartbreaking story
of three African refugees, which features music by reggae star
Shaggy, The White Sound (Das Weisse Rauschen), a
film about the tragedy of a young schizophrenic (starring Daniel
Bruehl), and the family fantasy film Help, I’m a Boy! (Hilfe,
Ich bin ein Junge!) round up the portfolio.
”We’ve also acquired a wonderful Austrian film, NOGO, from
Dor Film,“ says Rohnke. ”NOGO is about three couples,
the stories told parallel, à la Tarantino, and takes place at a
petrol station. The first couple are Meret Becker and Oliver
Korritke, the second Jasmin Tabatabai and Juergen
Vogel and the third Mavie Hoerbiger and Michael
Ostrowski. They’re all actors you’ve seen elsewhere but not as
good as in this film. It’s exciting and explosive, in the true meaning
of the word.“
If this isn’t the stuff of dreams, what is?
Simon Kingsley spoke to Cathy Rohnke
Kino 2/2002
21
P ro d u c e r s ’ Po r t ra i t
MTM Medien & Television Muenchen
Established in 1993 by producers Gloria Burkert, Andreas Bareiss and Peter Herrmann, MTM produces for
the majority of German broadcasters (ProSieben, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Mitteldeutscher
Rundfunk and ZDF) as well as for the cinema. The company scored an international success with the co-production of
Romuald Karmakar’s The Deathmaker (Der Totmacher), which was the German entry in the 1997 race
for the OSCAR for Best Foreign Language Film. Produced in 1995, the film received three German Film Awards and was
awarded the Bavarian Film Award, the Hesse Film Prize, as well as the Coppa Volta at the Venice Film Festival. MTM’s
production of The Bubi Scholz Story (Die Bubi Scholz Story, 1998) for ARD was another success, receiving
the German Camera Prize, the Bavarian Television Award as well as the German Television Award. The company has also
enjoyed fruitful collaborations over the years with directors Dominik Graf and Friedemann Fromm in the field of
TV movies. Among MTM’s other credits are Jan Schuette’s Fat World (Fette Welt, 1997) and Roland Suso
Richter’s A Handful of Grass (Eine Handvoll Gras, 1999). In 2001, the company – which also has an outpost,
MTM West Television und Film GmbH, in North Rhine-Westphalia – produced three features: Caroline
Link’s Nowhere in Africa (Nirgendwo in Afrika), Dominik Graf’s Berlinale 2001 competition entry A Map
of the Heart (Der Felsen), and Urs Egger’s Epstein’s Night (Epsteins Nacht).
MTM Medien & Television Muenchen GmbH · Siegfriedstrasse 8 · 80803 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-3 83 97 20 · fax +49-89-38 39 72 30 · www.mtm-medien.de · email: [email protected]
CREATING A
QUALITY BRAND
”When we decided to come together, the first idea was just to
produce good films“, recalls Andreas Bareiss who joined forces with fellow producers Gloria Burkert and Peter
Herrmann in December 1993 to set up the production company MTM Medien & Television Muenchen.
At that point in the early 1990s, it would have been too much of
a risk to have focused primarily on films for the cinema. ”Instead,
we said that we would make good television on a high-quality
narrative level in the field of 90-minute TV movies“, Bareiss
continues.
This strategy certainly seems to have paid off as the company’s
reputation in the industry was made, in particular, through its
collaborations with Dominik Graf on such productions as
Frau Bu lacht (1995), Der Skorpion (1997) and Deine
besten Jahre (1998), and with Friedemann Fromm on
Perfect Mind (1996), Spiel um Dein Leben (1997), and
Zum Sterben schoen (1999).
”These films resulted from a common understanding of the film
medium and film language“, Bareiss explains, ”about how I
approach a narrative in a film and which stories I want to tell“.
Most of MTM’s television work has been done with the public
broadcasters and, as with certain directors, the company has also
built up a bond of trust with commissioning editors ”because they
should also share what we think and not just be the ones who do
the financing“.
But how does the company work in practice with three strong
producer personalities under one roof ?
”I think the quality of MTM is that we have three extremely
different characters and we don’t present competition for each
22
other“, Bareiss says. ”The things which each one wants to
produce come about from their own very special take on the
stories and that then leads to the collaboration with the directors“.
Looking back at their first ten years of activity, he admits that it
would seem ”that Peter has done the larger projects like The
Bubi Scholz Story, Nowhere in Africa, and the projects
with Guenter Rohrbach – A Handful of Grass and
Fat World – , while I am more the one for melodramas and
romantic comedies, and Gloria has stayed with the drama and the
crime thriller. But that has just turned out that way.“
”In fact, we are like three small individual production platforms“,
Bareiss suggests, pointing out that before embarking on a project, all three look to see ”whether it fits our corporate identity.
We resisted for years from doing certain projects because they
did not conform to our brand. When we set the company up in
1993, we said that we would define ourselves through our brand
name ’MTM’ and not through our own names. The idea is that
the brand should be worth something, one should be able to trust
the whole, not just the individual“.
In addition, MTM is not a ’here today, gone tomorrow outfit’
making the fast, easy money. ”We are looking to the long term“
Bareiss declares. ”We have not said that we want to be
profitable in five years, but are aiming instead to do this in 10
years. The kinds of films we are making have a very long lead-in
time, realization in the medium term, and then exploitation in
the long term“.
”For example, we optioned the rights for Nowhere in Africa
in 1995 and the film was released in the cinemas in 2001, and TV
and video revenues will follow. All this takes time – which perhaps
contradicts the Zeitgeist – but we want to create a value chain because we know that one can also show our films in ten years’ time“.
Kino 2/2002
MTM Medien & Television Muenchen
Andreas Bareiss, Gloria Burkert, Peter Herrmann (photo © Walter Wehner)
P ro d u c e r s ’ Po r t ra i t
After having a regular output each year of TV movies, it was
nevertheless quite a step for the company to then embark on
tackling three features – Epstein’s Night, A Map of the
Heart, and Nowhere in Africa – more or less at the same
time last year.
For Bareiss, though, it was a logical step in the company’s development after its involvement in countless TV movies which, on the
one hand, had scored with both critics and audiences and, on the
other, were not that far away from many German feature films as
far as their production values were concerned.
”We thought that we might possibly succeed in being able to produce popular feature films with the same demands on quality
which we had made for the TV movies“, Bareiss explains.
”The idea was to create a brand for the cinema and make it
unmistakably clear with three films in one swoop where we see
our future“, he adds.
The first of the trio to open in the cinemas - Caroline Link’s
Stephanie Zweig-adaptation Nowhere in Africa, starring
Juliane Koehler and Merab Ninidze – has developed into
something of a sleeper success for distributor Constantin
Film. Launched on 27 December 2001 with 229 prints, the film
still had the same number circulating through German cinemas
over two months later and passed the one million admissions
mark at the beginning of March 2002.
As Bareiss points out, Link’s film is one of those films like
Chocolat or The English Patient which takes a while to
find its predominantly female audience. But find it it does. The
audiences for such upmarket titles tend to be spread over several
weeks because a cinema visit for them is a real event which has to
be specially arranged – with the booking of a babysitter and so on.
”It’s not important for me to get 11 million [admissions] just
once“, Bareiss jests in allusion to last year’s box-office hit
Manitou’s Shoe (Der Schuh des Manitu). ”I’d like that as
well, of course! But I want to produce ten films in the next ten
years which each are seen by a million. I am more for stability than
for speculation about a particular success“.
Kino 2/2002
Meanwhile, in the immediate future, MTM has projects in
development which see it working with partners outside of the
German-speaking area and with newcomer filmmakers.
The co-production with France’s MACT Productions on
Nina Grosse’s coming-of-age story Olgas Sommer (cf. p.34)
”is a very organic development“, according to Bareiss. ”Parts of
the story are set in a southern country like Spain or France.
Moreover, the director studied in France and is very francophile.
And the German-French Film Academy and the mini-treaty in the
co-production agreement were also supporting factors which
made it easier for our French partner to come onboard“.
For a second project, MTM will serve as the junior partner on a
Austrian-Hungarian-German co-production (Dallas) to be set in
Transylvania and directed by Robert Pejo. ”It is a central
European story with a cinematic language that comes from the
center of Europe“, Bareiss says and points out that MTM
would not get involved in co-productions just for the sake of it
”but only when a film says something we think will be of interest
to our audience in Germany“.
As far as working with newcomer directors, he admits that
MTM has not done much in this area although the three
producers are always keeping their eyes and ears open to know
what new talents are coming out of the film academies.
A project now in preparation is with Kai Pieck – Ein Leben
lang kurze Hosen tragen about the child murderer Juergen
Bartsch – which will be made within the WDR/Filmstiftung
NRW ”Six Pack“ initiative. And Bareiss is working with the
English-born screenwriter Nick Baker-Monteys on a
comedy with the working title 42 about a psychoanalyst who is
mistakenly diagnosed with a brain tumor and suspects that his
patients might not be so crazy after all …
Martin Blaney spoke to Andreas Bareiss
23
Kino n e w s
The Filmstiftung NRW invites European producers to an
international film conference within the framework of the
Media Forum North Rhine-Westphalia from 18 - 20
June 2002. For three days, filmmakers and representatives
from the film industry will meet to make new contacts,
exchange ideas and discuss new trends.
While the co-production meeting will provide an opportunity
to pitch new projects and find partners for international coproductions, the discussion rounds will be dedicated to the
future of German film. Topics will include the various strategies of larger and smaller distributors, the complicated business relationship between bankers and film producers, as well
as the difficult situation of marketing German films abroad.
A further point of focus will be the prospects of the expanding East European market. For further information, please
contact:
New Faces at the Export-Union
The position of the Export-Union’s representative for the
USA/East Coast and Canada has been divided up into two
separate areas of work, given the central role the two regions
play both in the festival and production/distribution scenes. In
the future, two people will be responsible for looking after the
region.
With immediate effect, the representative for USA/East
Coast is the film agent Oliver Mahrdt. The New Yorker of
German descent has been working in the international film
business since 1994 and is the sole owner of the Hanns
Wolters Agency, one of the oldest talent agencies in New
York.
Martina Neumann
“Am See“ by Ulrike von Ribbeck
Filmstiftung NRW, phone +49-2 11-93 05 00 or
email: [email protected]
sive statistical and informational catalogue. The services are
divided into seven categories: profile of the FFA, film subsidy
law and other regulations, press services, funding departments, market data, publications, as well as important links to
institutions and organizations in the German and international
film industries. Whether you’re in London, Paris or Rome –
just one click is all you need: www.ffa.de.
Oliver Mahrdt (photo © Karin Kohlberg, NY)
Film Conference in Cologne
Extraordinary Cinema Year
in Germany
The run at the German box offices carries on and the film
industry continues to announce new records - that is the
conclusion of the German Federal Film Board’s (FFA)
official analysis of the year 2001. For the first time in ten
years, cinema attendance in Germany increased by 16.7%, a
percentage plus far greater than that in France, England or the
United States. A total of 177.9 million cinemagoers were
registered; statistically seen, that’s 2.2 cinema visits per capita.
With a turnover of Euro 987.2 million, the box offices scored
a plus of over 20 percent.
And German productions experienced a similar increase of
interest. For the first time in years and with more than 10.5
million admissions, a German film, Manitou’s Shoe (Der
Schuh des Manitu), topped the annual hit list. Eight other
local films, including four children’s films, drew in audiences of
over one million viewers.
Complete details of the analysis and statistics can be downloaded from the FFA’s new website at www.ffa.de. The
recently re-launched website is more user friendly and offers a
search function to navigate the user through the FFA’s exten-
24
The newly created post of representative for Canada has
been taken by the German scholar and media marketing
expert Martina Neumann. She has also been working for
some time in the film and media industry - as a producer for
ProSieben and the head of marketing for the e-business company Proxicom Germany, among other things.
The USA/East Coast and Canada had been looked after by
the Canadian-Austrian film expert Brigitte Hubmann until
the end of 2001.
At the Munich headquarters of the Export-Union, the project
manager Julia Basler has started her maternity leave; she
has been succeeded by Stephanie Weiss, who has been
working for the Export-Union as a PR assistant since 2000 and
will now be responsible for the organization of the four
Festivals of German Cinema in Europe. The new PR assistant
is Cornelia Klimkeit, who was previously a member of
the organization team for the Rencontres Internationales
Paris/Berlin Festival.
Contact details for all Export-Union employees and
foreign representatives can be found at:
www.german-cinema.de under ”About Us“.
Kino 2/2002
Kino n e w s
Location Bavaria at Home
and Abroad
This spring, Universal Studios, Los Angeles, for the first
time will provide the setting for a presentation of Bavarian
know-how in film technique and location qualities. Organized
by the State Ministry of Economy, Transportation and
Technologies in cooperation with Bavaria Film International and the Munich Chamber of Commerce, the highprofile film and video expo CineGear 2002 will be the
forum for Bavarian production service companies and the
Film Commission Bavaria, headed by Anja Metzger.
From 31 May to 1 June, anyone interested in shooting in
Bavaria can receive information about the latest developments
in local film production, equipment, locations and film funding.
In April and May, the Film Commission Bavaria also
participated in the world’s most important AFCI Locations
Trade Show in Santa Monica and was present in the
German Pavilion at Cannes’ Marché International du Film
(MIF). Back home in Bavaria, a new service will be of use to
anyone in need of historical buildings for a film project:
through a mediator, the Film Commission Bavaria has
gained access to private castles all over the state and is now
able to offer them to film productions. Further information
under: www.location-bayern.com.
France in Hamburg
Three new German-French co-productions, all supported by
the FilmFoerderung Hamburg, are well underway in
Hamburg and the south of France. Dream, Dream,
Dream (cf. p. 46), directed by Anne Alix, is the first
feature-length film to be accompanied by the German-French
master class at the Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg. The film, a co-production between
Euripide Productions, Integral Film, Wide Eyes,
Diana Film and T & C Film, was shot in part and edited
and mixed in its entirety in Hamburg. In addition to the
positive experience with the various film services in the
area, Alix also found a musician for the film score. ”We are
always very happy when foreign producers find Hamburg to
be an interesting location for their productions as well as postproduction“, says Eva Hubert, managing director of the
FilmFoerderung Hamburg.
The city also plays an important role in Pandora Film’s
German-French co-production Leben toetet mich
(Vivre me tue). Jean-Pierre Sinapi’s film, based on the
novel of the same name by Paul Smail, tells the story of
two North African immigrant children coming to terms with
their lives in Germany and France in different ways. The
documentary Sanary – Letzte Station vor dem
Vergessen from Bertina Henrich (a co-production from
Le Mer du Son Cinéma and Filmtank Hamburg)
describes the town Sanary-sur-Mer as a vanishing point and the
”last tip of Europe“. Between 1933 and 1941, the small beach
town on the Mediterranean coast became a large colony of
German writers, artists and intellectuals fleeing from the
Nazi regime.
FFA Industry Tigers 2002:
Over Euro 21 Million in
Reference Funding
For about 100 producers and distributors, the trip to
Berlin at the end of
March 2002 was well
worth it: the Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA)
awarded over Euro
21 million (Euro 3.7
million more than
the previous year)
to the most
successful films of
the cinema boom year 2001. The Industry Tiger 2002
awards were based on the number of tickets sold per film.
And the winners were: the producers MMC Independent,
Kinowelt Filmproduktion and Olga-Film, as well as
the distributors Constantin Film Verleih, Senator
Film Verleih and Kinowelt Film Verleih.
FFA president Rolf Baehr was particularly happy that children’s films and documentaries were also represented at this
year’s awards presentation. The reference funding was divided
up among features (58.56%), children’s films (39.02%) and
documentaries (2.42%).
Manuel Blanc and Hamburg’s harbor in
"Dream, Dream, Dream"
Three German Competition
Entries in Nyon
No less than twelve German films and German-international
co-productions were shown at the 8th Festival Visions
du Réel (22 - 28 April 2002) in the Swiss town of Nyon,
of which three German and three German-international
works were screened in the festival’s two competition
sections.
The international competition featured: A Bookshelf on
Top of the Sky by Claudia Heuermann, a portrait of
the New York composer and saxophonist John Zorn, the film
diary Wie ich ein Hoehlenmaler wurde by Jan
Kino 2/2002
25
Kino n e w s
Peters, and Volker Koepp’s new film Uckermarck. In
addition, the German-international co-production
Brodwey.Chemoye Morye by Vitali Manski
(Russia/Germany/Czech Republic) was shown.
Two German-international co-productions were presented as
part of the Regards Neufs, the festival’s competitive section for
debuts: Ima by Caterina Klusemann (Germany/USA)
and Kazi Ni Kiku by Ayako Mogi (Germany/Japan).
Other German and German-international co-production films
at the festival included: Hwa-Shan District, Taipei by
Bernhard Schreiner, Die eiserne Maria by
Ingeborg Jacobs and Hartmut Seifert, Phoenix aus
der Asche by Simone Fuerbringer (Switzerland/
Germany), Thomas Pynchon – A Journey into the
Mind of P. by Donatello and Fosco Dubini
(Germany/Switzerland), as well as Das Haus/1984 and
Volkspolizei/1985 by Thomas Heise.
Founded in 1969, the documentary film festival Visions du
Réel in Nyon is one of the most important of its kind in
Europe. It is primarily dedicated to films ”which, through a
conscious formal and aesthetic choice, impart depictions of
past and present realities as well as their personal and imbued
interpretation“ (festival catalogue).
Since its foundation in 1998, MDM has supported more
than 250 projects with more than Euro 40 million. Unique
landscapes, remarkable building structures, as well as places
and motives of cultural interest make central Germany an
impressive film location. MDM offers wide-range support in
the areas of material and project development, production
support, distribution and sales, as well as screenings and presentation. Increasingly, the aspects of further training and market-orientated film marketing are taken into consideration in
the overall support scheme. One important criteria for support is a lasting regional effect in the states of Saxony-Anhalt,
Thuringia and Saxony. This year MDM is supporting a number
of historical projects (Luther, Freiherr von Trenck),
road movies (including a German-Finnish-Latvian co-production under the Mika Kaurismaeki’s direction) and many
other interesting projects. One of the highlights of the 2002
support year will be Peter Greenaway’s trilogy of 120minute films.
Faster, Easier, Closer: Location
Search Engine for Berlin and
Brandenburg with New Looks
and Functions
“Benny X“ by Florian Baxmeyer
Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg’s location office, the
Berlin Brandenburg Film Commission (bbfc), is
launching its new website, www.bbfc.de, with many new
features. Via some 600 locations with over 6,800 photographs,
moviemakers from all over the world can take a closer look
at Germany’s capital region and get straight through to the
”Gate to Germany“. The Berlin Brandenburg Film
Commission is a producer’s first stop.
Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung’s Impressive
Program
Over the last years the Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung (MDM) has sent out a wide range of impulses
which contributed to the dynamic development of structures
in the media industry in Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.
Alongside strengthening the performance of central German
companies in the film, television and media industries, MDM
pursues in the medium-term the following aims: increasing the
”regional effects“ in the area, the continuation of the settlement policy and the strengthening of networking within the
industry, as well as the establishment of a practice-oriented
range of training and qualification programs. As a result, cities
in central Germany have recently hosted such well-known
European seminars as Cartoon Creativity, Discovery Campus,
EAVE, Pymalion and Sagas.
26
The huge database HELP, which was first introduced at the
Berlin Film Festival two years ago, functions as an electronic
directory to give producers all the information they need on
locations, shooting permissions and the appropriate contacts.
It now holds more than 2,200 addresses to give the user an
idea of ”who’s who“ in film in Berlin and Brandenburg.
Scriptwriting Camp Freiburg
A script development training for young writers and script
talents organized by the Filmfoerderung BadenWuerttemberg (MFG), the Hessian film fund, the
Goethe Institute Freiburg, TaunusFilm GmbH Wiesbaden and
ZFP will take place in Freiburg from 28 May to 2 June 2002
and in Wiesbaden from 2 - 7 September 2002. The new
concept will feature: Scriptwriting for Documentary Features
Kino 2/2002
Kino n e w s
MFG Filmfoerdung Baden-Wuerttemberg
Karin Frey
Breitscheidstrasse 4 · 70174 Stuttgart/Germany
phone +49-7 11-90 71 54 04
fax +49-7 11-90 71 54 50
www.mfg.de/film · email: [email protected]
(Gregors groesste Erfindung), which was nominated
this year for an OSCAR in the category Best Short Film-Live
Action.
Following the presentation in Cannes, which is also supported
by the six major regional film funds, ”Next Generation
2002“ will be shown at all Festivals of German Cinema
organized by the Export-Union in key cities of the international film industry, including Rome, Madrid, Paris, London,
Los Angeles, Warsaw, Sydney, Melbourne and Hong Kong.
“Fenster mit Aussicht“ by Vera Lalyko
by Pepe Danquart, who took home an OSCAR
in 1994 for his widely-acclaimed short Black Rider
(Schwarzfahrer, 1993) and a German Film Award for Best
Direction for the feature Heimspiel (2000). For further
information please contact:
NEXT GENERATION for the
5th Time in Cannes
The Export-Union once again presents a selection of short
films by students of German films schools under the banner
”Next Generation“ during the Cannes Film Festival.
Eight new films from six German film and art academies make
up this year’s ”Next Generation“ lineup which will have its
world premiere in Cannes on Sunday, 19 May 2002 at
20:00 h in the Cinema Star 1. The members of the independent expert jury for this year’s annual selection were:
Heinz Badewitz (Hof Film Days), Astrid Kuehl
(Short Film Agency Hamburg) and Thomas
Blieninger (Blickpunkt Film).
4th Location Tour Southwest
”Hochzeitstag“ by Tanja Brzakovic
From 27 to 28 June 2002, the MFG film fund kindly invites
filmmakers to join this year’s location tour. The two-day
discovery of shooting-locations in Baden-Wuerttemberg,
providing a large variety of contrasting motifs, will start out in
Freiburg, the beautiful university town close to the French and
Swiss borders, and leads into the heart of the Southern Black
Forest. For further information please contact:
MFG Filmfoerdung Baden-Wuerttemberg
Uschi Freynick
Breitscheidstrasse 4 · 70174 Stuttgart/Germany
phone +49-7 11-90 71 54 08
fax +49-7 11-90 71 54 50
www.mfg.de/film · email: [email protected]
”Gregor's Greatest Invention“ by Johannes Kiefer
”Next Generation 2002“ proudly presents: Hochzeitstag by Tanja Brzakovic and Benny X by Florian
Baxmeyer (both from the Hamburger Filmwerkstatt for Film
Studies of the University of Hamburg); Am See by Ulrike
von Ribbeck and Red Gourmet Pellzik by Andreas
Samland (both from the German Film & Television Academy
(dffb) Berlin); Fenster mit Aussicht by Vera Lalyko
(Academy of Media Arts (KHM) Cologne); Morgenstund
by David Emmenlauer (Academy of Television & Film in
Munich); Das Rad by Chris Stenner, Arvid Uibel, and
Heidi Wittlinger (Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg in
Ludwigsburg); and Undercover by Susanne Buddenberg (”Konrad Wolf“ Academy of Film & Television in
Potsdam-Babelsberg).
The program will also feature a special presentation of
Johannes Kiefer’s Gregor’s Greatest Invention
Kino 2/2002
27
The third annual Festival of German Cinema in Rome
(11 - 15 April 2002) was met with great response by audiences
and the media alike. Five directors and two actors were personally on hand to present their films to sold-out screenings.
The festival opened with Andreas Dresen’s Grill Point
(Halbe Treppe), who, together with lead actor Axel
Prahl, introduced the film.
Maria Speth and Benjamin Quabeck were also in
Rome to present and discuss their films The Days
Between (In den Tag hinein) and No Regrets
(Nichts Bereuen).
Three other films which have already found Italian distributors
and will soon be released in Italy were shown as ”avantpremieres“: The Experiment (Das Experiment) by
Oliver Hirschbiegel; the documentary Black Box BRD
by Andres Veiel, who was also present for a Q&A session
after the film, and Sandra Nettelbeck’s Bella Martha,
presented by lead actor Sergio Castellito.
The program also included: Esther Gronenborn’s alaska.de, Christian Petzold’s two films The State I Am
In (Die Innere Sicherheit) and Something to
Remind Me (Toter Mann), a midnight presentation of
Wim Wender’s Ode to Cologne (Viel Passiert –
Der BAP Film), Fritz Lang’s silent classic Metropolis
with live musical accompaniment, and the short film program
Next Generation 2001. Within the framework of the
”Next Generation“ presentation, Oliver Seiter’s film The
Pilot was named Best Short Film by the Italian magazine and
Internet website 35mm.it.
All three German-international competition entries were
among the prize winners at the 17th Festival International de Cine de Mar del Plata (7 - 16 March
2002). The international jury at Mar del Plata awarded the
German-international co-production Taking Sides
(Germany/United Kingdom/France) by István Szabó with
the Silver Ombú for Best Direction. Another Silver Ombú was
presented to the Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard in the
category of Best Actor for his role in the film, while cinematographer Lajos Koltai received the prize for Best Cinematography from the Association of Cinematographers (ADF
Jury) and the Kodak Award.
Jeanine Meerapfel (director of ”Anna’s Summer“,
Yves Pasquier (producer of ”Taking Sides“), Gustav Wilhelmi
(the Export-Union’s foreign representative in Argentina)
Third Festival of German
Cinema in Rome
Sandra Nettelbeck (director of "Bella Martha")
Kino n e w s
The event was supported by the Federal Government
Commissioner for Cultural Affairs and the Media, the German
Federal Film Board (FFA) and the six regional film funds, in
cooperation with the Goethe-Institue Inter Nationes
and the German Embassy in Rome. The festival was also sponsored in part by Bavaria Film International, Transit Film, the
Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation, UICC, 35mm.it, Radio
Città Futura, Scuola Nazionale di Cinema and Erdinger
Weissbrau.
German Films Win at Creteil
and Mar del Plata
Sandra Nettelbeck’s Bella Martha was awarded the
Jury’s Grand Prix for the Best Feature Film at the 24th
Festival International Films de Femmes in
Creteil, which is regarded as one of the most important
international meeting places for women filmmakers and as a
springboard for new directors.
28
The Silver Ombú for Best Actress went to Kirsten Dunst
for her role in the German-international competition entry
The Cat’s Meow by Peter Bogdanovich (Germany/
United Kingdom), while one of the jury’s two special
mentions was presented to the German-international
competition entry Annas Sommer (Anna’s Summer)
by Jeanine Meerapfel (Germany/Spain/Greece).
Recognized by the FIAPF, the Festival International de
Cine de Mar del Plata is one of the current twelve
so-called ”A-Festivals“ and thus one of the most important
film events worldwide.
Kino 2/2002
www.german-cinema.de
with
more than 100 news items
more than 200 festival portraits
more than 500 German films
more than 1000 other useful things
to know about German Cinema
Export-Union des Deutschen Films GmbH · Sonnenstrasse 21 · 80331 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-5 99 78 70 · fax +49-89-59 97 87 30 · email: [email protected]
Marie Baeumer, Oskar Roehler (photo © Marco Meneen)
”It is not exactly a continuation of No Place to Go, although
there are some elements there“, Roehler says. “This film is
closer to life, it is set in the present and will be narrated in a more
realistic way“.
”The parallel story between the couple Robert and Marie
(Baeumer) came about from my observation of a lot of situations and long-term relationships where one always had the feeling
that men have difficulties committing themselves sexually to one
partner“, Roehler explains, adding that ”there is a unconditional
nature to this couple’s love and they are bound to one another
by fate, but the male partner cannot hold out indefinitely“.
”For once, it will really be a quiet film for me. I want to have a
relatively quiet and straightforward camera; there will be no
black-and-white, no stylization and everything will be unobtrusive“,
he continues.
Der alte
Affe Angst
Der alte Affe Angst marks the second collaboration between
Roehler and producers Junkersdorf and Guentsche – they
had previously worked together on the RTL TV movie Latin
Lover (1999) which also starred Marie Baeumer – and
it is the first project under the roof of Junkersdorf’s new company Neue Bioskop Film.
MB
Original Title Feature Film Cinema Genre Drama
Production Company Neue Bioskop Film, Munich in co-production with TV-60 Filmproduktion, Munich, BR, Munich
With backing from Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg,
FilmFernsehFonds Bayern Producers Eberhard Junkersdorf,
Dietmar Guentsche, Bernd Burgemeister Director Oskar
Roehler Screenplay Oskar Roehler Director of Photography Hagen Bogdanski Editor Uli Schoen Music by Martin
Todsharow Production Design Birgit Kniep-Gentis Principal
Cast André Hennicke, Marie Baeumer, Vadim Glowna, Hilde van
Mieghem, Wolfgang Joop Format 35 mm, color, cs, Dolby
Digital Shooting Language German Shooting in Berlin
from 9 April to end of May 2002
Das fliegende
Klassenzimmer
Original Title Das fliegende Klassenzimmer Type of
Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Family Production
Companies Bavaria Filmverleih und Produktion, Munich,
Lunaris, Munich, in cooperation with ZDF, Mainz With backing
from Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung, FilmFernsehFonds
Bayern, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA) Producers Uschi Reich,
Peter Zenk Director Tomy Wigand Screenplay Henriette
Piper, Hermine Kunka, based on the novel of the same name by
Erich Kaestner Director of Photography Peter von Haller
Editor Christian Nauheimer Music by Niki Reiser, Biber
Gullatz (songs), Moritz Freise Principal Cast Ulrich Noethen,
Sebastian Koch, Piet Klocke, Anja Kling, Hauke Diekamp, Teresa
Vilsmaier Format 35 mm, color Shooting Language
German Shooting in Munich and Leipzig and surroundings from
February to April 2002 German Distributor Constantin Film
Verleih GmbH, Munich
Contact:
Neue Bioskop Film GmbH · Dietmar Guentsche
Rosenheimer Strasse 143d · 81671 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-4 09 09 20 · fax +49-89-40 90 92 20
email: [email protected]
Production is currently underway in Berlin on Oskar Roehler’s
latest feature Der alte Affe Angst, starring André
Hennicke (Something to Remind Me/Toter Mann,
2001), Marie Baeumer (Ode to Cologne/Viel Passiert
– Der BAP Film, 2000/2001) and Vadim Glowna (No
Place to Go/Die Unberuehrbare, 2000).
While Roehler’s mother, the writer Gisela Elsner, provided
the inspiration for the figure played by Hannelore Elsner in
No Place to Go, one strand in Der alte Affe Angst with
the successful film director Robert (Hennicke) getting in touch
with his father Klaus (Glowna) after a gap of five years only to
learn that he is suffering from prostate cancer, was based on
Roehler’s own experience of being reunited with his father
shortly before his death.
30
Scene from ”Das fliegende Klassenzimmer“
(photo © Rolf v.d. Heydt/Bavaria Film/Lunaris)
As with Roehler’s No Place to Go, which was shown in
Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight sidebar two years ago and won
countless prizes in Germany and abroad, the new film also
borrows autobiographical elements from Roehler’s life and that
of his family.
PR Contact:
Just Publicity · Bianca Feilkas
Erhardtstrasse 8 · 80469 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-20 20 82 60 · fax +49-89-20 20 82 89
email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
in p r o d u c t i o n
World Sales:
Bavaria Film International
Dept. of Bavaria Media GmbH · Thorsten Schaumann
Bavariafilmplatz 8 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/Germany
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86 · fax +49-89-64 99 37 20
www.bavaria-film-international.de
email: [email protected]
But the latest adaptation – Das fliegende Klassenzimmer –
posed a few challenges for producers and screenwriters alike as it
didn't have ”a continuous, exciting storyline like in Emil and the
Detectives“, as producer Uschi Reich points out.
Production cranks up for 11 weeks at the beginning of June on
Veit Helmer’s second full-length feature Gate to Heaven
(Tor zum Himmel) at locations in Frankfurt’s international
airport.
Masumi Makhija
Producer Peter Zenk is quite a specialist in adapting the children’s classics of Erich Kaestner for the cinema after having
also produced Joseph Vilsmaier’s Charlie & Louise (Das
doppelte Lottchen, 1993), Caroline Link’s Annaluise
and Anton (Puenkchten und Anton, 1999), and
Franziska Buch’s Emil and the Detectives (Emil und
die Detektive, 2001).
World Sales:
Bavaria Film International
Dept. of Bavaria Media GmbH · Thorsten Schaumann
Bavariafilmplatz 8 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/Germany
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86 · fax +49-89-64 99 37 20
www.bavaria-film-international.de
email: [email protected]
The story centers on young Jonathan who has already flown out
of eight boarding schools and thinks it will be only a matter of
time before he is sent packing from his new school at the
Thomaskirche in Leipzig. But the headmaster takes him under his
wing and the boys in his dormitory accept him into their gang. All
kinds of adventures are about to happen ...
Casting the adult roles came together quite easily with such leading German actors as Ulrich Noethen (The Slurb/Das
Sams, 2001) in the role of the headmaster and Sebastian
Koch (The Tunnel/Der Tunnel, 2001) as the mysterious
figure of the ’non-smoker’. But finding the right 10 to 12-year-olds
for the children’s parts proved much harder. ”We definitely didn’t
want to cast the parts with children who had already appeared in
the last Kaestner films“, Zenk recalls. ”And the demands were
extremely high because we are dealing here with big lead roles“.
As a consequence, almost a thousand children passed through the
casting sessions before the producers decided on a number of
film debutants such as 12-year-old Hauke Diekamp for the
part of Jonathan, alongside established child actors like Teresa
Vilsmaier and Constantin Gastmann.
The Euro 5 million production of Das fliegende Klassenzimmer marks director Tomy Wigand’s second outing
into feature films after his award-winning debut Soccer Rules!
(Fussball ist unser Leben), starring Uwe Ochsenknecht,
from 2000.
MB
Gate to Hea ven
Original Title Gate to Heaven German Title Tor zum
Himmel Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Love
Story Production Company Veit Helmer Filmproduktion,
Berlin, in cooperation with ZDF, Mainz, ARTE, Strasbourg
With backing from Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA) Producer Ulf Israel Director Veit
Helmer Screenplay Veit Helmer, Gordon Mihic Director of
Photography Joachim Jung Production Designer
Alexander Manasse Principal Cast Valera Nikolaev, Masumi
Makhija, Miki Manojlovic, Udo Kier, Michael Chynamurindi,
Sotigui Koyate Format 35 mm, color, cs Shooting Language
English Shooting at Frankfurt airport from 11 June - 24 August
2002 German Distributor Prokino Filmverleih GmbH,
Munich
This project, which had been gestating for the last seven years,
sees Helmer collaborating with the Serbian screenwriter
Gordon Mihic, whose screenplays including Emir
Kusturica’s award-winning Time of the Gypsies and
Black Cat, White Cat.
”Gate To Heaven is a love story set at an airport, a film about
luggage handlers and cleaning women who dream of becoming
stewardesses“, explains Helmer. ”It will be shot in English because people from all over the world will appear in the film and
they will speak with an accent, but that is intended“.
Helmer and Mihic researched together ”behind the scenes“
at the airport in Frankfurt, away from the check-in counters and
departure lounges, with Mihic writing the screenplay in Serbian
since he can speak neither English nor German. Helmer then
wrote the last draft of the script with the support of the
éQuinoxe script workshop and also participated in other
European initiatives such as Moonstone and EAVE to hone
and fine-tune the screenplay. ”I was interested in the international
response and to see how the project was accepted“, he recalls.
Although the project has been a long time in preparation – with a
break for the production of Tuvalu (1999) –, Helmer says that
the film’s story was ”always topical and is so more than ever. The
film title has many meanings: on one level, it is means the dream
of flying, of coming to Europe and Germany. But, sometimes, the
characters in the film are up on the roof cleaning and look down
on the passengers in the departure lounge - then heaven is below
them!“
As was the case with Tuvalu, casting for his new film was also a
marathon task with the director meeting actors in places as far
apart as Los Angeles, London, Tashkent, Bombay and Moscow to
find the right people for his acting ensemble. The lineup includes
Kusturica-star Miki Manojlovic and Germany’s Udo Kier
as well as the ”Bollywood“ actress Masumi Makhija, and
Valera Nikolaev (U-Turn).
MB
Kino 2/2002
31
Gruesse aus
Dac hau!
Original Title Gruesse aus Dachau! English Title Hello
Dachau! Type of Project Feature Film Cinema with TV version
Genre Documentary Production Company Egoli Tossell
Film, Berlin, in cooperation with BR, Munich, SWR, Stuttgart
With backing from FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, Filmboard
Berlin-Brandenburg Producers Jens Meurer, Dr. Claudia
Gladziejewski (BR) Director Bernd Fischer Screenplay Bernd
Fischer Directors of Photography Knut Schmitz, Bernd
Fischer Editor Inge Scheider Music by Haindling Format
Digital Video to 35 mm blow-up, 1:1.85, color, 90 min (TV
version 52 min) Shooting Language German Shooting in
Dachau from October 2001 to August 2002 German
Distributor Salzgeber & Co Medien GmbH, Berlin
Max Mannheimer in ”Hello Dachau!“ (photo © Bernd Fischer)
Sixty years after World War II, the town remains trapped in an
eternal Nazi time loop. Dachau. It’s a name the residents can’t
shake off. It’s on the check and credit cards issued by the local
bank, it’s written on their birth certificates and, worse still, the
dreaded DAH car registration means they carry it with them in
the open wherever they go.
While there is no magic solution for disconnecting Dachau’s name
from its past, it doesn’t stop the good citizens from trying. In
2001, for example, they represented themselves at Berlin’s
International Tourism Fair, the world’s largest, praising Dachau’s
Annual Beetroot Festival. And they are currently pressuring
Lufthansa to finally name one of their aircraft after Dachau; other
German towns have long since received the honor.
32
SK
Original Title Das Jesus Video English Title Jesus Video
Type of Project Mini-Series Genre Thriller Production
Companies Ratpack Filmproduktion, Munich, GFP Medienfonds,
Berlin, in cooperation with F.A.M.E., Munich, ProSieben, Munich,
KirchMedia, Munich Executive Producers Christian Becker,
Anita Schneider Director Sebastian Niemann Screenplay
Martin Ritzenhoff, based on the novel of the same name by
Andreas Eschbach Director of Photography Gerhard Schirlo
Principal Cast Matthias Koerberlin, Naike Rivelli, Manou
Lubowski, Heinrich Giskes, Hans Diehl Format 35 mm, color,
1:1.85 Shooting Language German Shooting in Casablanca
and Ouarzazate/Morocco, from 26 February to 14 May 2002
It’s not easy being German! Especially if you come from an infamous small town in Bavaria, known throughout the world as the
site of the first Nazi concentration camp. And while Dachau
dreams of being nothing more than as average as anywhere else
in Germany, that is impossible.
”I’m a storyteller,“ says Bernd Fischer (who spent his teenage
years growing up in Dachau). ”Everyone knows the name and the
His guides in this tourist-video-with-a-twist are a group of charismatic townspeople, taking him through their ”own personal
Dachau“. We meet former prisoners, ex-politicians, the Don
Quixote of Dachau, the son of a former concentration-camp
guard, his father and the landlord of a strange oompah-pub. All of
them are united by living in Germany’s most (in)famous town.
Das Jesus Video
World Sales:
d.net.sales · Heino Deckert
Peterssteinweg 13 · 04107 Leipzig/Germany
phone +49-3 41-2 15 66 38 · fax +49-3 41-2 15 66 39
www.d-net-sales.de · email [email protected]
In fact, there is no end to the convulsions that the people of
Dachau put themselves through to deal with their legacy. And in
that way, they are the most German of Germans!
horrors of the concentration camp, but what about the town
which has become synonymous with the crimes?“ Hello
Dachau!, the veteran film, television and advertising cameraman
Fischer’s directorial debut, is ”a fascinating, sympathetic,
tragically funny and most topical film about Germans, Germany
and the way they are dealing with their loathsome past.“
PR Contact:
KirchMedia GmbH · Program Press & PR
Silvia Fernandez
phone +49-89-99 56 23 80 · fax +49-89-99 56 26 40
www.kirchmedia.de
email: [email protected]
World Sales:
Beta Film GmbH
Robert-Buerkle-Strasse 2 · 85737 Ismaning/Germany
phone +49-89-99 56 27 44 · fax +49-89-99 56 27 03
www.betacinema.com
Sebastian Niemann’s fast-paced adventure thriller Jesus
Video, based on Andreas Eschbach’s international best-seller
of the same name, is a first on several counts.
To begin with, it is the first production by Christian Becker
and Anita Schneider’s new outfit Ratpack Filmproduktion; the first project to be backed by the media investment
fund German Film Productions (GFP); ProSieben’s
first in-house two-parter and also screenwriter Martin
Ritzenhoff’s first foray into the thriller genre from comedy.
Niemann, who had previously worked with Becker on the
mystery TV movie Das Biikenbrennen – Der Fluch des
Meeres (1999) and the English-language feature 7 Days To
Live (2000), became curious after reading the hardback edition’s
blurb.
A year or so later, producer Becker came to him with the offer
to direct an adaptation for television and Niemann didn’t hesitate in accepting.
Kino 2/2002
Matthias Koerberlin (photo © Ratpack Filmproduktion)
in p r o d u c t i o n
Set in Hamburg’s immigrant district of Altona, home to the world
famous red light district, the Reeperbahn, Yueksel Yavuz’s
Der Laufbursche tells the unusual story of the friendship
between two young men.
”I liked the idea of two parts because you then have the chance to
be broader in your storytelling and for the whole story to be
expanded“, Niemann explains, ”It was an interesting challenge and a completely new experience for me - to tell a story over
three hours“.
Cagdas Bozkurt, Leroy Delmar
Baran (Cagdas Bozkurt) is a Kurd whose relatives have helped
him to come to Germany after the death of his parents. Raised in
a home, his asylum application was rejected just shy of his sixteenth birthday. No stranger to hard work, he survives by running
errands (the best translation of Der Laufbursche is actually
the American term ”gofer“, as in the boy who goes and fetches
things) for a Turkish fast-food restaurant.
At the center of the plot, Matthias Koerberlin (who appeared in the Berlinale competition film Amen (2002) by CostaGavras this year), plays the young man Steffen helping out at a
German archeological excavation in Israel when he finds a 2,000year-old skeleton holding the instructions for a video camera made
in 2003. Although his theory of a time-traveler who made a video
of Jesus is ridiculed by everyone, soon he is being pursued by the
German embassy and a secret Vatican order, among others, who
are all very keen to find the camera and video …
Budgeted at Euro 4.45 million, the production also features
Ornella Muti’s daughter Naike Rivelli as Steffen’s feisty love
interest Sharon, who helps him out of many a tight spot, and was
shot on location at Ouarzazate – partly using the sets from The
Bible series – and Casablanca in Morocco.
MB
Der Laufbur sc he
Original Title Der Laufbursche (working title) English Title
Baran’s Way (working title) Type of Project Feature Film
Cinema Genre Coming-of-Age Story, Drama Production
Company Cotta Media Entertainment, Berlin, Peter Stockhaus
Filmproduktion, Hamburg, in co-production with ZDF, Mainz
With backing from Filmfoerderung Hamburg, Filmboard
Berlin-Brandenburg, BKM Producers Ralph E. Cotta, Peter
Stockhaus Commissioning Editor Claudia Tronnier (ZDF)
Director Yueksel Yavuz Screenplay Yueksel Yavuz Director
of Photography Patrick Orth Principal Cast Cagdas
Bozkurt, Leroy Delmar, Nazmi Kirik, Necmettin Cobanoglu,
Susanna Rozkosny, Sunay Girisken Format 35 mm, 1:1.85, color,
90 min Shooting Language German, Turkish, Kurdish (partly
subtitled) Shooting in Hamburg from February to April 2002
German Distributor Pegasos Filmverleih, Cologne
World Sales:
Cotta Media Entertainment GmbH · Ralph E. Cotta
Suarezstrasse 43 · 14057 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-8 91 66 11 · fax +49-30-30 82 43 39
email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
His errands take him from the finest apartments to the lowest
clip joints; confronting him with the district’s many realities.
Occasionally he meets up with a Bosnian woman who works in a
cafe or a homeless man who ”lives“ on a park bench. There’s even
a Turkish girl who is keen on him. But to all of them, Baran
remains a closed book.
It is not until he encounters the seventeen-year old African,
Chernor (Leroy Delmar), that his life gains impetus. Chernor is
also an illegal and stateless immigrant. They are drawn together.
But while Chernor tries to finance his future, emigration to
Australia, by dealing drugs, Baran’s past catches up with him.
He keeps encountering an old Kurdish man and one day learns the
man was responsible for his parents’ death. Baran wants to avenge
them but doesn’t know how.
During an argument between Kurdish radicals at a party, Baran
comes into possession of a gun. But when he confronts the old
man he is unable to act. Shortly afterwards, the worst happens:
Baran and Chernor are stopped by the police. Baran escapes but
Chernor is arrested. He has already lost enough people in his life,
he can’t stand to lose another, one to whom he feels so close.
Baran retrieves his gun and heads for the police station to free his
friend.
Kurdish-born Yavuz came to Germany in 1980 when he was sixteen. A keen stills photographer, he started experimenting with
film in 1990, going on to make several documentaries.
His 1998 feature film April Children (Aprilkinder), a portrait of a Kurdish family whose three children struggle to carve out
a niche for themselves between the old and new worlds, won the
Audience Award at Saarbruecken in 1999.
SK
33
Nac h Haus in
die Fremde
recognition, with films such as the fake-Hitler-diaries comedy
Schtonk! (director Helmut Dietl, 1992) and The
Deathmaker (Der Totmacher, director Romuald
Karmakar, 1995).
Original Title Nach Haus in die Fremde (working title)
Type of Project TV Movie Genre Tragicomedy
Production Company Colonia Media, Cologne for WDR,
Cologne Producer Sonja Goslicki Director Andreas Kleinert
Screenplay Karl-Heinz Kaefer Director of Photography
Johann Feindt Editor Gisela Zick Music by Andreas Hoge
Principal Cast Goetz George, Klaus J. Behrendt, Ulrike
Krumbiegel, Serguy Moya, Christine Schorn Format Super 16
mm to video transfer, 16:9, color, 90 min Shooting Language
German Shooting in Cologne and surroundings in February
and March 2002
Producer Sonja Goslicki has worked closely with George
since 1996 on the re-launched police series Schimanksi (after the
detective of the same name), also for broadcaster WDR. Among
the many honors she has received are the Golden Camera, the
German Television Award, the Bavarian Television Award and a
Golden Gong.
World Sales:
Bavaria Media Television · Carlos Hertel
Bavariafilmplatz 8 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/Germany
phone +49-89-64 99 22 36 · fax +49-89-64 99 22 40
email: [email protected]
A young family has just moved into its new home. The renovations still haven’t been finished as the telephone rings one night:
Grandfather has been knocked down by a car.
Goetz George, Klaus J. Behrendt
Richard (Goetz George) is only slightly hurt, but it’s obvious
the old man’s senile dementia, or Alzheimer’s Disease, is getting
worse and he is no longer able to take care of himself.
Colonia Media is a subsidiary of Bavaria Film and specializes in TV movies (such as the famous ”Scene of Crime“, or Tatort,
films), drama series and documentaries for Germany’s commercial
and public broadcasters. In 2000, Christian Granderath joined the company. His hit feature production credits include the
comedy Maybe, Maybe Not (Der bewegte Mann)
directed by Soenke Wortmann in 1994, as well as the dramas
The Deathmaker, and Andreas Dresen´s The Policewoman (Die Polizistin, 2000).
SK
Olgas Sommer
Original Title Olgas Sommer (working title) English Title
Olga’s Summer Type of Project Feature Film Cinema
Genre Coming-of-Age Story Production Company MTM
West Television & Film, Cologne, in co-production with MACT
Productions, Paris, in cooperation with WDR, Cologne With
backing from Filmstiftung NRW, Filmfoerderungsanstalt
(FFA)/CNC co-production treaty Producer Peter Herrmann
Commissioning Editor Andrea Hanke (WDR) Director
Nina Grosse Screenplay Nina Grosse Production Design
Ingrid Buron Format 35 mm, color, Dolby SR Shooting
Language German/French Shooting in Germany and France
from August 2002
Contact:
MTM West Television & Film GmbH
Peter Herrmann
Richard-Wagner-Strasse 13-17
50674 Cologne/Germany
phone +49-2 21-9 49 72 10 · fax +49-2 21-94 97 21 18
email: [email protected]
Richard moves in and, to begin with, they all find humor in the
many slight mishaps. At first, they are convinced they can help him
deal with the situation. Oliver prints computer labels for the
doors so grandfather can find his way around the house. Jochen
increases health insurance payments for his father while Anja gives
up her part-time job. But it soon becomes clear to them that their
decision has serious implications for all their lives.
The one flicker of hope is Karin, Richard’s long-time lover, whose
presence causes him to become his old self and act normally. As
Richard’s illness progresses, the family finds itself deeper and
deeper in crisis. When the old man accidentally starts a fire, that is
the final straw for Anja. She moves out, leaving the three men
alone. What will Jochen do? Will the family survive?
Goetz George, a nationally-known star of film and television, is
also one of the few German actors to have achieved international
34
World Sales:
Bavaria Film International
Dept. of Bavaria Media GmbH · Thorsten Schaumann
Bavariafilmplatz 8 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/Germany
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86 · fax +49-89-64 99 37 20
www.bavaria-film-international.de
email: [email protected]
Shooting is set to begin this August on the latest feature by
writer-director Nina Grosse, Olga’s Summer, which also
marks the first foray by German producer MTM into European
co-productions through its Cologne-based outpost MTM West.
”Having a German-French co-production was a very organic
development“, explains MTM’s Andreas Bareiss. ”Parts of
the story are set in a southern country which could be Spain or
France, and Nina Grosse studied in France and is very francophile. We also didn’t want to cast some of the characters with
actors from Germany because we had the feeling that they
wouldn’t feel French“.
Kino 2/2002
in p r o d u c t i o n
screen adaptation of her historical novel Pope Joan which has been
a bestseller hit in Germany.
Nina Grosse (photo © Joachim Gern)
Set in 9th century Europe, Pope Joan tells the fascinating and
extraordinary story of Johanna von Ingelheim who disguised
herself as a man and sat on the papal throne for two years as
Pope John Anglicus. (This episode in history was apparently
general knowledge until the 17th century before Johanna’s
existence was removed from the Vatican’s manuscripts).
”I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have make this movie and I
have every faith in Volker and Michael, who really understand the
weight of the book and Joan the woman", Cross adds.
In addition, the decision to team up with a French partner –
Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre of MACT Productions – was made easier by the existence of the co-production
mini-treaty (signed at the Cannes Film Festival last year by ministers Tasca and Nida-Ruemelin) and the GermanFrench Film Academy.
Grosse’s coming-of-age story revolves around the 16-year-old
Olga who has the following philosophy of life:
”Things happen just as you want them to if you firmly believe in
them and do the following:
1. Take everything you can get straightaway because it will no
1. longer be there tomorrow.
2. Giving up is boring.
3. So is being scared, unless it is being scared to death.
4. Never stay any longer than necessary in one place. That
4. particularly applies to the place where your family is staying.
5. As far as love is concerned, only wild men can be taken into
5. consideration.
6. Adventures are sacred.
7. Betrayal can be atoned for by death."
”I had promised myself no more literary masterpieces“ admits
Schloendorff who has made literary adaptations something of
a speciality in his directorial career with versions of books by
Grass, Proust, Musil, and Frisch. ”But this is real storytelling. It
starts with a strong character, about how a gifted child had a thirst
for knowledge, and my first aim is to portray the passion of the
main character rather than show a wide fresco of the time“.
Producer Norbert Sauer recalls that it was really difficult to
get the film rights to Cross’ novel: three years ago, an option had
been taken by New Line, but then 18 months later, he learned
that they were free again and took the plunge. While a final figure
has yet to be fixed for the budget, Sauer is perfectly aware that
Pope Joan will be ”big budget, more than triple average, but we
have talked to international financial partners and distributors and
the impression is that everyone is convinced that it would be a
success“.
Following the motto of ”don’t aim for America and fail at home“,
Sauer says that they ”have a European film in mind for the
European market", but also with appeal for the USA. ”If it has
a strong European identity, it will be more successful“, Sauer
concludes.
MB
As Grosse explains, ”this feeling of being alive determines the
story’s dramaturgy. The principle of realism is temporarily cancelled; what is now in force are the laws of the fairytale, of one’s
own images and desires, the laws of the welcome coincidence.
Olga in Wonderland“.
MB
Die Paepstin
Original Title Die Paepstin English Title Pope Joan
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Drama
Production Company UFA Film & TV Produktion, Potsdam
Producer Norbert Sauer Director Volker Schloendorff
Screenplay Michael Hirst, based on the novel of the same
name by Donna Woolfork Cross Format 35 mm, color
Shooting Language English Shooting in Europe from
Summer 2003
PR Contact:
UFA Film & TV Produktion GmbH · Kristian Mueller
Dianastrasse 21 · 14482 Potsdam-Babelsberg/Germany
phone +49-3 31-7 06 03 78 · fax +49-3 31-7 06 03 76
www.ufa.de · email: [email protected]
”This is my dream team“, enthuses US authoress Donna
Woolfolk Cross about the plans of OSCAR-winning German
director Volker Schloendorff, UK screenwriter Michael
Hirst (Elizabeth) and producer Norbert Sauer for a big-
Kino 2/2002
Norbert Sauer, Volker Schloendorff, Donna Cross, Michael Hirst
35
Grimm fairytales are turned completely topsy turvey as witches fly
around on Harley Davidsons, Rumpelstilzchen proves to be an
ideal single parent father, and poor Snow White gets up to some
wild adventures.
At the center of the story is a love triangle between Ella (whose
voice is spoken by Buffy the Vampire Slayer-star Sarah
Michelle Gellar), her ideal prince and an unknown true love
who turns out to be Rick, the palace dish-washer (Freddie
Prinze Jr.) – and, of course, a fairytale story would not be complete without an evil mother-in-law (Sigourney Weaver) and
a magician (George Carlin).
The voices were recorded at the beginning of March in Los
Angeles, and the actual classic 2D animation work was begun
shortly afterwards by 300-400 animators at Berlin-based Hahn
Film, with production on the Euro 14.3 million project to last
for around 16 months.
Gerhard Hahn, John Williams, Stefan Beiten, Nikolaus Weil
SimsalaGrimm –
The Movie
Original Title SimsalaGrimm – The Movie Type of Project
Feature Film Cinema Genre Animation Production
Company BAF Berlin Animation Film, Berlin, Hahn Film, Berlin
Executive Producer Greenlight Media, Berlin Producers
Stefan Beiten, André Sikojev, Nikolaus Weil, John H. Williams
Director Gerhard Hahn Screenplay Rob Moreland Music
by Alexander Janko Voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie
Prinze Jr., Sigourney Weaver, George Carlin Format 35 mm,
color, 1: 1.85, Dolby SR Shooting Language English
Shooting at Hahn Film Studios from March 2002
Contact:
Greenlight Media AG
Gormannstrasse 22 · 10119 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-7 26 20 00 · fax +49-30-7 26 20 02 22
www.greenlightmedia.com
email: [email protected]
World Sales:
Greenlight International B.V.
Lorentzweg 46
B1221 EH Hilversum/The Netherlands
phone +31-3 56-42 06 77 · fax +31-3 56-42 06 88
www.greenlightmedia.com
email: [email protected]
Over the last three years, television screens in some 130 countries
around the world have been graced by the highly successful 26
half-hour TV animated series SimsalaGrimm, based on the
classic fairy tales of Germany’s Brothers Grimm.
Now, producers Greenlight Media are going one step forward
and building on the series’ popularity with the making of a feature
animation film inspired by the Grimm stories and targeted at an
international family audience.
Scripted by Rob Moreland, SimsalaGrimm – The Movie
is set in the fairytale land of Simsala and shows what happens
when the balance of good and evil is brought out of kilter. The
36
SimsalaGrimm – The Movie (which will have the additional
title of Happily (N)ever After in the USA) is the first of a
planned long-term collaboration between Greenlight and John
Williams’s Vanguard Films, the OSCAR-winning producer of
last year’s animation hit Shrek, to produce internationally
marketable animation features for the whole family.
MB
Die Suenderin
Original Title Die Suenderin Type of Project Feature Film
Cinema Genre Psycho-Thriller Production Company Hager
Moss Film, Munich With backing from FilmFoerderung
Hamburg, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern Producers Kirsten Hager,
Eric Moss Director Sherry Hormann Screenplay Bernd
Schwamm, Kit Hopkins Director of Photography Hanno
Lentz Editor Eva Schnare Format 35 mm, 1:1.85, color, 110
min Shooting Language German Shooting in Hamburg
from September to October 2002
Contact:
Hager Moss Film GmbH · Kerstin Hager, Eric Moss
Rambergstrasse 5 · 80799 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-2 06 08 00 · fax +49-89-20 60 80 10
www.hager-moss.de · email: [email protected]
Her fate was sealed years ago. Now it’s caught up with her!
As Cora Bender prepares for a swimming trip with her husband
and young son, she’s really planning her own death by drowning.
But her planned ’accident’ is interrupted when she is called back
to shore by her child, who is hungry.
She peels him an apple and is then further disturbed by a couple
who have started necking. Cora stands up, walks over to them
and stabs the man repeatedly in the throat, killing him.
At first, the police, in the form of Detective Rudolph Grovian, are
interested only in the facts, but run up against a wall of silence and
forgotten motives. But as Cora’s memory returns, she begins to
remember the person who sealed her fate, her sister Magdalena.
As Cora’s obsessions and her repressed past overwhelm her, it is
Grovian who also finds himself forced to stand on the edge of the
abyss, looking into the bottomless depths below.
Die Suenderin (the title translates ”The Sinner“) is the latest
film from German-American Sherry Hormann, and tells the
Kino 2/2002
in p r o d u c t i o n
standing leads to a rift which tears both them and their world
apart.
Twenty years later, Lukas is still terrified of being abandoned. He
survives by forming loose relationships which don’t threaten him.
Then one day he meets Lena who turns his feelings upside down
and awakens his inner child, the one still searching for unconditional friendship.
Sherry Hormann
While there is never a guarantee of security, there forms a bond
of trust, and through Lena, Lukas again makes contact with
Clemens. After years of silence, they are finally able to exorcise
their ghosts in an explosion of emotion.
”The characters in this film aren’t driven by outside events,“ says
writer-director Andreas Struck, ”but by their internal experiences and expectations. Just as Lukas’ physical handicap mirrors
his emotional handicap after being abandoned, so I intend to
visualize the internal processes.“
story of a journey into the unknown, into the very secrets of the
human soul.
”The figures are bound within a dramatic corset,“ says Hormann. ”I want to show breaks and feelings beyond the normal.
The spectator should not be able to work out what awaits him
or her. There is no more intelligent way to be entertained.“
Born in Cologne in 1965, Struck studied Comparative Literature
in Bonn and Berlin before embarking on a career in theatrical
direction. His film credits include Edward II (1991) and
Wittgenstein (1993, personal assistant to Derek Jarman
on both films) as well as director’s assistant and script supervision
for Sandra Nettelbeck’s Loose Ends (Unbestaendig
und kuehl, TV, 1995), Christian Petzold’s Cuba Libre
(TV, 1996) and Maria Teresa Camoglio’s Bandagistenglueck (1997).
In fact, Hager Moss Film’s first-ever feature was Hormann’s
Silent Shadows (Leise Schatten, 1992) which was awarded
the Bavarian Film Award and won three German Film Awards. Their
next collaboration, Women Are Simply Wonderful
(Frauen sind was Wunderbares, 1993) won the Bavarian
Film Award for newcomer producers. Hormann’s other films
with Hager Moss include the features Doubting Thomas
(Irren ist maennlich, 1995) and Widows (Erst die Ehe,
dann das Vergnuegen, 1997). She is also the director of the
feature drama, Private Lies (2000).
As well as contributing to the magazines Filmfaust and Theater
Heute, since 1993 he has been part of the Panorama team at the
Berlin Film Festival and since 1997 he has coordinated the activities of the European Film Promotion in Cannes and Pusan/South
Korea.
Sugar Orange sees Struck renewing his partnership with
director of photography Andreas Doub, editor Philipp
Stahl and composer Erlandas. Together, they all worked on
Struck’s debut film, Chill Out (1999), which has played at
festivals around the world, including Berlin, Edinburgh,
Gothenburg, Toronto, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Palm Springs,
San Francisco, Los Angeles, Montreal, Hong Kong and Sydney.
Hager Moss Film also produces commercials. The two-track
approach pays rich dividends, as Eric Moss explains: ”Directors
working in advertising have moved over into features and, at the
same time, we have worked with film directors on commercials
because this gives them a chance to try out new things and work
with more precision. It’s very good training and pays the rent!“
SK
Sugar Orange
Original Title Sugar Orange Type of Project Feature Film
Cinema Genre Drama Production Company Jost Hering
Filmproduktion, Berlin With backing from Filmstiftung NRW
Producer Jost Hering Director Andreas Struck Screenplay
Andreas Struck Director of Photography Andreas Doub
Editor Philipp Stahl Music by Erlandas Principal Cast Lucas
Gregorowicz, Ellen ten Damme Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.66
Shooting Language German Shooting in Cologne and the
state of Brandenburg in Spring 2003
Andreas Struck
SK
Contact:
Jost Hering Filmproduktion · Jost Hering
Winterfeldtstrasse 31 · 10781 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-21 75 68 56 · fax +49-30-21 75 68 58
www.josthering.de · email: [email protected]
Lukas is Sugar, Clemens is Orange. Together, they are two tenyear-old boys who are inseparable. More than just playmates, they
share a unique bond which seems predestined to last a lifetime.
Until, that is, powerful emotions come to the fore and a misunder-
Kino 2/2002
37
Scene from ”Liebelei“ (photo © Filmmuseum Berlin/Deutsche Kinemathek)
Liebelei
THE 100 MOST SIGNIFICANT GERMAN FILMS – 22
Turn-of-the-century Vienna. Lieutenant Fritz Lobheimer is having a secret affair with the Baroness
Eggersdorf, but wants to end the relationship because he is constantly afraid of being found out.
However, the Baroness wants to hear nothing of it. In the meantime, the Baroness’ husband
becomes suspicious and returns home early one day. Fritz is able to sneak out unnoticed, but the
Baron finds a strange key - the key that Fritz gave the Baroness to his apartment. Suddenly the
Baron appears one night during a party at Fritz’ apartment - using the key he found, thus revealing
Fritz as his wife’s secret lover. Fritz must then face death when his code of honor compels him to a
duel with the Baron.
Genre Drama, History, Literature Category
Feature Film Cinema Year of Production
1932/1933 Director Max Ophuels Screenplay
Hans Wilhelm, Curt Alexander, Max Ophuels,
based on the play by Arthur Schnitzler Director
of Photography Franz Planer Editor Friedel
Buckow Music by Theo Mackeben Production
Design Gabriel Pellon Producer Christoph
Muelleneisen Production Company EliteTonfilm-Produktion, Berlin Principal Cast Paul
Hoerbiger, Magda Schneider, Luise Ullrich, Gustaf
Gruendgens, Olga Tschechowa, Willy Eichberger,
Wolfgang Liebeneiner, Werner Finck, Paul Otto
Length 87 min, 2,378 m Format 35 mm, b&w,
1:1.37 Original Version German Subtitled
Version French Sound Technology Mono
German Distributor Filmkundliches Archiv,
Cologne
Max Ophuels was born in 1902 in Saarbruecken
and died in 1957 in Hamburg. He began his career as an
actor and director for the theater before he became an
assistant director and dialogue director at the Ufa
Studios in 1930. After a series of comedies, he directed
The Bartered Bride (Die verkaufte Braut,
1932), one of the first sound film versions of an opera.
In 1933, he emigrated to France, followed by time spent
from 1941-1949 in the United States. A selection of
his films includes: Dann schon lieber Lebertran
(1930), Die lachenden Erben (1931), Die verliebte Firma (1931), Liebelei (1932/1933),
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Brief
einer Unbekannten, 1948), Caught (Gefangen,
1949), The Reckless Moment (Schweigegeld
fuer Liebesbriefe, 1949), La ronde (Der
Reigen, 1950), Lola Montez (1955), and many
more.
World Sales:
Canal+ Images International · Dominique Brunet
Espace Lumière, 5-13 Boulevard de la République · Boulogne-Billancourt Cedex 92/France
phone +33-1-71 75 88 51 · fax +33-1-71 75 87 02
38
Kino 2/2002
THE 100 MOST SIGNIFICANT GERMAN FILMS – 24*
Scenes from ”Wintergartenprogramm“ (photo © Filmmuseum Berlin/Deutsche Kinemathek)
Wintergartenprogramm
On 1 November 1895, the brothers Max and Emil Skladanowsky presented their pioneer film
work and legendary Bioscop program in Berlin's Wintergarten Theater. With live musical accompaniment, the compilation program included short film sequences with famous artists of the time:
Italienischer Bauerntanz, Komisches Reck, Der Jongleur, Das boxende Kaenguruh,
Kamarinskaja, Die Serpentintaenzerin, Akrobatisches Potpourri, Ringkampf, and
Apotheose, with the Skladanowsky brothers bowing to their audience.
Genre History Category Documentary
Cinema Year of Production 1895
Director Max Skladanowsky Screenplay
Max Skladanowsky Directors of Photography Max Skladanowsky, Wilhelm Fenz
Production Company Skladanowsky Film,
Berlin Principal Cast the Ploetz-Larella children, the Milton brothers, Mr. Delaware, Paul
Petra Sandow, Emil and Max Skladanowsky, the
Grunato family, the Tscherpanoff brothers,
Mademoiselle Ancion, Mr. Greiner Length
7 min, 159 m Format 35 mm, b&w, 1:1.37
Original Version silent with German intertitles German Distributor Transit Film
GmbH, Munich
Max Skladanowsky was born in 1863 and died in 1939 in
Berlin. A film pioneer, he experimented in photography together
with his father Carl and brother Emil, and in 1892, constructed a
camera that could capture moving images. In 1885, he introduced
the Bioscop double projector, followed by another new camera
and a single projector in 1896. He started his own business,
Berliner Camerawerk, and later the production and distribution
company Projektion fuer Alle in 1897, hoping to successfully commercialize his early cinematic inventions, but the growing competition from the rapidly developing film industry led to the ruin of his
small company. However, his unsurpassed significance as inventor
of Germany's first film camera and projector and his historical
contributions to the entire film industry remain. His films include:
Wintergartenprogramm (1895), Nicht mehr allein
(1896), Am Bollwerk in Stettin (1897), Eine Fliegenjagd
oder Die Rache der Frau Schultze (1913), Die
moderne Jungfrau von Orleans (1914), and Die
Erfindung der Kinematographie im Jahre 1895 in
Berlin (1927), among others.
World Sales:
Transit Film GmbH · Loy W. Arnold, Mark Gruenthal
Dachauer Strasse 35 · 80335 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-5 99 88 50 · fax +49-89-59 98 85 20
email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
(* no. 23 Spur der Steine was already presented
within the framework of the former series
”German Classic Movies“ in KINO 2/1999)
39
Scene from ”Lola Montez“ (photo courtesy of Filmmuseum Munich)
Lola Montez
THE 100 MOST SIGNIFICANT GERMAN FILMS – 25
Based on the novel La vie extraordinaire de Lola Montèz by Cécil Saint-Laurent, Lola Montez tells
the tragic story of the once notorious courtesan, but now ill and tired Lola Montez, who works in
the circus as the "attraction of the year" answering questions from the audience. When asked about
her love life, she is reminded of her past, which is performed in short sequences in the circus ring:
childhood and early marriage, farewell from Franz Liszt, and successful career. The more respected
her lovers are, the higher she ascends on the trapeze. She reaches the highest point when she tells
the story of her relationship to the Bavarian king, Ludwig I. But after being banished from the
king's court by revolting citizens, her downfall soon follows after a brief affair with a student.
One of the most celebrated examples of both Technicolor and CinemaScope, the German version
of Lola Montez was fully restored in 2002 by the Filmmuseum Munich.
Genre Biopic, Drama, History Category
Feature Film Cinema Year of Production 1955
Director Max Ophuels Screenplay Max
Ophuels, Jacques Natanson, Annette Wademant,
Franz Geiger Director of Photography
Christian Matras Editors Madeleine Gug,
Adolph Schlyssleder Music by Georges Auric
Production Design Jean d'Eaubonne, Willy
Schatz Producers André Haguet, Alfred Zappelli,
Emil E. Reinegger Production Company
Gamma Film, Paris, Florida Films, Paris, Gamma
Film, Munich, Oska-Film, Munch, Union-Film,
Munich Principal Cast Martine Carol, Peter
Ustinov, Anton Wohlbrueck, Henri Guisol, Lise
Delamare, Oskar Werner, Will Quadflieg Length
114 min, 3,093 m Format 35 mm, color, cs
Original Version English/German/French
Sound Technology 4-Channel Magnetic Track
German Distributor Metropolitan, Munich
Max Ophuels was born in 1902 in Saarbruecken
and died in 1957 in Hamburg. He began his career as an
actor and director for the theater before he became an
assistant director and dialogue director at the Ufa
Studios in 1930. After a series of comedies, he directed
The Bartered Bride (Die verkaufte Braut,
1932), one of the first sound film versions of an opera.
In 1933, he emigrated to France, followed by time spent
from 1941-1949 in the United States. A selection of
his films includes: Dann schon lieber Lebertran
(1930), Die lachenden Erben (1931), Die verliebte Firma (1931), Liebelei (1932/1933),
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Brief
einer Unbekannten, 1948), Caught (Gefangen,
1949), The Reckless Moment (Schweigegeld
fuer Liebesbriefe, 1949), La ronde (Der
Reigen, 1950), Lola Montez (1955), and many
more.
World Sales:
Les Films du Jeudi - Les Films de la Pléiade · Laurence Braunberger
3, rue Hautefeuille · 75006 Paris/France
phone +33-1-40 46 97 98 · fax +33-1-40 46 89 88
email: [email protected]
40
Kino 2/2002
Madame Dubarry
THE 100 MOST SIGNIFICANT GERMAN FILMS – 29*
Emil Jannings, Pola Negri in ”Passion“ (photo © Filmmuseum Berlin/Deutsche Kinemathek)
PA S S I O N
In a deal to save her lover Count Dubarry from financial ruin, the Parisian milliner Jeanne
Vaubernier (alias Madame Dubarry) becomes the influential wife of the reigning French king, Louis
XV. However much to the dismay of the king's advisor Choiseul, who had planned for his own sister
to marry the king. Choiseul thus starts a campaign to turn the people against the monarch and his
new wife, and Jeanne soon becomes a symbol for the extravagance of the much-hated aristocracy.
When the king dies, Jeanne is ousted by the angry masses and sent to the stakes.
Genre Drama, History Category Feature Film
Cinema Year of Production 1919
Director Ernst Lubitsch Screenplay Fred
Orbing, Hanns Kraely Directors of Photography Theodor Sparkuhl, Fritz Arno Wagner
Music by Alexander Schirmann (1919), Hans
Joensson (1976) Production Design Kurt
Richter, Karl Machus Producer Paul Davidson
Production Company Projektions-AG Union
(PAGU), Berlin Rights Friedrich-Wilhelm-MurnauFoundation, Wiesbaden Principal Cast Pola
Negri, Emil Jannings, Reinhold Schuenzel, Harry
Liedtke, Eduard von Winterstein, Karl Platen,
Paul Biensfeldt, Magnus Stifter Length 92 min,
2,492 m Format 35 mm, b&w, 1:1.37 Original
Version silent with German intertitles
Intertitled Version English German
Distributor Transit Film GmbH, Munich
Ernst Lubitsch was born in 1892 in Berlin and died in 1947 in
Hollywood. After studying Acting, he appeared as a comedian in
his first film roles. He had his directorial debut with the film
Blindekuh in 1914. His first comedy Die Austernprinzessin (1919) was followed closely by Madame
Dubarry (1919), which was a great audience success. In 1922,
he emigrated to the United States where he became one of the
leading directors of Hollywood. Once in Hollywood, he developed his frivolous style known as the ”Lubitsch touch“. In 1933,
he became an American citizen and took over production at
Paramount. His other films include: I Don't Want to Be a
Man (Ich moechte kein Mann sein, 1918), Carmen
(1918), Anna Boleyn (1920), Sumurun (1920), The
Flame (Die Flamme, 1922), The Marriage Circle (Die
Ehe im Kreis, 1924), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925),
Trouble in Paradise (Aerger im Paradies (1932), the
Hitler satire To Be or Not to Be (Sein oder Nichtsein
(1942), and many, many more.
World Sales:
Transit Film GmbH · Loy W. Arnold, Mark Gruenthal
Dachauer Strasse 35 · 80335 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-5 99 88 50 · fax +49-89-59 98 85 20
email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
(*no. 26 Faust. Eine deutsche Volkssage, no. 27 Heimat I.
Eine Chronik in 11 Teilen, and no. 28 Deutschland im Herbst
were already presented within the framework of the former
series "German Classic Movies" in KINO 1/1999,
KINO 2/2000 and KINO 4/1999 respectively)
41
Anansi
From Ghana to a deserted coast – from Morocco to Spain – out of desperate need, a group of West
Africans dare the perilous journey to Germany. But their path to the promised land of satellite dishes and
a better life is strewn with obstacles.
In West Africa, the name ”Anansi“ means spider – a well-loved trickster. This ancient mythical character
represents the survival strategies of a people who secure a future for themselves in spite of the most
repulsive conditions.
Jimmy Akingbola, Naomie Harris (photo © AVISTA FILM)
The main character – Zaza – is played by George Quaye, Ghana’s much adored womanizer in the weekly
soap Taxi. His friend Sir Francis – the wise cracker – is played by Maynard Eziashi, who earned a Silver
Bear at Berlin in 1992 for Mister Johnson and also starred in the film Ace Ventura. Reggae superstar Shaggy
supported the project from the beginning and contributed the title song Why Me Lord. Roman Bunka’s
vivid soundtrack carries the spirit of this road movie – oscillating between laughter and tears. Anansi is an
odyssey full of wonders and sacrifices, African mystic and a love that surpasses all borders.
Genre Drama Category Feature Film Cinema Year of Production 2001/2002 Director Fritz Baumann Screenplay Fritz
Baumann Director of Photography Arturo Smith Editor
Christian Lonk Music by Roman Bunka Production Design
Carsten Lippstock Producers Alena & Herbert Rimbach Production Company AVISTA FILM, Munich, in co-production with
Brainpool TV, Cologne, Calypso Filmproduktion, Cologne, in cooperation with ARTE, Strasbourg, BR, Munich Principal Cast George
Quaye, Jimmy Akingbola, Naomie Harris, Maynard Eziashi, Danny
Sapani Casting Daniela Tolkien, Munich, Sam Jones, London Length
80 min, 2,188 m Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85 Original Version
English Dubbed Version German Sound Technology Dolby
SRD With backing from FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, BKM,
Filmbuero NW, FilmFoerderung Hamburg, MFG Baden-Wuerttemberg,
Kuratorium junger deutscher Film, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA),
MEDIA German Distributor Pegasos Film, Frankfurt
Fritz Baumann was born in 1950 in Brannenburg.
From 1973-1977, he studied at the Academy of
Television & Film (HFF/M) in Munich. Since 1976, he has
been working as an independent producer, director,
recording supervisor and film editor. His films include:
Mord (1974), Die Pensionierung (1975), Die
Begegnungen (1976), co-direction on Let’s Not
Talk About It (1978) and Dein Kopf ist ein
schlafendes Auto (TV, 1981) with Werner Penzel,
So frei wie der Loewe (1984), D’jubel Wies’n
(documentary, 1985), Woman (documentary, 1989),
The Journey of the Lion (Die Reise des
Loewen, 1993) – winner of the Silver Plaque at Chicago
in 1993 and the New York Times Film Critics’ Award in
1994, Eisen (TV, 1996), six documentary episodes of
Bonn packt (TV, 1999) and Anansi (2001/2002),
among others.
World Sales:
CINEPOOL · A Dept. of Telepool Europaeisches Fernsehprogrammkontor GmbH
Dr. Cathy Rohnke, Wolfram Skowronnek
NNES
Sonnenstrasse 21 · 80331 Munich/Germany
AT C A
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phone +49-89-55 87 60 · fax +49-89-55 87 62 29
REEN
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www.telepool.de · email: [email protected], [email protected]
ARKE
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Kino 2/2002
Annas Sommer
A N NA ' S S U M M E R
Anna Kastelano is packing up the home that had belonged to her family on a Greek island and is
considering putting it up for sale. However, in these familiar surroundings, she is revisited by
memories of her own past and that of her Sephardic-Jewish family. Anna has not yet got over the
death of her husband Max. She spends the summer on the island, which has become her second
home, trying to come to terms with her solitude.
For the first time, she opens the old family chest. Memories and ghosts rise up, with whom she
cooks, dances and picks figs. She finds old telegrams relating to the fate of her grandmother Anna.
She also discovers the diary of another Anna, her father's first love.
Scene from "Anna's Summer" (photo © Integral Film)
But the present also makes itself felt. Anna meets Nikola and the feelings she experiences intermingle with her mourning and the moving discoveries about her family. Anna is searching for a path
through the labyrinth of her history and ultimately decides to assume her place in it. Life goes on.
Genre Drama, Family Category Feature Film Cinema Year of Production 2001 Director Jeanine Meerapfel Screenplay Jeanine Meerapfel
Director of Photography Andreas Sinanos Editor Bernd Euscher
Music by Flores Floridis Production Design Alexander Scherer
Producer Dagmar Jacobsen Production Company Integral Film, Berlin,
in co-production with Malena Films, Berlin, FS Production, Athens, El Iman,
Madrid, in cooperation with WDR, Cologne, ARTE, Strasbourg, ERT, Athens,
Canal+ España, Madrid Principal Cast Angela Molina, Herbert Knaup,
Dimitris Katalifos, Rosana Pastor Length 107 min, 3,080 m Format 35 mm,
color, 1:1.85 Original Version German/English/Greek/Spanish Subtitled
Versions English, German, Spanish Sound Technology Dolby SR
International Festival Screenings Montreal 2001, Chicago 2001,
Washington Jewish Film Festival 2001, Thessaloniki 2001, Hof 2001, Luenen
2001, Berlin 2002 (German Cinema), Mar del Plata 2002 (in competition)
With backing from Filmstiftung NRW, BKM, Filmboard BerlinBrandenburg, Greek Film Center, Ministerio de Educación (Spain), Eurimages
German Distributor Basis-Film Verleih, Berlin
Jeanine Meerapfel was born in 1943 in Buenos
Aires/Argentina. Born to parents who fled Germany
during the Nazi regime, she has consistently engaged
themes involving identity, politics and emigration into her
films. Her first feature, Malou (1981), won the FIPRESCI
Award at Cannes and the Gold Hugo at Chicago. She has
directed numerous features and documentaries, several of
which, including La Amiga (1989) and Amigomío
(1995), have received awards in Spain, Cuba and
Germany. She has lived in Germany since 1964, where she
became a professor at the Academy of Media Arts
Cologne (KHM) in 1990. Her films include: the collective
social drama Zwickel auf Bizyckel (1968), In the
Country of My Parents (1981), Melek Leaves
(1985), Days to Remember (1987), Desembarcos
– When Memory Speaks (1989), La Amiga, and
Anna´s Summer (2001), among others.
World Sales:
Media Luna Entertainment GmbH & Co. KG · Ida Martins
Hochstadenstrasse 1-3 · 50674 Cologne/Germany
phone +49-2 21-1 39 22 22 · fax +49-2 21-1 39 22 24
www.medialuna-entertainment.de · email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
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43
Berlin – Sinfonie einer Grossstadt
B E RLI N SYM PHONY
”I think most people who feel a rush of excitement watching my Berlin film don’t know where it’s coming from.
If I managed to give people a sense of that excitement, of allowing them to experience the city of Berlin, then I
achieved what I set out to do and proved that I was right all along.“
(Walther Ruttmann)
In 1927, Walther Ruttmann shot his majestic documentary Berlin. Symphony of a City. In September of
that same year, this milestone of the silent film era was premiered at Berlin’s Tauentzien Palast with a
specially composed live soundtrack.
Seventy-five years later, Berlin is in the midst of a uniquely vibrant and exciting transition. Ten years
after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the re-energized drive of history is bringing forth a new city. People from
all over the world and from all walks of life are coming together to form a new metropolis, one reminiscent in many ways of 1920s Berlin.
Scene from ”Berlin Symphony“ (photo © Thomas Schadt)
While retaining some of the original’s basic dramatic principles and characteristics – organizing every
shot in the film according to a symphonic structure, depicting one day in the life of the city using several
main themes, and shooting on black-and-white 35 mm film – this remake also strives to establish its
own cohesive pictorial language and narrative structure.
Genre History Category Documentary Cinema
Year of Production 2001/2002 Director
Thomas Schadt Screenplay Thomas Schadt
Director of Photography Thomas Schadt
Editor Thomas Wellmann Music by Helmut
Oehring, Iris ter Schiphorst Producers Nico
Hofmann, Thomas Schadt Production
Companies teamWorx, Berlin, Odyssee-Film,
Berlin Length 82 min, 2,300 m Format 35 mm,
b&w, 1:1.66 Sound Technology Dolby SR
With backing from Filmboard BerlinBrandenburg, MFG Baden-Wuerttemberg, BKM
German Distributor ottfilm GmbH, Berlin
Thomas Schadt was born in 1957 in Nuremberg. During his Photography studies, he
worked as a film projectionist, photography assistant and theater photographer, followed
by studies at the German Film & Television Academy (dffb) in Berlin from 1980-1983.
He then founded his own film production company, Odyssee-Film, and has been working
since as a freelance documentary filmmaker, photographer and cinematographer. Since
1991, he has been teaching at various film academies, including the dffb and the Film
Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg. His films include: his graduation film
Was hab i in Hawaii verloren (1982), Unterwegs nach immer und
ueberall – Eine Deutschlandreise (1985/1986), Der Autobahnkrieg (1991)
- winner of the Adolf Grimme Award, Grenzgaenge – Die Deutschen auf der
Suche nach einer Identitaet (1993) and Augenzeugen – Die Fotografen
Hoepker, Lebeck, Moses und Scheler (1998) together with Reiner Holzemer,
Der Kandidat – Gerhard Schroeder im Wahlkampf ’98 (1998) – winner of
the German Television Award for Best Documentary in 1999, Hans im Glueck –
Deutsche Banker an der Wall Street (1999), My Way – James Last
(2001), Berlin Symphony (2001/2002), and many, many more.
World Sales:
CINEPOOL · A Dept. of Telepool Europaeisches Fernsehprogrammkontor GmbH
Dr. Cathy Rohnke, Wolfram Skowronnek
Sonnenstrasse 21 · 80331 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-55 87 60 · fax +49-89-55 87 62 29
www.telepool.de · email: [email protected], [email protected]
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Kino 2/2002
Die Datsche
HOM E TRUTH S
Michael Kind, Catherine Flemming (photo © Equinox Film)
An East German married couple, Elke and Arnold, are attacked in their
weekend cottage by two robbers, Asche and Big. It quickly becomes
clear however, that there's nothing in the cottage worth stealing. Arnold
and Elke become the helpless victims of the crooks’ aggression. But then,
unforeseen circumstances fuse attacker and victim together in a tragicomic union that explodes just as quickly as it came together.
Genre Drama Category Feature Film Cinema Year of
Production 2001 Director Carsten Fiebeler
Screenplay Carsten Fiebeler, Ulv Jakobsen Director of
Photography Erik Krambeck Editor Christian
Nauheimer Music by Tarwater Production Design
Steffen Gnade Producers Sabine Manthey, Bernhard
Koellisch Production Company Equinox Film, Leipzig, in
co-production with Koppfilm, Berlin, in cooperation with
MDR, Leipzig Principal Cast Catherine Flemming, Michael
Kind, Uwe Kockisch, Nils Nellessen Casting Drews Casting
Length 86 min, 2,353 m Format 24p-HD Blow-up
35 mm, color, cs Original Version German Subtitled
Version English Sound Technology Dolby SR With
backing from Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung
Carsten Fiebeler studied Directing at
the ”Konrad Wolff“ Academy of Television
& Film in Babelsberg. His graduation film
Revanche was awarded the Panther Prize
at the Filmfest Munich in 1999. His short
film Strassensperre won the Panorama
Short Film Award at Berlin in 1998. In addition to various commercials and short films,
has also directed the TV movie Himmlische Helden (2001) and Home
Truths (2001).
World Sales:
Equinox Film GmbH & Co · Sabine Manthey
Gohliser Strasse 6 · 04105 Leipzig/Germany
phone +49-3 41-5 66 56 90 · fax +49-3 41-5 66 56 99
www.equinoxfilm.de · email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
45
Dream, Dream, Dream
Joachim and Franco are standing on a cliff in Norway at midnight, watching the sun set. But
instead of disappearing behind the horizon, the sun rises again. Both men have reached their
destination, and now it is time to return back home again. But they have a long road ahead of
them, over 3,000 kilometers, and not much in common. There is tension in the air, but they
will have to put up with each other for a while.
Franco Belviso, Kati Outinen, Manuel Blanc (photo © Integral Film)
Joachim is a young, somewhat stiff scientist who is on a journey to fulfill his deceased father’s
dream. During the journey, he learns a lot about himself and his much-hated but also muchrespected father. Franco, on the other hand, is a fiery-tempered Italian who hates nothing
more than "good advice", particularly when it has to do with his status as a father. So the ”bad
son“ and the ”bad father“ make their way through thick and thin. The trip back to Hamburg
gives them the chance to find themselves and to become good friends.
Genre Road Movie Category Feature Film Cinema Year
of Production 2001/2002 Director Anne Alix Screenplay Anne Alix Director of Photography Pascale Granel
Editor Marie-Laure Desideri Music by Hinrich Dagefoer,
Frank Wulff-Raven, Stefan Wulff Production Design Dawn
Carman Staub Producers Dagmar Jacobsen, Frédéric Sichler,
Marc Ruscart, Helmut Dietl, Tuomas Sallinen, Marcel Hoehn
Production Company Integral Film, Berlin, in co-production with Euripide Productions, Paris, Diana Film, Munich, Wide
Eye Productions, Helsinki, T & C Film, Zurich, in association
with ARTE, Strasbourg Principal Cast Manuel Blanc, Franco
Belviso, Kati Outinen, Marina Kobakhidze, Harry Baer, Heinz
Lieven Length 93 min, 2,544 m Format 16 mm Blow-up
35 mm, color, 1:1.66 Original Version French/English/
Finnish/German Subtitled Versions French, German
Sound Technology Dolby Stereo With backing from
FilmFoerderung Hamburg, Le Centre National de la
Cinématographie
Anne Alix was born in 1963 in Paris,
where she studied History and Film.
Also working freelance as a film editor,
her films include: the shorts Il y
a (1988), La Boutique (1996) and
Paradise (1999), as well as numerous
documentaries for television, including
L’Usine: mémoires croisées
(1993), Il cantastorie (1995),
Hôpital Silence? (1996), Mémoire
vive (1997), and Dream, Dream,
Dream (2001/2002), her feature debut.
World Sales: please contact
Integral Film GmbH
Bleibtreustrasse 10/11 · 10623 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-88 55 15 86 · fax +49-30-88 55 28 46
www.integralfilm.de · email: [email protected]
46
Kino 2/2002
Gold Cuts – eine poetische
Reise durch die Gegensaetze
G O L D C U T S – A P O E T I C T R A I L T H RO U G H C O N T R A D I CT I O N
Is art more than the genius, inspiration and total dedication of one individual? In an age of networked
information, can art and the world be enriched through symbiotic networks?
In reaction to the ever increasing individualization of society, a new artistic direction is manifested –
network art. Not the individual, but rather a well-honed collective forms the creative focal point.
Gold Cuts – A Poetic Trail Through Contradiction takes the viewer on an imaginary journey
through the spaces and crevices of spiritual city landscapes in contemporary Berlin.
Scenes from ”Gold Cuts – A Poetic Trail Through Contradiction“
Through the professional support of a local artist and an award-winning editor, sixteen international
managers have mastered the difficult task of bringing together unspoiled enthusiasm and technical
finesse. Gold Cuts – A Poetic Trail Through Contradiction describes the gold from which the
threads of everyday life are spun.
Genre Art Category (Semi-)Fictional Documentary
Year of Production 2002 Directors Team Gold Cuts
under the artistic direction of Ernst Handl Screenplay Ernst
Handl, Bernd Wildenmann Director of Photography Hans
Rombach Editor Petra Jurowski Music by Marcelo Royo
Producer Juergen Bock Production Company Otto
International Academy, Hamburg Length 55 min, 1,571 m
Format Digital Video Blow-up 35 mm, color, 1:1.66
Original Version German Subtitled Version French
Sound Technology Stereo German Distributor Otto
International Academy, Hamburg
Ernst Handl studied at the Academy
of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1970-1975.
After spending a year on the Greek island
of Crete, he moved to Berlin in 1980,
where he became a founding member of
various art galleries and cultural centers.
He has initiated many art symposia and
events, including the Snake Charming project for the Expo 2000 in Hanover and
the Guggenheim Museum in New York in
2001. Gold Cuts – A Poetic Trail
Through Contradiction (2002)
marks his film debut.
World Sales:
Otto International Academy · Juergen Bock
Wandsbeker Strasse 3-7 · 22172 Hamburg/Germany
phone +49-40-64 61 70 52 · fax +49-40-64 61 80 58
www.gold-cuts.com · email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
47
Grosse Maedchen weinen nicht
B I G G I R L S D O N ' T C RY
What does it mean to be seventeen and to have a best friend? It means you spend almost every waking
moment with each other, talk all day and night about your favorite topics (love, boys, and sex) and you share
fears, desires, joys and pain.
Kati is seventeen. Her relationships never turn out as she hopes for – many affairs, but not really a true boyfriend, and her parents are trying to get a grip on things on the home front, but just cannot seem to manage.
Steffi, Kati's best friend, seems to have the perfect life. She's pretty, has a sweet boyfriend and an open and
functional relationship to her parents – or so it seems.
Anna Maria Muehe, Karoline Herfurth (photo © Gabrielle Meros)
But Kati and Steffi's friendship is put to the test. Kati witnesses her friend's life fall apart, as Steffi finds out by
chance that her father is having an affair. In their despair, the two girls try to find out more about this woman
and happen to then meet her daughter, Tessa. Steffi focuses all her hate on Tessa, and Kati has to decide how
far her loyalties will take her. The situation gets out of control, but big girls don't cry …
Genre Coming-of-Age Story, Drama Category Feature Film Cinema
Year of Production 2002 Director Maria von Heland Screenplay Maria von Heland Director of Photography Roman Osin
Editor Jessica Congdon Music by Niclas Frisk, Andreas Mattsson
Production Design Ulrika Andersson Producers Andrea Willson,
Judy Tossell Production Company Deutsche Columbia Pictures
Filmproduktion, Berlin, in co-production with Egoli Tossell Film, Berlin
Principal Cast Anna Maria Muehe, Karoline Herfurth, Josefine Domes,
David Winter, Tillbert Strahl-Schaefer, Stefan Kurt, Nina Petri, Gabriela
Maria Schmiede, Matthias Brandt Casting Nessie Nesslauer Special
Effects Adolf Wojtinek/VFX: TVT Berlin, Manfred Buettner/Cinesite
London Length 87 min, 2,486 m Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85
Original Version German Subtitled Version English Sound
Technology Dolby Digital, SDDS With backing from
Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA), Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg
German Distributor Columbia Tristar Film GmbH, Berlin
Maria von Heland was born in Stockholm in
1965. She studied Journalism in Sweden, Acting in
Paris and Directing at the California Institute of
the Arts, during which time she attended classes
as an exchange student at the ”Konrad Wolf“
Academy of Film & Television (HFF/B) in
Potsdam-Babelsberg. Her films include: the
award-winning shorts Die Staerkere (1994),
Chainsmoker (1997) and Real Men Eat
Meat (1998), her first feature film Recycled
(1999) and Big Girls Don’t Cry (2002).
World Sales:
Columbia Pictures Inc. · Sal Ladestro
10202 W. Washington Boulevard · Culver City, California 90232/USA
phone +1-3 10-2 44 20 73 · fax +1-3 10-2 44 18 01
www.spe.sony.com · email: [email protected]
48
Kino 2/2002
Herz im Kopf
H E A RT OV E R H E A D
Tom Schilling, Alicja Bachleda-Curus (photo © Claussen + Woebke Filmproduktion)
When his mother died, Jakob was unable to cope with his life. He quit school and moved to Berlin to
live with his father. But things didn’t work out, and now, a year later, he packs his bags and returns
home to the Frankfurt suburbs to live with his older sister Petra. Although planning on only passing
through, Jakob soon realizes he’ll have to help her out. Petra is pregnant, her boyfriend has just left her
and she can barely make ends meet for herself and her eight-year-old son. Just after his return home,
Jakob meets Wanda, a Polish au-pair girl living there. The more he sees her, the more he falls in love
with her. Wanda is attracted to him too, but she’s hesitant to give in to his attentions. She’s responsible
for the household of the Gebhard family and takes care of their two kids – but the Gebhards aren’t too
pleased to have Jakob hanging around. And Wanda’s friends don’t really like him either. If love is to
win, they must both follow their hearts …
Genre Drama, Comedy Category Feature Film Cinema
Year of Production 2001 Director Michael Gutmann
Screenplay Michael Gutmann, Hans-Christian Schmid
Directors of Photography Klaus Eichhammer, Pascal
Hoffmann Editor Monika Abspacher Music by Rainer
Michel Production Design Ingrid Henn, Marion Anna
Schlauss Producers Jakob Claussen, Thomas Woebke
Production Company Claussen + Woebke
Filmproduktion, Munich Principal Cast Tom Schilling,
Alicja Bachleda-Curus, Anna von Berg, Matthias
Schweighoefer, Sebastian Kroehnert Casting Anja Dihrberg
Length 89 min, 2,656 m Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85
Original Version German Subtitled Version English
Sound Technology Dolby SR International Festival
Screenings Hof 2001 With backing from
Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA), FilmFernsehFonds Bayern,
Filmstiftung NRW German Distributor Constantin Film
Verleih GmbH, Munich
Michael Gutmann was born in Frankfurt in 1956.
After studying Art and German at the University of
Frankfurt, he transferred to the Academy of Television
& Film (HFF/M) in Munich. He has worked as a screenwriter and comic artist as well as a lecturer at the film
schools in Ludwigsburg, Munich and Cologne. He has
written and directed a number of episodes for TV
series such as Das Nest, Ein Fall fuer zwei and Tatort and
co-authored a number of films directed and co-written by Hans-Christian Schmid, including It’s a Jungle
Out There (Nach fuenf im Urwald, 1995), 23 (1998),
and Crazy (2000). His films as director and screenwriter include: Von Zeit zu Zeit (short, 1990),
How I Got Rhythm (short, 1993), Rohe
Ostern (1995), Nur fuer eine Nacht (TV,
1996), Black Ice (Glatteis, TV, 1998) and Heart
over Head (Herz im Kopf, 2001).
World Sales:
Beta Film GmbH · Dirk Schuerhoff
Robert-Buerkle-Strasse 2 · 85737 Ismaning/Germany
phone +49-89-99 56 21 34 · fax +49-89-99 56 27 03
www.betacinema.com · email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
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Nichts Bereuen
NO REG RETS
Daniel is 19-years-old and finally has his high school days behind him. After a wonderful summer
vacation, he is back in town and ready for life to start happening.
Daniel Bruehl, Jessica Schwarz (photo © ottfilm)
Things start out alright, but all his shots seem to backfire. His father organized a boring community
service job for him at the church, and his reunion with the love of his life, Luca, was a disaster.
Luca is fascinating, breathtaking, exciting, and … way out of his league! But virgin Daniel has chosen
her as his partner for his first sexual encounter. Although he made the decision four years ago,
Luca still knows nothing about it. She just sees Daniel as a good friend. But things can’t go on like
this, so Daniel decides to change his life dramatically. He changes jobs, an act he considers much
easier than changing the love of his life. Or maybe not. He then meets Anna, a social worker, and
for the first time he realizes that there are indeed alternatives to Luca. And all of the following
small and not-so-small catastrophes help him to realize that life is what happens between it all. And
that is why there is nothing to regret.
Genre Coming-of-Age Story Category Feature Film Cinema Year of
Production 2000 Director Benjamin Quabeck Screenplay Hendrik
Hoelzemann Director of Photography David Schultz Editor Tobias
Haas Music by Lee Buddah Production Design Miriam Moeller,
Markus Wollersheim Producers Stephanie Wagner, Michael Schaefer
Production Company Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg, Ludwigsburg, in cooperation with WDR, Cologne, ARRI Film & TV, Munich
Principal Cast Daniel Bruehl, Jessica Schwarz, Denis Moschitto, MarieLou Sellem, Josef Heynert, Sonja Rogusch Special Effects ARRI Digital,
Angela Reedwisch, Claudia Fuchs Length 103 min, 2,680 m Format
Super 16 mm Blow-up 35 mm, color, 1:1.85 Original Version
German Subtitled Version English, Italian Sound Technology
Dolby Digital International Festival Screenings Munich 2001,
Berlin 2002 (German Cinema) International Awards Hypo Bank
Young Director’s Award 2001, Best First Feature Society of German Film
Critics 2002 With backing from Filmbuero NW, MFG BadenWuerttemberg, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA)
German Distributor ottfilm GmbH, Berlin
World Sales:
ottfilm GmbH · Claudia Poepsel
Kurfuerstendamm 175/176 · 10707 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-88 71 88 80 · fax +49-30-8 87 18 88 99
www.ottfilm.de · email: [email protected]
50
Benjamin Quabeck studied
Directing at the Film Academy BadenWuerttemberg from 1996-2000. He also
works freelance as a film editor. His films
include the prize-winning shorts: Wind
(1996), Weird Wire (1996), Die
Wenigsten wissen das (1997),
Hoehlenangst (1998), Ertraenkte
Angst (1998), Grafenzeit (1998),
4000 Teile (1999), and his graduation
film and feature film debut No Regrets
(2000).
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Kino 2/2002
Poem – ”Ich setzte den Fuss
in die Luft, und sie trug“
POE M
Poems have the power to uplift. They deal with a certain sense of magical enthusiasm and truth. Poem is a film that lets the viewer experience this power.
Scene from ”Poem“ (Ich kann Dir die Welt nicht zu Fuessen legen by Heiner Mueller)
A collection of twenty-one poems from German-speaking authors are performed
and recited, taking us on a trip through life: its precious experiences and possibilities,
expressions of love and friendship, the suffering of change, and the fear of aging,
disease, loneliness and death.
Genre Literature Category Feature Film Cinema
Year of Production 2002 Director Ralf Schmerberg
Screenplay Antonia Keinz, Ralf Schmerberg Directors of
Photography Neelesha Barthel, Ana Davila, Daniel
Gottschalk, Ali Goezkaya, Darius Khondji, Franz Lustig, Jo
Molitoris, Joerg Schmidt Reitwein, Ralf Schmerberg, Robby
Mueller, Nicola Pecorini Editor Rick Waller Production
Design Peter Weber Art Department Producers Ralf
Schmerberg, Eva Maier-Schoenung Production Company
Trigger Happy Productions, Berlin, in co-production with radical.media, New York Principal Cast Meret Becker, David
Bennent, Carmen Birk, Anna Boettcher, Klaus Maria Brandauer,
John & Larry Gassmann, Christoph Asmus Gerber, Chiring
Gurong, Marcia Haydée, Sham Lama Tulkur, Luise Rainer, Rosa
Coco Schinagl, Herman van Veen, Juergen Vogel Casting Ana
Davila Casting Length 95 min, 2,608 m Format 35 mm,
Digital Video, 16 mm, Super 16 mm Blow-up 35 mm, color,
1:1.85 Original Version German Subtitled Versions
English, French Sound Technology Dolby Digital
Ralf Schmerberg was born 1965 in Stuttgart and
studied Photography. He has received numerous
awards for his photographic work since 1989, including distinctions from the ADC Germany as well as a
Kodak Newcomer’s Prize, and he has exhibited in
Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart and Hamburg. He made
his feature directorial debut in 1995 with the poetic
documentary Hommage à Noir which was presented with a Certificate of Merit at the 1996 Chicago
International Film Festival and two Gold Medals at the
New York Film Festival in 1997 and was nominated
for the UNESCO Award. His other works include:
video clips for groups such as Die Fantastischen Vier,
Die Toten Hosen, and Chaka Khan, various advertisements for companies like Nike, Afri Cola and
Mastercard, among others, and the feature film
Poem (2002).
World Sales:
Trigger Happy Productions GmbH · Eva Maier-Schoenung
Swinemuender Strasse 121 · 10435 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-2 84 89 70 · fax +49-30-28 48 97 55
www.triggerhappyproductions.com · email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
51
Ein Produzent hat Seele
oder er hat keine
In January 2002, the director Volker Schloendorff and the producer Horst Wendlandt had an interesting conversation, which was filmed by the cameraman Andreas Hoefer. Horst Wendlandt, who has received over 38
Golden Screen Awards for his films, talks about his film work since the 1960s. The dialogue between the ”old
and young filmmakers“ provides a fascinating spectrum of German cinema of the recent past. Their conversation is complemented with numerous excerpts from some of Wendlandt’s most well-known films.
Volker Schloendorff, Horst Wendlandt (photo © Wolfgang Jahnke)
Volker Schloendorff’s proclamation of the necessary development of ”conservative film“ to Autorenfilm is
countered by Horst Wendlandt, impressive examples of his success, as well as clips from films by Loriot,
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ingmar Bergmann, Otto, Edgar Wallace and Karl May.
Genre Biopic Category Documentary
Cinema Year of Production 2002
Director Volker Schloendorff Director of
Photography Andreas Hoefer Editors Peter
Przygodda, Oliver Weiss Producers Susan
Nielebock, Henry Nielebock Production
Company Kruemel Film, Berlin Principal
Cast Horst Wendlandt, Volker Schloendorff
Length 75 min Format DigiBeta, color
Original Version German Subtitled
Version French
Volker Schloendorff was born in Wiesbaden in 1939. He
made his debut as a film director in 1965 with You Are a Man,
My Boy (Der junge Toerless) which won the German Film
Award in 1966 and the Max-Ophuels Award. In 1979, his adaptation
of Guenter Grass’ The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel)
was the first film by a German director to be awarded a Golden
Palm in Cannes. A year later, it was the first German film to be
awarded an OSCAR. His other films include: the filming of
Heinrich Boell’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
(Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, 1975),
Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst, 1976,
together with Stefan Aust, Alexander Kluge, et al), Circle of
Deceit (1980/1981), Swann in Love (Un amour de
Swann, 1984), Death of a Salesman (TV, 1985), A
Gathering of Old Men (TV, 1987), The Handmaid’s
Tale (1990), Voyager (Homo Faber, 1991), The Ogre
(Der Unhold, 1996), The Legends of Rita (Die Stille
nach dem Schuss, 1999), Ein Produzent hat Seele
oder er hat keine (2002), and many, many more.
World Sales: please contact
Kruemel Film GmbH · Henry Nielebock
Fasanenstrasse 13 · 10623 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-3 13 08 43 · fax +49-30-3 12 90 11
www.kruemelfilm.com · email: [email protected]
52
Kino 2/2002
Russian Ark
An extraordinary journey through time and Russian history. The Marquis de Custine, an 18th century French
diplomat with a love/hate relationship to Russia finds himself on a time trip through St. Petersburg’s fabled Winter
Palace – from the times of Peter the Great to the present day. With him, an invisible Russian filmmaker, who is
confused about Russia’s position in Europe.
Together they encounter life at the Imperial Palace as it was in different ages. From little backstage love affairs in
Catherine the Great’s personal theater to the last Grand Royal Ball of 1913. From Peter’s humiliation of his coarse
18th century countrymen to the Nazi’s bloody siege of Leningrad during World War II. It’s as if the Hermitage is a
vessel, retaining the Russian soul until a better day, when that country once again knows where it belongs.
Russian Ark is a truly unique film – the ”absolute auteur movie“. Alexander Sokurov tells his story in one uninterrupted steadicam sequence, which was only recorded once. There is no editing, the film unfolds in pure real time.
The filmmaker’s vision – featuring more than 2,000 actors and extras – was realized entirely ”in the camera“.
Scene from ”Russian Ark“ (photo © Egoli Tossell Film / Hermitage Bridge Studio)
Russian Ark was recorded straight to hard disk in the High Definition format, for digital and for 35 mm projection, featuring a live performance by the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra under Valery Gergiev.
Genre Art, History Category Feature Film Cinema Year of
Production 2002 Director Alexander Sokurov Screenplay
Alexander Sokurov, Anatoli Nikiforov Director of Photography
Tilman Buettner Imaging Sergey Ivanov Music by Sergey Yetushenko
Production Design Alexander Sokurov Producers Andrey
Deryabin, Jens Meurer, Karsten Stoeter Production Companies
Hermitage Bridge Studio, St. Petersburg, Egoli Tossell Film, Berlin, in coproduction with Kopp Film, Berlin, Fora Film, Moscow Principal Cast
Sergey Dreiden, Maria Kuznetsova, Leonid Mozgovoi, Prof. Michail
Piotrovsky Length 96 min 2,627 m Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85
Original Version Russian Subtitled Versions English, French
Sound Technology Dolby SR International Festival
Screenings Cannes 2002 (in competition) With backing from
Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung, Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg, BKM,
Filmbuero NW, FilmFoerderung Hamburg, Filmfoerderung Sachsen-Anhalt,
Kultusministerium der Russischen Foederation German Distributor
Delphi Filmverleih GmbH, Berlin
Alexander Sokurov was born in Russia in 1951. He
studied History and trained until 1979 as a director at the
Moscow Film School VGIK. His graduation film The
Lonely Voice of Man (1987) was neither officially
accepted by the school, nor given the right to be shown –
as was the case with all of his films until the democratic
reforms in the mid to late 80s –-, but did win a Bronze
Leopard at Locarno. In 2000, he founded the studio Bereg
for non-commercial feature and documentary films.
Sokurov has made numerous prize-winning feature films
and documentaries, including: Painful Indifference
(1987), Days of Eclipse (1988), Elegy of Russia
(documentary, 1992), Mother And Son (1996),
Moloch (1999), Taurus (2001) and Russian Ark
(2002), among others.
World Sales:
Celluloid Dreams · Hengameh Panahi
2, rue Turgot · 75009 Paris/France
phone +33-1-49 70 03 70 · fax +33-1-49 70 03 71
www.celluloid-dreams.com · email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
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M PET
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IN
53
Sternzeichen
ZO D I AC S I G N
Alexander Becker, caring father of two children,
loving husband and ambitious lawyer, is offered
the deal of a lifetime: if he wins a high-caliber
lawsuit for his firm, he will be on his way to a
top career in Canada.
But then he receives a phone call from the clinic
where he put his mentally handicapped brother
Fabian after the early death of their mother many
years ago. Apparently important renovations at
the clinic make it necessary to find temporary
accommodations for Fabian for four weeks.
Although completely against the idea of his
brother coming to live with him, Alexander
finally gives in.
Barnaby Metschurat (photo © ANTAEUS Babelsberg GmbH)
Unwillingly, Fabian becomes a catalyst for all the
unsettled conflicts in his new environment. With
Fabian, the suppressed memories of Alexander’s
childhood, the reminder of their mutual roots and
their painful separation come to fore. Things start to
happen very fast, and slowly but surely Alexander
begins to understand where he really belongs.
Genre Drama, Family Category Feature Film
Cinema Year of Production 2002 Director
Peter Patzak Screenplay Stefan Kolditz Director
of Photography Andreas Koefer Editor Michou
Hutter Music by Martin Todsharow Production
Design Ric Schachtebeck Producer Alexander
Gehrke Production Company ANTAEUS
Babelsberg, Potsdam, in co-production with
Scala-Film, Halle, in association with MDR, Leipzig
Principal Cast Barnaby Metschurat, Heikko
Deutschmann, Karin Giegerich, Vadim Glowna,
Juergen Hentsch Casting Simone Baer Special
Effects Exozet, Motionworks Length 97 min,
2,650 m Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85 Original
Version German Subtitled Version English
Sound Technology Dolby Digital With
backing from Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg,
Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung
Peter Patzak was born in Vienna in 1945 and
studied Psychology and Art History. A painter and
conceptual artist, he lived in New York from
1968-1970, where he also worked for a TV station,
making numerous 16 mm and video films before
returning to Vienna. He is best known as the writer
and director of the cult television series Kottan
ermittelt (1976-1983). A selection of his other
films includes: Kassbach (1978), The
Uppercrust (Den Tuechtigen gehoert
die Welt, 1981), Wahnfried – Richard und
Cosima (1988), Killing Blue (1988), Der
Joker (1988), Shanghai Hotel (1995),
Promised Land (2000) and Zodiac Sign
(2002), among others.
World Sales: please contact
ANTAEUS Medienvertrieb GmbH · Alexander Gehrke
Steinstrasse 62 · 14482 Potsdam-Babelsberg/Germany
phone +49-3 31-74 00 00 50 · fax +49-3 31-74 00 00 53
email: [email protected]
54
Kino 2/2002
Suche impotenten Mann
fuers Leben
I N S E A RC H O F A N I M P OT E N T M A N
Carmen, a successful girl in her late twenties, has had enough. Her boyfriend is cheating on her, and at work her
clients seem to believe that sex should be offered as one of the company services.
She and her best friend Laura, who has just discovered that she is pregnant, decide that where there is sex, there
are lies; the two seem inseparable. After many tears and even more bottles of wine, Carmen comes up with
what she believes is the perfect solution to her problems with men. She puts an ad on the Internet asking to
meet a sensitive, intelligent man with a good sense of humor … but he must be impotent.
Tim Williams, Katrin Weisser (photo © ZIEGLER FILM GmbH / Co. KG)
What follows is a hilarious, touching story of love and misunderstanding, laughter and tears, Viagra and three pairs
of underpants, and an enjoyable roller coaster of a relationship in this joyous romantic comedy for our times.
Genre Romantic Comedy Category Feature Film Cinema
Year of Production 2000/2001 Director John Henderson
Screenplay John Henderson, Sharon v. Wietersheim, based
on the novel by Gaby Hauptmann Director of Photography Jo Heim Editor Mathias Meyer Music by Richard
Harvey, Daryl Griffith, Paul Reeves Production Design
Matthias Kammermeier Executive Producer Wolfgang
Hantke Produced by Regina Ziegler Production
Company Ziegler Film, Berlin, in co-production with Degeto
Film, Frankfurt Principal Cast Katrin Weisser, Tim Williams,
Sandra Leonhard, Gabriel Walsh Casting Casting Chiarello
(GER), Susan Shopmaker (USA) Length 92 min, 2,530 m
Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85 Original Version English
Dubbed Version German Sound Technology Dolby
SRD With backing from Filmstiftung NRW, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA) German Distributor Senator Film
Verleih GmbH, Berlin
John Henderson is active as both a
writer and director for television and the
cinema. A selection of his films includes:
The Borrowers (TV, 1992), The
Last Englishman (TV, 1994), Loch
Ness (1995), Bring Me the Head
of Mavis Davis (1996/1997),
Hospital (TV, 1997), Jack and the
Beanstalk (TV, 1998), Alice
Through the Looking Glass (TV,
1998), Leprechauns (1999), Sigurd
(2000), Los dos bros (TV, 2000), Ogo
Pogo (2000/2001), In Search of an
Impotent Man (2000/2001) and
many more.
NNES
GS
AT C A
EENIN
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C
S
T
ARKE
World Sales:
M
Peppermint GmbH · Michael Knobloch
Rauchstrasse 9-11 · 81679 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-9 82 47 08 30 · fax +49-89-9 82 47 08 11
www.seepeppermint.com · www.ziegler-film.com · email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
55
Ten Minutes Older
Ten Minutes Older is a film unique in the history of cinema about the most universal of all
subjects: time.
”Ten Thousand Years Older“ – Werner Herzog’s episode of ”Ten Minutes Older“ (photo © Lena Herzog)
Each of the distinguished directors has been given exactly ten minutes on the screen for their
vision. With complete creative freedom, the directors bring their own unique interpretation of
’time’ to the screen. Using the technology of film in innovative, provocative ways, Ten Minutes
Older takes in all human experience: birth, death, love, sex, the drama of the moment, history
and ancient myth; and a great variety of locations from the deserts of India to the streets of New
York. Combined together in a feature film, their individual work gains new meaning and presents
an intriguing and exciting experience for all cinemagoers.
Genre Art, Experimental Category Feature Film
Cinema Year of Production 2002 Directors
Aki Kaurismaeki, Víctor Erice, Werner Herzog, Jim
Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, Spike Lee, Chen Kaige, et al
Music composed by Paul Englishby, performed by
Hugh Masekela Producers Ulrich Felsberg, Nicolas
McClintock, Nigel Thomas Production Company
Road Movies, Berlin, in co-production with Matador
Pictures, London, Odyssey Films, London Length
132 min, 3,612 m Format 35 mm, color and b&w,
1:1.85 Original Version Chinese/English/Finnish/
Spanish Subtitled Versions English, French
Sound Technology Dolby SRD International
Festival Screenings Cannes 2002 (Un Certain
Regard)
56
Since the early 80s, Ulrich Felsberg has produced and co-produced
more than 50 films. His feature credits include eight films directed by
Wim Wenders, including The Million Dollar Hotel (Silver Bear,
Berlin 2000) and Buena Vista Social Club, for which he received
the European Film Award in 1999. In 2000, Felsberg was nominated for
an OSCAR for Buena Vista Social Club. He has also produced
Michaelangelo Antonioni’s and Wim Wenders’ Beyond the
Clouds (1995), as well as six Ken Loach films, including Land of
Freedom, winner of the European Film Award in 1995. He has worked with such directors as Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Stephen Frears,
Gerardo Herrero, Robert Lepage, Paul McGuigan, Pat Murphy, Manuel
Gómez Pereira, Carlos Saura, Julien Temple, and Juanma Bajo Ulloa.
Felsberg’s most recent projects include Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen,
and Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham. Ulrich Felsberg
is a member of the board of The European Film Academy and a
member of the board of the Ateliers du Cinema Européen (ACE) as
well as a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts
(BAFTA). He is also a board member of the German producers’
association Film 20.
World Sales:
Road Sales USA · Jon Kramer, Annouchka Lesoeur
3599 Cahuenga Boulevard, West 3rd Floor
90068 Los Angeles, California/USA
phone +1-3 23-8 78 04 04 · fax +1-3 23-8 78 04 86
email: [email protected]
UN
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Kino 2/2002
Verrueckt nach Paris
C R A ZY A B O U T PA R I S
Hilde, Philip and Karl all live in a home for disabled people in Bremen. Hilde helps out in the kitchen, while
Philip and Karl make children’s toys in a supervised workshop. Enno, their supervisor, goes about his job,
keeping an ironic distance between himself and the proceedings. One day, Hilde, Philip and Karl decide to
peel off on their own. Equipped with some luggage, Hilde’s savings and a bundle of toy ducks, they get on
a train bound for Cologne. Their very own little excursion!
Frank Grabski, Paula Kleine, Wolfgang Goettsch (photo © Diana Richter)
Upon arrival in Cologne, they start selling their wooden ducks in front of the cathedral, which gets them in
trouble with a gang of youths. A charitable organization at the railway station takes the trio in and informs
the home of their whereabouts. But the runaways manage to slip away unnoticed yet again. They miss their
train back to Bremen – making them all the more determined to embark on a proper journey. By now,
Enno is on his way to Cologne to retrieve the truants. Meanwhile, Hilde has booked tickets for them all on
the night train to Paris. Enno misses the runaways by a hair’s breadth; he leaps into a taxi and drives off
after the train, but doesn’t manage to catch up with them until the train stops at Liège. He finally discovers
the trio on the train – but it won’t stop again until it reaches Paris …
Genre Comedy, Drama Category Feature Film Cinema Year
of Production 2002 Directors Eike Besuden, Pago Balke
Screenplay Eike Besuden, Pago Balke Director of Photography Piotr Lenar Editor Margot Neubert-Maric Music by
Karsten Gundermann Production Design Heike Lauer
Producer Eike Besuden Production Company Geisberg
Studios, Bremen, in cooperation with NDR, Hamburg, Radio
Bremen, ARTE, Strasbourg Principal Cast Paula Kleine,
Wolfgang Goettsch, Frank Grabski, Dominique Horwitz, Corinna
Harfouch, Martin Luettge Casting Tina Boeckenhauer Length
90 min, 2,462 m Format 16 mm Blow-up 35 mm, color,
1:1.66 Original Version German Subtitled Version English
Sound Technology Dolby Digital International Festival
Screenings Berlin 2002 (Perspective German Cinema) With
backing from Filmfoerderung Niedersachsen, FilmFoerderung
Hamburg, Filmfoerderung Bremen, Kuratorium junger deutscher
Film German Distributor Neue Visionen Filmverleih
Soergel/Frehse GbR, Berlin
Pago Balke was born in 1954. After studying Art and
Germanic Studies, he founded an alternative school for the educationally handicapped. In 1987, he began a career as a cabaret
artist and singer. From 1987-1998, he worked as an actor and
director at the Blaumeier Atelier in Bremen and has been acting
at the Bremen Theater since 1998. Crazy About Paris
marks his feature film debut.
Eike Besuden was born in 1948. After taking a teaching
degree to become a grammar school teacher, he taught for
seven years. During that time, he also began working freelance
for Radio Bremen and has been directing documentaries since
1989. A selection of his television films includes: Dann
bin ich eben weg, na und? (1989), Endje van’d Welt
(1992), Zurueck nach Rom (1994), Irre menschlich
(1995), Wenn der Teufel in die Kirche kommt …
(1996), Der vergessene Krieg (1997), Gruene Lady,
du laechelst mich an! (1999) and Warten auf ein
neues Leben (2000), among others. Crazy About Paris
is his feature film debut.
World Sales: please contact
Geisberg Studios Eike Besuden Filmproduktion GmbH · Eike Besuden
Friesenstrasse 87 · 28203 Bremen/Germany
phone +49-4 21-79 01 00 · fax +49-4 21-7 90 10 20
www.verruecktnachparis.de · www.geisbergstudios.de · email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
57
Westend
Markus Mischkowski, Kai Maria Steinkuehler (photo © Anna C. Wagner)
The friends Mike and Alfred are unemployed. They spend their empty days drinking beer at a roadside snack bar. Half-hearted attempts to find work have not got them anywhere. One day, they take
up the proposal of a regular drinking partner, Rasto, to take over a derelict motorway kiosk, but it
soon becomes apparent that Rasto doesn’t have his business in order. Shady business relations use
criminal techniques to pressure him to pay his debts. In spite of the long odds, Mike and Alfred
manage to turn the kiosk into a goldmine, but that can’t save Rasto. When Alfred falls in love with a
supermarket check-out girl and neglects his work, while Mike turns into a workaholic, disaster cannot
be avoided. The turbulence of working life puts the friendship of the former jobless Mike and Alfred
to the test. It isn’t that easy to get what everyone already seems to have: work, money, recognition
and the right woman at your side.
Genre Comedy, Tragicomedy Category Feature Film
Cinema Year of Production 2001 Directors Markus
Mischkowski, Kai Maria Steinkuehler Screenplay Markus
Mischkowski Director of Photography Klaus Peter
Schmidt Editor Christine Dériaz Music by The
Haifaboys Production Design Anja Kuehnle, Ildiko
Mohos Producer Kai Kuennemann Production
Company Kai Kuennemann Filmproduktion, Cologne
Principal Cast Jens Claassen, Katharina Schmaltz, Markus
Mischkowski, Kai Maria Steinkuehler, Ralf Richter, Katy
Karrenbauer Length 89 min, 2,440 m Format Super
16 mm Blow-up 35 mm, b&w, 1:1.66 Original
Version German Subtitled Version English
Sound Technology Dolby SR International
Festival Screenings Hof 2001, Ophuels-Festival
Saarbruecken 2002, Rotterdam 2002 With backing
from Filmbuero NW, Kuratorium junger deutscher Film
Markus Mischkowski was born in 1966 in
Cologne and studied Linguistics in Berlin. Since 1990,
he has been scripting, producing and directing films
together with Kai Maria Steinkuehler, who
was born in 1967 in Cologne and studied Egyptian
and African Studies from 1986-1989. Their films
include: the shorts Einsam und allein (1990),
Suizid (1991), Struktur B muss sterben
(1993), Von der Aesthetik des Abschleppens (1993), Die Ordnung der Dinge
(1994), Uncle Ben’s Film (1995), Was tun
(1998), Wolga (2001) and the feature film
Westend (2001).
World Sales: please contact
Kai Kuennemann Filmproduktion · Kai Kuennemann
Maybachstrasse 111 · 50670 Cologne/Germany
phone +49-2 21-9 12 90 25 · fax +49-2 21-9 12 90 35
www.westend-derfilm.de · email: [email protected]
58
Kino 2/2002
www.german-cinema.de
more than 100 news items
more than 200 festival portraits
more than 500 German films
more than 1000 other useful things
to know about German Cinema
Export-Union des Deutschen Films GmbH · Sonnenstrasse 21 · 80331 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-5 99 78 70 · fax +49-89-59 97 87 30 · email: [email protected]
Export-Union of German Cinema
Shareholders and Supporters
Verband Deutscher Spielfilmproduzenten e.V./
Association of German Feature Film Producers
please contact Franz Seitz
Beichstrasse 8, 80802 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-39 11 23, fax +49-89-33 74 32
Arbeitsgemeinschaft Neuer Deutscher Spielfilmproduzenten/
Association of New Feature Film Producers
please contact Margarete Evers
Agnesstrasse 14, 80798 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-2 71 74 30, fax +49-89-2 71 97 28
email: [email protected]
Verband Deutscher Filmexporteure e.V./
Association of German Film Exporters
please contact Lothar Wedel
Tegernseer Landstrasse 75, 81539 Munich/Germany
phone +49- 89-6 42 49 70, fax +49-89-6 92 09 10
www.vdfe.de, email: [email protected]
Filmfoerderungsanstalt
Große Praesidentenstrasse 9, 10178 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-27 57 70, fax +49-30-27 57 71 11
www.ffa.de, email: [email protected]
Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für
Angelegenheiten der Kultur und der Medien
Referat K 36, Graurheindorfer Strasse 198, 53117 Bonn/Germany
phone +49-18 88-6 81 36 43, fax +49-18 88-6 81 38 53
email: [email protected]
Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH
August-Bebel-Strasse 26-53, 14482 Potsdam-Babelsberg/Germany
phone +49-3 31-7 43 87-0, fax +49-3 31-7 43 87-99
www.filmboard.de
email: [email protected]
FilmFernsehFonds Bayern GmbH
Sonnenstrasse 21, 80331 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-5 44 60 20, fax +49-89-54 46 02 21
www.fff-bayern.de
email: [email protected]
FilmFoerderung Hamburg GmbH
Friedensallee 14–16, 22765 Hamburg/Germany
phone +49-40-3 98 37-0, fax +49-40-3 98 37-10
www.ffhh.de
email: [email protected]
Filmstiftung NRW GmbH
Kaistrasse 14, 40221 Duesseldorf/Germany
phone +49-2 11-93 05 00, fax +49-2 11-93 05 05
www.filmstiftung.de
email: [email protected]
Medien- und Filmgesellschaft
Baden-Wuerttemberg mbH
Filmfoerderung
Breitscheidstrasse 4, 70174 Stuttgart/Germany
phone +49-7 11-90 71 54 00, fax +49-7 11-90 71 54 50
www.mfg.de/film
email: [email protected]
Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung GmbH
Hainstrasse 17-19, 04109 Leipzig/Germany
phone +49-3 41-26 98 70, fax +49-3 41-2 69 87 65
www.mdm-foerderung.de
email: [email protected]
60
Kino 2/2002
Credits non contractual
Foto: Roman Polanski shooting “The Pianist”, a Studio Babelsberg Co-Production
"Sixteen sound stages, lab on-site, state-of-the-art sound post. 250,000 costumes,
1 million props. Experienced film craftsmen – carpenters, set painters, metal workers, tailors ...
90 years of filmmaking in one of the most exciting neighbourhoods of today.
Welcome to Berlin, welcome to STUDIO BABELSBERG.
We appreciate your business."
Gabriela Bacher
CEO Studio Babelsberg Motion Pictures
ART DEPARTMENT
Scenic design, planning, calculation, construction – we take a
project from rough sketch through construction.
WARDROBE
The costume department contains an assortment of over 250,000
costumes, uniforms and accessories from every conceivable era.
MAKE-UP/HAIR
The make up department has one of the most extensive collections
of wigs and hairpieces in Europe.
PROPS
Two large warehouses of 80,700 sq ft provide a collection of over
a million items. Special effects/weapons. We cooperate with the
internationally acclaimed special effects specialist Nefzer under
the roof of the Nefzer Babelsberg.
SOUND STAGES
From the legendary 43.000 sq ft “Marlene Dietrich Stage” to fully
equipped 4,500 sq ft television studios with adjoining production
offices, wardrobe, make-up and dressing rooms.
SOUND DESIGN
Studio F for feature films, from the most modern digital mixing
studio in Europe, to edit suites, digital audio suites, soundlibrary
and screening theatres.
BACK LOT
The working facades of more than 26 buildings spread over a total
area of 75,300 sq ft create an European city atmosphere typical
“Berlin Street”, that was used in productions like “The Pianist”
and “Joe and Max”.
FILM LAB
Daily processing of colour or b/w negative in 16, 35 and Super
35mm. Dailies in film or video.
PRODUCTION SERVICE
Our team supports the realisation of your project from
pre-production to delivery.
August-Bebel-Straße 26 – 53 D-14482 Potsdam Tel: + 49 (0) 331-721- 30 01 Fax: + 49 (0) 331-721 - 25 25 [email protected]
A Vivendi Universal company.
Film Exporters
Members of the Association of German Film Exporters
please contact Lothar Wedel · Tegernseer Landstrasse 75 · 81539 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-6 42 49 70 · fax +49-89-6 92 09 10 · www.vdfe.de · email: [email protected]
ARRI Media Worldsales
please contact Antonio Exacoustos jun.
Tuerkenstrasse 89
80799 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-38 09 12 88
fax +49-89-38 09 16 19
www.arri-mediaworldsales.de
email: [email protected]
Atlas International
Film GmbH
please contact
Dieter Menz, Stefan Menz, Christl Blum
Rumfordstrasse 29-31
80469 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-21 09 75-0
fax +49-89-22 43 32
www.atlasfilm.com
email: [email protected]
Bavaria Film International
Dept. of Bavaria Media GmbH
CINEPOOL – Dept. of Telepool
Europaeisches Fernsehprogrammkontor GmbH
please contact Dr. Cathy Rohnke,
Wolfram Skowronnek
Sonnenstrasse 21
80331 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-55 87 60
fax +49-89-55 87 62 29
www.telepool.de
email: [email protected],
[email protected]
DWF
Dieter Wahl Film
please contact Dieter Wahl
Postfach 71 10 26
81460 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-53 27 21
fax +49-89-53 12 97
email: [email protected]
Exportfilm Bischoff & Co. GmbH
Bavariafilmplatz 8
82031 Geiselgasteig/Germany
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86
fax +49-89-64 99 37 20
www.bavaria-film-international.de
email: [email protected]
please contact Jochem Strate,
Philip Evenkamp
Isabellastrasse 20
80798 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-2 72 93 60
fax +49-89-27 29 36 36
email: [email protected]
Beta Film GmbH
Robert-Buerkle-Strasse 2
85737 Ismaning/Germany
phone +49-89-99 56 - 21 34
fax +49-89-99 56 - 27 03
www.betacinema.com
email: [email protected]
cine aktuell
Filmgesellschaft mbH
please contact Ralf Faust, Axel Schaarschmidt
Werdenfelsstrasse 81
81377 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-7 41 34 30
fax +49-89-74 13 43 16
www.cine-aktuell.de
email: [email protected]
Cine-International Filmvertrieb
GmbH & Co. KG
please contact Lilli Tyc-Holm, Susanne Groh
Leopoldstrasse 18
80802 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-39 10 25
fax +49-89-33 10 89
www.cine-international.de
email: [email protected]
62
please contact Christel Jansen
Burgstrasse 27
10178 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-24 00 32 25
fax +49-30-24 00 32 22
www.progress-film.de
email: [email protected]
Road Sales GmbH
Mediadistribution
please contact Frank Graf
Clausewitzstrasse 4
10629 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-8 80 48 60
fax +49-30-88 04 86 11
www.road-movies.de
email: [email protected]
RRS Entertainment Gesellschaft
fuer Filmlizenzen GmbH
please contact Robert Rajber
please contact Thorsten Schaumann
please contact Dirk Schuerhoff
Progress Film-Verleih GmbH
german united distributors
Programmvertrieb GmbH
please contact Silke Spahr
Richartzstrasse 6-8a
50667 Cologne/Germany
phone +49-2 21-92 06 90
fax +49-2 21-9 20 69 69
email: [email protected]
Sternwartstrasse 2
81679 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-2 11 16 60
fax +49-89-21 11 66 11
email: [email protected]
Transit Film GmbH
please contact Loy W. Arnold, Mark Gruenthal
Dachauer Strasse 35
80335 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-59 98 85-0
fax +49-89-59 98 85-20
email: [email protected]
Uni Media International
Filmvertriebsgesellschaft mbH
please contact Irene Vogt
Kinowelt Medien AG
Kinowelt World Sales
A Division of Kinowelt
Lizenzverwertungs GmbH
Bayerstrasse 15
80335 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-59 58 46
fax +49-89-5 50 17 01
email: [email protected]
please contact Jochen Hesse,
Stelios Ziannis
Waldleitner Media GmbH
Infanteriestrasse 19/Bldg. 6
80797 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-30 79 66
fax +49-89-3 07 96 70 67
www.kinoweltworldsales.com
email: [email protected]
please contact Michael Waldleitner,
Angela Waldleitner
Muenchhausenstrasse 29
81247 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-55 53 41
fax +49-89-59 45 10
email: [email protected]
Media Luna Entertainment
GmbH & Co.KG
please contact Ida Martins
Hochstadenstrasse 1-3
50674 Cologne/Germany
phone +49-2 21-1 39 22 22
fax +49-2 21-1 39 22 24
www.medialuna-entertainment.de
email: [email protected]
Kino 2/2002
Beichstrasse 8, D - 80 802 Muenchen, Germany
Phone: (89) 391 425 Fax: (89) 340 1291
The Export-Union of German Cinema –
The Export-Union of German Cinema is the national information
A Profile
EXPORT-UNION’S RANGE OF ACTIVITIES:
and advisory center for the export of German films. It was established in 1954 as the ”umbrella“ association for the Association of
Close cooperation with the major international film
German Feature Film Producers, the Association of New German
festivals, e.g. Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Montreal, Toronto,
Feature Film Producers and the Association of German Film
San Sebastian, Tokyo, New York, Locarno, Karlovy Vary;
Exporters, and operates today in the legal form of a limited company.
Shareholders in the limited company are the Association of
Organization of umbrella stands for German sales companies
German Feature Film Producers, the Association of New German
and producers at international TV and film markets, e.g.
Feature Film Producers, the Association of German Film Exporters
MIP-TV, MIPCOM, NATPE, AFM;
and the German Federal Film Board (FFA).
The members of the board of the Export-Union of
Staging of festivals of German Cinema in key cities of the
German Cinema are: Jochem Strate (chairman), Rolf Baehr,
international film industry (2002: London, Los Angeles,
Antonio Exacoustos Jr. and Michael Weber.
Madrid, Melbourne, Moscow, New York, Paris, Rome,
Sydney, Warsaw);
The Export-Union itself has nine permanent staff:
• Christian Dorsch, managing director
• Susanne Reinker, PR manager
Providing advice and information for representatives of
• Stephanie Weiss, project manager
the international press and buyers from the fields of
• Angela Hawkins, publications editor
cinema, video, TV;
• Andrea Rings, assistant to the managing director
• Cornelia Klimkeit, PR assistant
• Nicole Kaufmann, project coordinator
Providing advice and information for German filmmakers and
• Petra Bader, office manager
press on international festivals, conditions of participation
• Ernst Schrottenloher, accounts
and German films being shown, e.g. publication of a
comprehensive guide to international film festivals as well as
In addition, the Export-Union shares foreign representatives
a German film festival guide;
in nine countries with the German Federal Film Board (FFA).
(cf. page 66)
Publication of informational literature on the current
The Export-Union’s budget of presently approx. Euro 3.1
German cinema: KINO-Magazine and KINO-Yearbook;
million (including projects, administration, foreign representatives)
comes from the export levies, monies from the office of the Federal
Government Commissioner for Cultural Affairs and the Media and
An Internet website (http://www.german-cinema.de)
the FFA. In addition, the six main economic film funds
offering information about new German films, a film
(Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, FilmFoer-
archive, as well as information and links to German and
derung Hamburg, Filmstiftung NRW, Medien- and Filmgesellschaft
international film festivals;
Baden-Wuerttemberg and Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung) have
made a financial contribution, currently amounting to Euro 0.25
million, towards the work of the Export-Union. In 1997, the Export-
Organization of the selection procedure for the German
Union and five large economic film funds founded an advisory
entry for the OSCAR for Best Foreign Language Film.
committee whose goal is the ”concentration of efforts for the
promotion of German film abroad“ (constitution).
The focus of the work: feature films, documentaries with
The Export-Union is a founding member of the ”European Film
theatrical potential and shorts that have been invited to the main
Promotion“, an amalgamation of twenty national film-PR
sections of major festivals.
agencies (UNIFRANCE, Swiss Films, Italia Cinema, Holland Film,
among others) with similar responsibilities to those of the ExportUnion. The organization, with its headquarters in Hamburg, aims to
develop and realize joint projects for the presentation of European
films on an international level.
www.german-cinema.de
more than 100 news items
more than 200 festival portraits
more than 500 German films
more than 1000 other useful things
to know about German Cinema
Export-Union des Deutschen Films GmbH · Sonnenstrasse 21 · 80331 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-5 99 78 70 · fax +49-89-59 97 87 30 · email: [email protected]
Foreign Representatives
Argentina
Dipl. Ing. Gustav Wilhelmi
Lavalle 1928 · 1º Piso
C1051ABD Buenos Aires
phone +54 -11- 49 52 15 37
phone + fax +54 -11- 49 51 19 10
email: [email protected]
Canada
Martina Neumann
5206 Casgrain · Montreal, Quebec
H2T 1W9 · Canada
phone/fax +1-5 14-2 76 56 04
email: [email protected]
China & South East Asia
Lukas Schwarzacher
Flat F, 18/F, Tonnochy Tower A
272 Jaffe Road
Wanchai
Hong Kong SAR, China
phone +8 52-97 30 55 75
fax +1-2 40- 255-71 60
email: [email protected]
France
Cristina Hoffman
33, rue L. Gaillet
94250 Gentilly/France
phone/fax +33-1-49 86 44 18
email: [email protected]
Italy
Alessia Ratzenberger
Angeli Movie Service
via Aureliana, 53
00187 Rome/Italy
phone +39-06-4 82 80 18
fax +39-06-4 82 80 19
email: [email protected]
United Kingdom
Iris Kehr
Top Floor
113-117 Charing Cross Road
London WC2H ODT/United Kingdom
phone +44-20-74 37 20 47
fax +44-20-74 39 29 47
email: [email protected]
Japan
Tomosuke Suzuki
Nippon Cine TV Corporation
Suite 123, Gaien House
2-2-39 Jingumae, Shibuya-Ku
Tokyo, Japan
phone +81-3-34 05 09 16
fax +81-3-34 79-08 69
email: [email protected]
USA/East Coast
Oliver Mahrdt
c/o Hanns Wolters International Inc.
10 W 37th Street, Floor 3,
New York, NY 10018/USA
phone +1-2 12-7 14-01 00
fax +1-2 12-6 43-14 12
email: [email protected]
Spain
Stefan Schmitz
Avalon Productions S.L.
C/ Duque de Rivas, 2-2°D
28012 Madrid/Spain
phone +34-91-3 66 43 64
fax +34-91-3 65 93 01
email: [email protected]
USA/West Coast
Corina Danckwerts
Capture Film, Inc.
2400 W. Silverlake Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90039/USA
phone +1-3 23-6 68-01 12
fax +1-3 23-6 68-08 53
email: [email protected]
Imprint
published by:
Editors
Production Reports
Export-Union des
Deutschen Films GmbH
Contributors for this issue
Sonnenstrasse 21
80331 Munich/Germany
phone +49-89-5 99 78 70
Translations
fax +49-89-59 97 87 30
www.german-cinema.de
Design Group
email: [email protected]
ISSN 0948-2547
Credits are not contractual for any
of the films mentioned in this publication.
© Export-Union des Deutschen Films
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or
transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
66
Art Direction
Printing Office
Financed by
Angela Hawkins, Susanne Reinker
Martin Blaney, Simon Kingsley
Martin Blaney, Kerstin Decker,
Manfred Geier, Simon Kingsley
Lucinda Rennison
triptychon · agentur für design
und kulturkommunikation, Munich/Germany
Werner Schauer
ESTA Druck,
Obermuehlstrasse 90, 82398 Polling/Germany
the office of the Federal Government
Commissioner for Cultural Affairs and the Media.
Printed on ecological, unchlorinated paper.
Kino 2/2002
German Film Award
… and the nominees are:
M
NNES
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T S R
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BEST PICTURE
BEST LEADING ACTRESS
Bella Martha
Karoline Eichhorn
by Sandra Nettelbeck
in Der Felsen
Halbe Treppe
by Andreas Dresen
Heaven
by Tom Tykwer
Nirgendwo in Afrika
M
NNES
AT C A
I NG S
REEN
C
S
T
ARKE
M
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AT C A
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T S R
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M
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AT C A
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REEN
C
S
T
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M
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S
AT C A
N I NG
CREE
S
T
E
ARK
Martina Gedeck
in Bella Martha
Juliane Koehler
in Nirgendwo in Afrika
BEST LEADING ACTOR
by Caroline Link
Wie Feuer und Flamme
by Connie Walther
D O C U M E N TA R Y F E AT U R E
Daniel Bruehl
in Nichts Bereuen, Das Weisse Rauschen
and Vaya Con Dios
Ulrich Noethen
in Das Sams
Black Box BRD
by Andres Veiel
Antonio Wannek
in Der Felsen and Wie Feuer und Flamme
A Woman and a HalfHildegard Knef
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
by Clarissa Ruge
Annabelle Lachatte
BEST CHILDRENS’ FILM
Hilfe! ich bin ein Fisch
by Stefan Fjeldmark, Michael Hegner
M
NNES
AT C A
I NG S
REEN
C
S
T
ARKE
Das Sams
by Ben Verbong
DIRECTING
M
NNES
GS
AT C A
EENIN
C
T S R
ARKE
M
NNES
S
AT C A
N I NG
CREE
S
T
E
ARK
Andreas Dresen
for Halbe Treppe
Dominik Graf
for Der Felsen
Caroline Link
for Nirgendwo in Afrika
NNES
GS
AT C A
EENIN
C
T S R
ARKE
in Das Weisse Rauschen
M
Eva Mattes
NNES
GS
AT C A
ENIN
SC RE
T
E
K
MAR
in Das Sams
Marie-Lou Sellem
in Mein Bruder der Vampir, Nichts
Bereuen and Hilfe, ich bin ein Junge!
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Martin Feifel
in Was tun, wenn’s brennt?
Remo Girone
in Heaven
Matthias Habich
in Nirgendwo in Afrika
NNES
GS
AT C A
ENIN
SC RE
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K
MAR