Fancy German Heavy Stuff.

Whether "Cloud 9" or "Jerichow," German film is in itself - and it radiates up to the other end of the world. In Berlin before the German Film Prize is awarded, Christian Buß an experience in Australia, which is seldom at home: queuing for cinema made in Germany.

 

The German cinema is full of mystery. In our own country is one of these myths serious cinema like a metaphor than banal, but the further you are geographically away from him, the seductive shimmer of gloss black. The best one goes the same to the other end of the world to get the full effect to be able to devote. Indeed, precisely the eternally sunny Australia learns the dark German film art world, perhaps its greatest appreciation.

Christian Schulz / Schramm Film
Benno Fürmann in "Jerichow": Myths Heavy cinema metaphor

Once a year there is the Audi Festival of German Films, during the two weeks in four cities about two dozen current productions are presented. After Sydney, Perth and Melbourne, the event will be held next Tuesday in Brisbane to an end. Significant 20,000 spectators, it had last year, it will be 2009 initial assessments that follow - and that, although this time the most serious substance was set.

Small dramas to big issues

Fortunately, no one in Australia the question of why German films always have this dark note. Why should they? Cheerful and optimistic - that we are not good times. Gloomy and sad - that we are world champions. Seen focused by the Goethe-Institut show put together almost on the core business of German Cinema: small dramas of the great social upheavals of recent history.

It was the program almost coincide with the major nominations for the German film Lola, on Friday evening in Berlin is to be awarded. And if you now Kapitalismusmelodram "Jerichow" or the RAF's Chronicle "Baader Meinhof Complex" takes the Rentnersexstudie "Cloud 9" or turning the drama "November Child" - makes it easy to the viewers, none of these films.

And the Aussies? They just loved this heavy german stuff - or at least discussed very encouraged about it. And that was not only that, as a co-sponsor of a Bavarian brewer this joyful drinking tribes before and after the performances with alcohol supplied. Unbelievable, what you here about the German cinema and German history knows.

Whether in Melbourne or Sydney, anywhere you meet critics and historians that a 100 years of German film history from the pocket can quote - and the firm have questions on which you first answer is no. Thus, it is possible that on a panel discussion on reunification of films is an Australian colleague and want to know where it actually comes to us in recent years so many strong women's roles as in any other national film industry. Only one is somewhat dumbfounded, then it becomes clear how right the man has.

So you saw at the festival Claudia Michelsen, Nina Hoss, Martina Gedeck, Karoline Herfurth, Johanna Wokalek and Julia Jentsch in their current productions. And the best will: You shall not male counterparts, which is similar to a rigorous game. Sometimes you have to travel far just to get to the simplest intelligence. One is: The German cinema has become a cinema of women. Men, because testosterone can be driven to himself, as in the shoot 'Baader Meinhof Complex, "are often just as supernumeraries.

The Aussies and the Ossis

ON TO ONLINE blogs

German Film Awards: The nominees in pictures

German Film Awards: War Drama favorite is Lola (13.03.2009)

Boom Biography of cinema: Good English, bad country (23.03.2009)

Film "In the winter a year": The flagship of the Mourning People (10.11.2008)

Gangster Film "Chiko": Hamburg Hexenkessel, Digger! (17.04.2008)

Erotic drama "Cloud 9": fellatio before the TV table (04.09.2008)

Eichinger "Baader-Meinhof Complex": The Terror Illustrated (18.09.2008)

Relationship drama "Jerichow" freezing in the East (07.01.2009)

Gangster film "Public Enemy No. 1.": A man is like a deactivated hand grenade (20.04.2009)

One of the women was also strong in Australia Location: Anna Maria Mühe, this year as best actress for Lola nominations, presented its quiet, moving and cryptic film 'November children' before. The painful self of a young woman is here as a metaphor for a reunited, but is still not himself arrived in Germany to read. A good example of how German film actors are currently the largest issues in intimate contexts can absorb. At any rate had trouble with the attachment to the shows a lot of question time information about the political dimension of their supposedly small film type.

The Aussies and the Ossis: Daytime said Anna Maria Mühe before inquiring young people from Sydney and Melbourne on reunification, celebrating the night she moved through the bars and discos. In the German-Australian bullish was also actor Robert Stadlober, in many gay clubs in the country is not completely unknown: his gay drama "Summer Storm" is now down under is a must else. Also a nice example of how unexpected way to the German film sometimes his international coming-out experience.

Arrived was Stadlober from the Goethe Institute, but really because his fairy tale film "Krabat" should imagine. Thus, for example, from the hinterland of Queensland busloads of students arrived in the connection to the dark fantasy drama perfectly legitimate questions presented. How to turn because nudity was one. As the film because Originalsaga to behave, was another. Originalsaga? The 14-year-olds are here appears to be very proficient in German culture.

Maybe because you do not really own the exciting stories can make. With a few exceptions, Australian films tell very rarely by the presence or history of their own country. If they do have a look, come to be an abomination as postcolonial "Australia" is emerging.

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If you ask local journalists about his own film industry, therefore the wave quickly. The proportion of Australian productions in the domestic cinema market is scarcely five percent - in Germany, however, it was 26th last year satte So much scrap between Babelsberg and Bavaria Film Studios will continue to be rotated, in the crowd was never so wisely and openly with a German identity.

And the nominations for the award-Lola, in this little half-baked review durchgewunken value cinema was showing the same as the gloss appear drab performance review of the Goethe-Institut down under: Germany in the distance so close.