Claus Mueller

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From April 6-12 the  New York based German independent film festival presented its fifth edition with nine features and the next generation’s short film section including five premieres. A non-film component of the program were two episodes of the widely acclaimed German six-part thriller series Bad Banks which has been acquired by numerous countries apparently including the large US streaming site  Hulu. As in past years, Bertelsmann, the huge German media corporation which is the sole corporate sponsor of Kino, presented a recently restored classic film, Variete, directed by E.A. Dupont in 1925.    The program included a screening and conversation featuring When Paul Came Over the Sea with the director Jacob Preuss and a new roundtable about women in the film industry with Bad Banks producer Lisa Blumenberg and Marieke Schroeder who helmed the lifestyle film Bar Talks by Schuman.

Though the screenings attracted a respectable audience many cineasts are surprised to find out that there is a German film festival in New York City though they are familiar with larger well established festivals focusing on films from France, Italy and even Cuba and India. Lately, screening platforms such as Netflix have been introducing  more German TV series like Berlin Babylon, Dark, Generation War, The Same Sky, and Charite to a wide audience, improving the image of  the German art of television and filmmaking. Excluding the UK, Germany is after France the second largest European film producer.   In most aspects France is ahead.  In 2016 France was the third largest film producer in the world, ranked third in revenues and was a leading film exporter. In 2017, including co-productions and documentaries, France produced 345 features, retaining its position as the largest European film producer while Germany produced 233 films. In France there are 32 film festivals attesting to the popularity of French and other films while Germany has about 20. More than 50% of the revenues are derived from local and other non-US productions. Surveys from 2014 show that after U.S. films French cinema is the next most popular.  For the French and their policy makers French cinema is an integral part of their culture as reflected in law, the droit moral,  strategies and  public diplomacies supporting the distribution and export of French films.   There is nothing similar for the promotion of German films in the US.  Though there numerous Goethe Institutes and small, mostly university affiliated, institutes  charged with promoting German culture, no systematic approach is adopted to foster German films in the United States. In New York, FIAF (French Institute Alliance Francaise) screened 52 films last year as part of a regular weekly program. In 2018 the Animation First festival was launched by FIAF which included 52 features and shorts. Throughout 2017 The New York Goethe Institute and Deutsches Haus (NYU) presented about 20 films.  Ever since the 5th Avenue Goethe Institute was closed there has been a decline in German film screenings and little is known about German attempts to obtain adequate film screening facilities. Access to a facility is an advantage that FIAF fully utilizes.

There is also the question of film festivals and their support. There is the annual independent Kino! Film fest but the Film Society of Lincoln Center with several screening facilities co-sponsors a French and an Italian film festival, not to speak of the annual Focus on French Cinema in Connecticut with its 18 feature films. There two other film festivals focusing on German language films,  German Currents organized by the Goethe Institute in Los Angeles and the San Francisco based Berlin & Beyond festival also  held by the Goethe Institute.  The French are more pro-active. In addition to New York’s Rendez Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center there are French film festivals in New Orleans, Chicago, Richmond VA, and Providence RI, organized sometimes with the help of the French cultural services. There are also innovative ventures that expand the French cultural reach such as the month long on-line My French Film Festival and the Tournees Film Festival. Tournees, which has been operating for 23 years, is connected with 600 universities. Affiliated individuals can apply for grants from the French cultural services to organize a film festival at their schools.  There is no German film promotion effort coming close to what the French have been carrying out for many years.

Still Kino!  instills expectations in light of the quality of the films shown over the last five editions. What is lacking is a well-funded concentrated film promotion and marketing effort that significantly expands German culture to include visual media.

Variete, a silent 1925 film presented in a marvelously restored version with live music was directed by Ewald Andre DuPont who ran his own variety show in Germany in the twenties and produced the first German film with sound in 1930. His primary achievement was Variete a realistic and visually appealing achievement with stunning photography and erotic overtones portraying the lives of people employed or otherwise attached to the variete trade.  Somehow anticipating Blue Angel, Emil Jennings a small town artist who comes to fame in Berlin and falls in love with a seductive dancer who becomes part of his a trapeze act. She abandons him for an upscale slick gentleman with dire consequences.  Jennings excels with his acting skills and received the Oscar in 1929 for two American films in which he performed. This was the first Oscar given to an actor and the last one ever received by a German.

In Times of Fading Light 2017, by Matti Geschonneck, has also strong biographical overtones reflecting his experience in East Germany and the Soviet Union where he received his film training. After settling in West Germany his directorial expertise was crowned with many television and film awards. The well-known   Bruno Ganz is an indispensable part of the film’s cast where he  has the role of Wilhelm Povileit. It is the fall of 1989 and Povileit, an East German 90 year old resolute communist veteran celebrates his birthday. The light is fading over the DDR (the German Democratic Republic) and few, if any, of the numerous participants in the party, including high ranking party members seem to express fervent support for the declining regime. To the contrary, there are fractured family patterns, resentment about the communist system not having compensated the older people present at the party for their sacrifices during the Third Reich and the post-war period, the departure of family members for West Germany,  the escape from bitterness with vodka by a Russian family member, and the detachment of Poviley’s wife from him because he leaves her no  space. Playing out mostly in the confines of Povileit’s home the ensemble cast is somber reflecting negative intensity and claustrophobia. His wife suspects that Wilhelm is losing his mind because as an admirer of Stalin he stubbornly holds to his convictions and seems to be totally out of touch with his environment. Geschonneck provides an extraordinary finely tuned psychological portrait of a family facing the doom of their society.

Funded by ZDF and Arte and directed by Christian Schwochow Bad Banks, is a topical mini-series fitting our time.  It provides a brilliant depiction of current high level interactions and issues faced by the principals of European investment banking and is set in Germany and Luxembourg. Most intriguing is the depiction of the principal adversaries which are shown in their private lives allowing viewers to better understand them. As distinct from American films on the same topic, the director emphasizes a differentiated image of the protagonists who are depicted with complex identities. There are few stereotypifications fitting the actors into black and white slots. Certainly, senior banking officials are striving for success. But their approach is governed by their personalities and willingness to break the rules of the game. Kino! 2018 showed the first two episodes and two female actors outshone the principal male protagonist Gabriel Fenger (Barry Atsma). Jana Liekam (Paula Beer), an investment banker from an international bank is fired but refuses to accept it and secures a stressful job with Fenger. In her strategic decisions and finesse in plying the complex investment games she outwitts her boss Fenger and prevails; though the viewer gets a clear idea about the manipulations, double-crossing and lies characteristic for the contemporary financial sector.  Desiree Nesbusch excels as Christelle Leblanc in the role as chief of the bank which had fired Jana Liekam and became instrumental in placing her with Fenger.  Christelle connects with young Jana but both remain suspicious about the other’s motivation, knowing that their loyalties are up for grabs as determined by their unspoken agendas. Schwochnow had the goal of casting actors which were intimately familiar with the current financial markets and of establishing plausible scenarios without engaging in overt moral judgements.  The viewer reflects and decides on the interpretation, a task that becomes as complex as the story told by this series.

Claus Mueller       filmexchange@gmail.com