Editor

Over 6,000 film fans attended the 35 performances of the sixth Festival of German Cinema in Madrid (8-12 June, 2004). The extensive programme was enthusiastically received by the Spanish audience and press. Compared to last year, the attendances increased by a third.

The event was opened by Eric Till's LUTHER in the presence of producer Alexander Thies. LUTHER generated great interest among the audience, press and distributors in Catholic Spain. Rosenstrasse by Margarethe von Trotta won the Audience Award.

The other films shown in the Festival's main programme were: GATE TO HEAVEN by Veit Helmer, BERLIN BLUES (HERR LEHMANN) by Leander Haussmann, GUN-SHY
(SCHUSSANGST) by Dito Tsindsadze, SEPTEMBER by Max Faerberboeck, LOVE IN THOUGHTS (WAS NUETZT DIE LIEBE IN GEDANKEN) by Achim von Borries, the animation film JESTER TILL (TILL EULENSPIEGEL) by Eberhard Junkersdorf, the TV film ZWEI TAGE HOFFNUNG by Peter Keglevic, the documentary THE CENTER (DIE MITTE) by Stanislaw Mucha, the short film programme NEXT GENERATION 2004 and four other shorts (ANDERSARTIG by Christina Schindler, DANGLE by Phil Traill, FINOW by Susanne Quester and OBY by Anja Perl and Max Stolzenberg). The event was rounded off with a screening of the silent film THE LAST LAUGH (DER LETZTE MANN) by Friedrich-Wilhelm Murnau with musical accompaniment.

A retrospective with eight films offered cinema highlights from the last ten years. The following films were shown under the banner "10 anos de cine": NOBODY LOVES ME (KEINER LIEBT MICH) by Doris Doerrie, BEYOND SILENCE (JENSEITS DER STILLE) by Caroline Link, KNOCKIN' ON HEAVEN'S DOOR by Thomas Jahn, RUN LOLA RUN (LOLA RENNT) by Tom Tykwer, THE EXPERIMENT (DAS
EXPERIMENT) by Oliver Hirschbiegel, SUN ALLEY (SONNENALLEE) by Leander Haussmann, MOSTLY MARTHA (BELLA MARTHA) by Sandra Nettelbeck, and GOOD BYE, LENIN! by Wolfgang Becker:

Eight Spanish and five German producers had a brainstorming session on the initiative of the German Embassy in Madrid during the festival. The four hours of talks saw proposals being hammered out to improve the conditions for co-productions. The talks are set to be continued within a larger forum during the film festival in Seville in November where a part of the festival programme will be shown in a special sidebar for German cinema.