A German cinema blitz commences Wednesday with the opening of German Film Week, which will see contemporary and classic films from the country projected through Oct. 1. Running in parallel (Sept. 19-23) is Talents Beirut, an incubator platform for aspiring filmmakers from around the MENA region, affiliated with Berlinale Talents and FID Marseille.
Leading off the slate of seven contemporary titles is Andreas Dresen’s award-winning biopic “Gundermann,” the big winner at this year’s German Film Awards.
Dresen dramatizes the life of East German singer-songwriter Gerhard Gundermann (1955-98), who worked as a coal miner by day and a performer at night. He won a mass following in 1980s GDR with his personable performance manner and songs that pondered existential, political and social issues. His popularity continued to swell after the fall of the Berlin Wall, even after it was disclosed that the performer had worked as an informant for the Stasi, the East German secret police.
“Gundermann” will be presented by the film’s scriptwriters Laila Stieler and editor Joerg Hauschild.
The film week will close with Nora Fingscheidt’s “System Crasher,” Germany’s official entry for the 2020 Academy Awards, which picked up the Silver Bear at the 2019 Berlinale.
A social-problem film that’s been flensed of sentimentality and didacticism, “System Crasher” follows its emotionally disturbed 9-year-old protagonist, Benni (a sensational Helena Zengel) as she struggles to reunite with her mother. Her mother, meanwhile, is frightened of her daughter’s intense rages. A noisy film on several layers (the young protagonist is forever clad in loud pink), Benni’s fits of fury are accompanied by raucous, percussive music that immerses audiences in Benni’s chaotic swirl of perceptions.
Other recent titles to look for include “Roads,” Sebastian Schipper’s 2019 follow-up to his much-loved single-shot feature from 2015, “Victoria,” Wolfgang Fischer’s critically lauded 2018 feature “Styx,” which depicts the transformation of a strong woman dislocated during a sailing trip gone awry, and “Fly Rocket Fly,” Oliver Schwehm’s 2018 profile of German rocket scientist Lutz Kayser, whose aerospace company OTRAG (Orbital Transport and Rockets), founded in 1975, is the first-ever commercial business of its kind.
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German Film Week is also projecting a program of films by renowned German auteur Volker Schloendorff, the only German director to have won both an Oscar and a Palme d’Or. Schloendorff’s contribution to Lebanese film history is his 1981 feature “Circle of Deceit,” starring Bruno Ganz, Hanna Schygulla and Roger Assaf, famously shot during this country’s most-recent Civil War. The filmmaker’s return to Beirut will be his first since wrapping production on his film.
Schloendorff will present two of his works during the cycle - his debut feature “Young Toerless,” 1966, counted among the most-significant works of the New German Cinema movement, and his critically lauded “Diplomacy,” 2014, about the German military governor of Paris and a Swedish diplomat stationed there.
In addition, the cycle will project two of Schloendorff’s appropriations of iconic stage works - “Baal,” 1970, his take on Bertolt Brecht’s play starring Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and “Death of a Salesman,” his 1985 staged-for-film adaptation of Arthur Miller’s stage play, starring Dustin Hoffman.
As in past years, German Film Week will unfurl alongside Talents Beirut. Organized by the Metropolis Association and Goethe-Institut Lebanon, Talents aims to support aspiring Arab filmmakers by connecting talents with other emerging artists and veteran cinema professionals, where they explore the art of filmmaking from technical and theoretical point of views.
For this year’s edition, 21 Arab film professionals - including editors, cinematographers and sound designers from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia - have been chosen to take part.
It’s in the framework of Talents Beirut that Schloendorff will give a public master class Sunday, Sept. 22, at 5:15 p.m. at Metropolis Cinema-Sofil, moderated by filmmaker Hady Zaccak.
The day before, at 5:15 p.m., Metropolis will host “Carving sounds into stories,” a sound design master class with sound designers Paul Davies (Lynne Ramsay’s “You Were Never Really Here,” 2017) and Rob Walker (Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s “Dau,” 2019). Sound designer and filmmaker Rana Eid will moderate.
German Film Week will close Oct. 1 at 6:30 p.m. with an outdoor cine-concert on the Esplanade of Sursock Museum. Ewald Andre Dupont’s 1925 silent film “Variety” will be projected, accompanied by a live original score composed and performed by Sharif Sehnaoui, Tony Elieh, Malek Rizkallah, Youmna Saba and Mme Chandelier.
This is as a fundraising event for the Metropolis Association, which launched its first-ever fundraising campaign in August. All proceeds from this fundraiser will help sustain the Metropolis Association’s program throughout 2020.
