Our second newsletter is completely and utterly about the Berlinale. Though we can't provide festival tickets or the latest films – after all, that's what cinemas are for – we would like to take the Berlinale fever as an opportunity to ask: How much Berlinale is in the ZZF?
Andreas Dresen – Silver Bear for Best Director 2002
World premiere at the Berlinale! The film by a Potsdam director based on a novel about Leipzig in the post-reunification era – actually, we should all be on the guest list tonight when Andreas Dresen's film adaptation of Clemens Meyer's novel "Als wir träumten’" (As we were dreaming") premieres... Without having seen it, we highly recommend buying a cinema ticket in the next few weeks and would like to point out that we obviously have the film for which Andreas Dresen received the Silver Bear as the Grand Jury Prize in 2002, namely "Halbe Treppe" ("Grill Point") (ZZF 21679) with the great music of the 17 Hippies. If you have already seen the film, then we would like to refer you to Dresen's brilliant feature film debut "Stilles Land" ("Silent country") (ZZF 21675), which tells a congenial/melancholy story about the turmoil of the fall of communism in a small-town theatre that is currently staging "Waiting for Godot".
Wim Wenders — Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement 2015
This year's Berlinale is honouring Wim Wenders with the Honorary Golden Bear for his lifetime achievement and is screening ten of his films on this occasion. You can borrow "Der Himmel über Berlin" ("Wings of Desire") (ZZF 20834) from us. We particularly recommend this film because of the scenes in which Otto Sander watches over the visitors to a library as an angel! And of course because of the great music by Nick Cave, Rowland S. Howard (gorgeous!), Blixa Bargeld and others. The film is also a tribute to West Berlin in the 1980s and its music scene, which can be seen at this year's Berlinale in the documentary "B-Movie – Lust & Sound in West Berlin (1979-1989)". By the way, we also have the sequel, which is set in Berlin at the time of reunification: "In weiter Ferne, so nah!" ("Faraway, So Close!") (ZZF 20861).
Nina Hoss - Silver Bear for Best Actress 2007
Nina Hoss, who was a member of the Berlinale International Jury in 2011, was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Actress in 2007 for her lead role in Christian Petzold's film "Yella". In 2012, she again played the lead role in a Petzold film. For "Barbara", which premiered at the Berlinale, he was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Director. You can borrow this film from us (ZZF 25993), which is set in the GDR in 1980 and tells the story of a doctor who is transferred to a provincial hospital after she applies to leave the country and takes care of the pregnant Stella, a girl from the Torgau juvenile detention center.
Claude Lanzmann – Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement 2013
Two years ago, the Berlinale honoured Claude Lanzmann as an important documentary filmmaker. "In his portrayal of inhumanity and violence, of anti-Semitism and its consequences, he has created a new cinematic and ethical approach," explained Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick the award. Lanzmann's film "Shoah" (1985) is considered an epochal masterpiece of the culture of remembrance in film history. The preparations and filming of "Shoah" (ZZF 20223) took almost twelve years. In this work, Lanzmann exclusively shows interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Shoah, including perpetrators, visits the sites of extermination and brings the immeasurable horror of genocide under National Socialism to mind. The nine-and-a-half-hour documentary film about the genocide of the European Jews was shown at the Berlinale Forum in 1986.
Wolfgang Kohlhaase –Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement 2010
The screenwriter and director Wolfgang Kohlhaase not only shaped DEFA's filmmaking, but also contributed to some great films after the reunification, such as "Sommer vorm Balkon" ("Summer in Berlin") by Andreas Dresen (2004/05) and also wrote the screenplay for "Als wir träumten" ("As We Were Dreaming"). He had his first cinema successes, together with Gerhard Klein, with films such as "Berlin – Ecke Schönhauser" ("Berlin, Schoenhauser Corner") (1956/57) (ZZF 19530). Since then, life in the divided and now reunited city of Berlin has been a recurring theme in Kohlhaase's work. A second constant, the preoccupation with German fascism and its consequences, brought him together with Konrad Wolf, with whom he made four films. In Wolf's last work, "Solo Sunny" (1978-80) (ZZF 21677), which won a Silver Bear for Best Actress (Renate Kräßner as Solo Sunny) at the 1980 Berlinale, author Kohlhaase was also co-director for the first time. Another Kohlhaase film, "Der Aufenthalt" ("The Turning Point") (Frank Beyer, 1982/83), was denied participation in the Berlinale at the time: following an objection from the Polish government, the GDR withdrew the film, which tells the story of a German soldier in a Polish prison at the end of the war.
Jiří Menzel – Golden Bear 1990
This absurd comedy "Lark on a String", based on a novel by Bohumil Hrabal, which was immediately banned after its completion in 1969, received the Golden Bear after its premiere at the Berlinale in 1990. The setting is the scrapyard of a steelworks combine in the 1950s, which serves as a "re-education camp" for "bourgeois elements" and enemies of the system. Symbols of bourgeois values, such as a crucifix or a writer's typewriter, are melted down into machines for socialist construction. Similarly, people are to be transformed, but they prove to be more resistant than steel. We have the Czech original with English subtitles in the collection ("Skřivánci na niti", ZZF 20158).
Rainer Simon – Golden Bear 1985
The only film produced in the GDR to ever win a Golden Bear is "Die Frau und der Fremde" ("The Woman and the Stranger") (ZZF 21673), directed by Rainer Simon and based on a novella by Leonhard Frank. It tells the story of Anna, Karl and Richard. The two men are in Russian war captivity during the last year of the war, 1918. During this time, Richard tells Karl everything about his wife Anna. When, by chance, Karl is able to escape captivity alone and return to Germany, he poses as Richard to Anna. Although Anna knows that the stranger is not her husband, she takes him in. They both think Richard is dead and fall in love with each other. At the end of the war, Richard also returns. But Anna decides in favour of Karl, from whom she is expecting a child. Because doubts arose shortly after the premiere about the validity of the filming rights for the literary original, the film was not officially released in cinemas until 2008.
Reinhard Hauff – Golden Bear 1986
When Reinhard Hauff presented his film "Stammheim" at the Berlinale and won the Golden Bear, it caused a scandal. Jury president Gina Lollobrigida publicly distanced herself from the film's award. The chamber drama-like courtroom film about the murder trial against the leading members of the RAF was based on the original court records of the 1975 trial in the Stammheim high-security prison, based on a screenplay by the then SPIEGEL editor-in-chief Stefan Aust. Opponents who had previously only met in shoot-outs, hostage-takings or escapes now face each other: The terrorists on one side and the state on the other, represented by the prosecutors and the judge, are forced to contend purely argumentatively. The trial becomes a battle that lasts 192 days. The film screening took place under police protection, as there had been death threats against the jurors. You can borrow the documentary-like reconstruction of the trial twice from us, under ZZF 19891 or ZZF 19897.
Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn) – Special mention 1978
The first cinema film to deal with the Federal Republic of Germany in times of RAF terror is the compilation film "Germany in Autumn". Supported by the Filmverlag der Autoren and with Alexander Kluge as final editor, one of the aims of the eleven directors involved was to create a counter-public to the official media. Thus, te film, which reflects the mood in the autumn of 1977, when the Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations, was kidnapped and murdered, a Lufthansa jet was hijacked by Palestinians to Mogadishu and the RAF prisoners Ensslin, Raspe and Baader died in the high-security wing in Stammheim, was made without the support of television stations or film funding and premiered at the Berlinale in 1978. You can find this unusual and exciting contemporary document in our collection under ZZF 19890.
Hanna Schygulla – Silver Bear 1979, Honorary Golden Bear 2010
One of the eleven directors of "Deutschland im Herbst" ("Germany in Autumn") was Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Just one year later, he presented the first film in his BRD Trilogy at the Berlinale, which he would continue with "Lola" and "Lili Marleen". In "Die Ehe der Maria Braun" ("The Marriage of Maria Braun") already a strong woman already takes centre stage. After Hermann Braun, has to return to the front just one day after their wedding in the middle of a hail of bombs, Maria is left to fend for herself. After the war, Maria receives the news of her husband's death, whereupon she begins a liaison with an American soldier, though she does not love him. When her husband suddenly turns up and catches them both in the act, a rash action ensues. Hermann is sent to prison and Maria becomes the assistant of an industrialist, which brings her wealth. However, she holds on to her love for Hermann. Fassbinder tells this story as a cool melodrama. Hanna Schygulla was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Actress for her portrayal of Maria, and another Silver Bear went to the entire film team. You can find the film in our collection under ZZF 18841. In 2010, the actress was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear for her lifetime achievement.