Boris, on the cusp of coming out, is smitten with Til. Upon leaving a club one night, just as they are about to kiss for the first time, an interloper joins them and much to Boris’ chagrin, Til is delighted. Boris doesn’t know how to deal with this and is jealous.
This is a well-made short that gives the audience a peek into the difficulties that arise when two boys look at love (and their relationship) differently.
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“I was interested in whether it was possible to tell the inner life of a relationship, the things you can’t express to a third person. When Gitti and Chris come home after the holiday, and someone asks her, “How was it?” she probably wouldn’t be able to tell what happened.” Maren Ade.Read More »
Second feature film by German-Turkish director Thomas Arslan (Ferien, Aus der Ferne), and a rough diamond of the first generation of the so-called ‘Berlin School’. Can is a young and smart upstart; he dreams of a small family but the money that fuels this dream comes from the streets. Can is a dealer, he works for Hakan who is supplying the kids in his neighbourhood with drugs. And while Can struggles to get control over his life he sees his girl friend, the mother of his kid, leaving and himself increasingly surrounded by false friends. On top of it, a cop (Birol Ünel, the male lead from Fatih Akin’s “Gegen die Wand) is on his back trying to persuade Can to work undercover for the police. The more Can attempts to free himself, the deeper he sinks into a life he never aspired to.Read More »
Quote:
Volker Schlöndorff was Melville’s assistant in Le Doulos, but it’s the opening of Les Enfants Terribles that he draws extensively on in his film debut, for the benefit of the New German Cinema. The kids aren’t alright in the Austro-Hungarian empire, a stay at a military boarding school reveals the seeds of the Third Reich (and of Lord of the Flies) in a series of biting outlines. Young Törless (Mathieu Carrière) leaves mommy’s carriage and meets new colleagues, though expectations of a conventional coming-of-age story disappear as soon as the slattern the boys visit turns out to be the great vampire-lady herself, Barbara Steele dispensing sepulchral lyricism as one of the teens fondles under her robe. Read More »
“Trojan is released from jail and goes straight back to his profession as a criminal. He gets hold of a weapon and looks out for new jobs. In just a few takes, Thomas Arslan sets up the anonymous world of his gangster protagonist by falling back on motifs and characters from the genre. The backroom of a car workshop, parking lots, furnished apartments. One meets men and women who distrust each other because they are all out to line their own pockets.Read More »
Sterile practice
7 August 2010 | by oOgiandujaOo (United Kingdom)
My only previous experience of Farocki prior to watching Leben – BRD (How to live in the FRG) was Die Bewerbung (The Interview). The subject of that documentary film was the preparing of people who had difficulty finding work for job interviews. The movie highlighted how unnatural it was to be in a situation where you had to sell yourself (the training provides promotion of an unnatural self-awareness), where you have to project a compliant image for the Procrustean corporate scrutiniser. Leben – BRD expands on this limited scenario to provide a number of training scenarios. This includes training people to kill, provide obstetric care, separate those involved in domestic arguments etc. All this is interspersed with factory images of equipment being tested for longevity (for example a car door being opened and closed a thousand times by machine). It all comes off as quite banal and sterile programming. There is no room for personality, there is no room for personal connection. I’ve heard how feeling is something that has been outsourced to professionals (psychiatrists), here the psychiatrists are just as impersonal, running a child through a quick-march battery of standardised tests, getting a patient to draw a time series graph of the progression of their phobia, incapable of providing what the patient needs, a shoulder to cry on, someone to hug and understand.Read More »
Samuel Beckett’s German Television productions for Süddeutscher Rundfunk.
Berühmt wurde Samuel Beckett als Theaterinnovateur (Warten auf Godot) und Romancier (Der Namenlose), der Literaturnobelpreisträger schrieb jedoch auch Hörspiele und inszenierte Kurzfilme für das Fernsehen. 1966 produzierte er für den Süddeutschen Rundfunk (SDR) im Rahmen der Reihe »Der Autor als Regisseur« das Fernsehspiel He Joe und schuf damit ein revolutionäres Stück Medienkunst. Bis 1986 folgten sieben weitere »crazy inventions«, wie Beckett seine TV-Arbeiten nannte.Read More »
In 1992, Wenders possibly bewildered a good portion of his fans by making a 30 minute short for children, titled Arisha, the Bear and the Stone Ring. It’s a fable about the Bear leaving Berlin (it’s the city’s emblem), featuring Wim Wenders dressed as Santa Claus…
SYNOPSIS
The story description posted on Wenders’ website reads as follows:
The bear leaves Berlin. He’s fed up. On the way, two Russian ladies – Anna and her daughter, Arisha – hire him as their driver. During the trip, a Santa Claus who cannot stand Christmas, and then a Vietnamese family, join the group whose destination is a spot by the sea. There, on the beach, lies a stone ring, which wants to be found.
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Prison discharges Hans into the inhospitable freedom of a cold Munich winter. As a stranger, he strays through familiar streets and bars and tries unsuccessfully to contact old friends. Eventually he takes a plane to a friend in Berlin, fleeing from invisible enemies, on the way to an indeterminate destination.
Wenders’s graduation film for the University of Television and Film Munich already reveals an innovative and individual style. Many of the themes that are woven through his later films, such as his enthusiasm for and inspiration from rock music, already appear here.Read More »