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its entirety," German Cultural State Minister Bernd Neumann said ominously at the 61st Berlin Film Fest in February, issuing an urgent appeal for intense lobbying efforts.
The German government, meanwhile, is forging ahead with an ambitious plan to "digitalise" every cinema in the country. Germany has just under 1,000 screens, and theatre owners are eligible for up to 21,000 euros per screen in funding to modernise their projection equipment and screens, in particular with view towards enabling them to show digital 3-D features.
So far, art houses in Germany have baulked at digitalisation, citing the expense, bother and lack of need for their high-brow audiences. But the 3-D trend has received a hefty boost in Germany with Pina, a dance biopic by Wim Wenders on the life of German modern-dance choreographer Pina Bausch - which he filmed in 3-D – the world's first 3-D art film.
German reviewers, notorious for looking down their noses at any digital effects, have universally praised Wenders for opening their eyes to the possibilities of 3-D filmmaking. And Wenders, best known for art house classics like Paris Texas, says he has seen the future and it is 3-D.
"To be perfectly honest, I seriously can't imagine making a 'flat' film ever again," Wenders said on German television."For so long...
I always felt there was a wall between what I saw on stage and what my cameras captured. I waited for a revelation and the fact that it came in the form of technology was almost a shock to me," Wenders added.
The Wenders film was shown out of competition at the Berlin Film Fest, which has a tradition of blending politics with social change. This year's not surprising festival winner was a clearly political choice, a dissident Iranian filmmaker. Nader and Simin: A Separation, captured the Golden Bear and swept top awards in Berlin.
The film, directed by Asghar Farhadi, tells the story of a broken marriage while portraying touchy social and religious conflicts in Islamic Iran. Farhadi, who won the Berlin Silver Bear for best director in 2009 for About Elly, also chose his daughter to play the married couple's daughter in the film.
Apart from the coveted Golden Bear, the film also took home two Silver Bears for Best Male and Female Actor ensembles. Farhadi's daughter, Sarina Farhadi, was among the actresses awarded.
"To me, it's (the Golden Bear) a very important prize," Farhadi said in accepting the award, "because it means more people will see the film.”
In addition, 2011 proved to be a fruitful year for German productions, which has not always been the case. For years, German filmmakers accused
the Berlin fest of anti-German sentiment. Not this year, however.
Ulrich Koehler's Sleeping Sickness won the Silver Bear prize for Best Director. The film follows a dual line of two doctors living in Africa who find themselves facing a very difficult choice between Africa and their European homeland.
German filmmaker Andres Veiel won the Alfred Bauer Prize for Wer Wenn Nicht Wir (If Not Us, Who). Veiel's first feature depicts the tragic relation- ship between writer Bernward Vesper and 1970s Red Army Faction (RAF) urban terrorist Gudrun Ensslin.
Alas, most of the nearly 1,000 films screened at the Berlin Film Fest will never find distributors for theatrical release or television.
But German television itself is opening up an almost wholly unex- plored territory for filmmakers. While broadcasters have long shown Hollywood pics in prime-time, they have rarely had the daring - or the money - to air made-for-TV features. Pubcasters never had the money and fledgling commercial channels which started up in the 1980s and '90s lacked both money and expertise.
Now all of that is changing as the commercial webs reach their stride. RTL Television, Europe's largest commercial network, spent a record 10 million euros and two years of production on its two-part, made-for- TV, prime-time docudrama Hindenburg.
Starring Stacy Keach and an international cast, Hindenburg went down in flames to catastrophic reviews - but soared very high with ratings both evenings.
Top ratings also went to Buddenbrucks, a TV-film adaptation of the novel which won Thomas Mann the Nobel Prize for Literature. Shot on FujiFilm F-125, ETERNA 500 by DoP Gernot Roll, the two-parter by Heinrich Breloer, starring Armin Mueller-Stahl, put the highbrow ARTE channel on the ratings chart - a very rare achievement for ARTE's intellectually oriented programming. The good news is that, encouraged by the prime-time movie trend, Germany's ARD pubcaster has just announced plans for regular week- night movies for the first time in its 60- year broadcast history.
The bad news, at least from the viewpoint of German filmmakers, is that the bulk of those features will be Hollywood movies.
However, in announcing the new movie lineup, ARD made a point of saying that German hit productions by Schweiger and Akin will most certainly be coming.
Soul-Kitchen was originated on
FujiFilm F-64, ETERNA 250D/500; Buddenbrucks was originated on F-125, ETERNA 500 - Stözl's Goethe was originated on FujiFilm F-64 ETERNA 250D / Vivid 500T.
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