Page 27 - Fujifilm Exposure_51_Expo Intl_Spring 2011_ok

Grobler again on Fujifilm, adds: “I love the feeling when light gets bundled by a lens and meets an analog medium, then via the chemical process, pictures are generated, which you can see later on a big screen ”.
Romance and a light touch was the theme of Philipp Stözl’s Goethe, a biopic focusing on the German bard’s early love life and shot on ETERNA Vivid 500T, ETERNA 250D and Super F-64D. The film won a prestigious LOLA German film industry award in the Best Costume category.
Yet Akin, Schweiger and the others of this new breed are heavily
dependent on federal and EU subsidies, and those subsidies are imperilled in cash-strapped, post- unification Germany. European countries of Greece, Spain and Portugal are cutting back on “expendables” such as the arts.
For two decades the EU’s generous MEDIA programme has funnelled millions to subsidise European filmmakers. But when the programme comes up for renewal in 2013, funding could be sharply reduced, according to MEDIA
head Aviva Silver.
“We are facing a very critical situation,” Silver told a stunned audience of filmmakers during a meeting at the 61st Berlin Film Festival in February.
With Germany bearing the brunt of the Athens bail-out deal, federal officials are mulling serious cutbacks
in funding for the FFA German film subsidy organisation which, in many cases, is the only thing keeping small production companies and independent filmmakers alive.
“Taking the axe to the FFA will jeopardise the German film industry
in its entirety,” German Cultural State Minister Bernd Neumann said ominously at Berlin, while issuing
an urgent appeal for intense lobbying efforts.
Other major new German releases in 2011, all shot on Fujifilm negative stock, include Don 2 – The Chase Continues by Farhan Akhtar, starring Shahrukh Khan, DP Jason West; Der Verdingbub by Markus Imboden, DP Peter von Haller; Dunkel by Alexandra Schmidt, Ruhm by Isabell Kleefeld starring Senta Berger and Heino Ferch, DP Rainer Klausmann; and Töte Mich – Kill Me by Emily Atef, DP Stéphane Kuthy.
Alas, most of the nearly 1,000 films screened at Berlin will never find distributors for theatrical release or television.
But German television itself is opening up an almost wholly unexplored 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 high with ratings both evenings.
Top ratings also went to Buddenbrooks, a TV-film adaptation of the novel, which won Thomas Mann the Nobel Prize for Literature. Shot by DP Gernot Roll on Fujifilm ETERNA 500T, the two-parter, directed by Heinrich Breloer, starring Armin Mueller-Stahl, put the highbrow ARTE channel on the ratings chart - a 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 weeknight 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.
FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE • THE MAGAZINE • EXPOSURE • 25