Background: German Cinema

 The Munich Filmfest is Germany’s most important summer film festival. A venue of choice for German, European and world premieres, it’s ultimately about discovering new creative talents.

Andreas Ströhl, director of the festival, and Ulrich Maass, programme coordinator of the “New German Film” series, discuss German cinema trends and prospects in the following interview.

Hans Weingartner’s film The Edukators (Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei) hadn’t hit the movie theatres yet when Rainer Knepperges and Christian Mrasek shot Like in Uruguay (Die Quereinsteigerinnen). At first sight, both look like social criticism, and they’re both about the kidnapping of a corporate CEO. One’s politically engagé, the other’s a screwball comedy. Which of the two reflects a new generation?

Maass: The Edukators is the reflection of a generation no longer capable of revolt. The supposed rebellion is more of a “happening” version of a kidnapping, which says a lot about the state of today’s generation. The film is a critical look at the impossibility of protest.

Public funding: Are the years of plenty over?

How have the cuts in public funding affected the content of German movies?

Maass: Funding determines content, smaller films have to tell different stories. The stagnation of funding is fostering a new film d’auteur, a German Nouvelle Vague. But if you choose a certain way of telling the story, you can still make a very fine film on a low budget. What’s more, the trend toward digital cameras is changing the aesthetics in a subtle way.

What are the criteria for public funding in Germany?

Ströhl: Most regional film-funding bodies in Germany apply either “cultural” or “commercial” criteria. Movies likely to be international hits get “commercial” public funding. In other words, movies that really don’t need any public funding in the first place. The fact that German films are so talky is also due to the funding. The screenplays aren’t written with the director in mind, but the public funding committee, which decides whether to fund a film based on the dialogues. It’s quite difficult to put atmosphere and lighting effects into words. Many directors try to, but like Fred Kelemen, they have a hard time of it.

Prospects and content

How highly is German cinema regarded abroad?

Ströhl: Artistically, German films have always been successful abroad; commercially, they’ve been on the upswing for several years now. Artistic success means the impact German directors have had on the way directors abroad tell their stories. You can see what an incredible mark German cinema has made in Thailand or Pakistan. Every filmmaker there knows German cinema of the 1970s. Foreign countries want different, more serious films than the romantic comedies of the ’90s that were big hits in Germany. A picture like Gordian Maugg’s Zeppelin about the 1937 crash of the Hindenburg in the US will be more successful abroad than in Germany.

Emily Atef and Esther Bernstorff were awarded the German Film Prize for their screenplay for Molly’s Way. A young Irish woman goes off in search of the father of her child in a small Polish town.

Ströhl: Many current films are set in Eastern Europe. Those are societies in upheaval – extremely interesting, not only in commercial terms. For Germans the world used to end at the border, now it stretches farther east. It’s such an exciting terrain.

The Mongolian-born Byambasuren Davaa won the Munich Filmfest best director award for The Cave of the Yellow Dog (Die Höhle des gelben Hundes). What part does the magic of foreign lands play in German films?

Ströhl: Foreign lands have always played a big part in German cinema. Werner Herzog shot only one of his 30 films in Germany, Wim Wenders filmed his longing for America. The only ones who systematically came to grips with German fug were Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Herbert Achternbusch.

Maass: Nowadays young filmmakers are keener on Germany than ever before. Take the Berlin School, for example, a group of filmmakers predominantly based in Berlin. They include Thomas Aslan, Angela Schanelec, Christoph Hochhäusler, Christian Petzold, Dominik Graf, Andreas Dresen and Hans Christian Schmid.

Compositions

When Silence Sings is an homage to the silent-film composer Aljoscha Zimmermann. How important is film music in our day?

Maass: German cinema doesn’t attach any special importance to film music. But German composers are a hit export. Some of the best composers for the screen now working in Hollywood are Germans.

What would you wish for the future of German film?

Ströhl: Film should be more of a total artwork in which narrative and verbal elements do have some importance, but are not all there is. Cinema nowadays is still too heavily based on literature and theatre. But the basic patterns and character constellations of fiction are too limited. Film’s got more possibilities since it doesn’t have to rely entirely on text. We’d like to see films with musical principles, whose rhythm and dramatization work more with atmospheres, pictures and sounds. Only film can portray mood sequences. That’s why we should make films about moods, something no other medium can do as well. The idea being to create visual and sound compositions and not just illustrate dialogues.

Thanks for the interview!