"Talking films with Volker Schlöndorff"

The Goethe-Institut will host the world-renowned German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff for a night of conversations with Ethiopian members of the film industry.
 
Volker Schlöndorff entered the film industry in the early 1960’s after finishing his studies on Cinematography at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques in France. His illustrious career spanning 50+years has allowed him to collaborate with prominent members of the global film industry and to create timeless pieces such as his Oscar winning film The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel). He remains active to this day and is currently working on a documentary film highlighting Global Regreening.
 
On the evening of Thursday, 8. April 2021, Volker Schlöndorff will hold a talk with invited guests focusing on film making whilst showcasing clips from his archive of works.
 
Note:
The event will be held in English and attendance will be by invitation ONLY.
  
About Volker Schlöndorff:
Born in 1939 in Wiesbaden, About Volker Schlöndorff studied cinematography at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris. He began working as a trainee and assistant director on films by prominent French directors such as Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Resnais.
In 1964, he received a screenplay bonus for his first screenplay Der junge Törless (Young Törless). The film becomes a success, receives three German Film Awards (Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay) and is considered the first international success of the young German filmmaker. With his second film Mord und Totschlag (A Degree of Murder, 1967), he staged the first colour film of a young German filmmaker. From 1969, Schlöndorff worked closely with Margarethe von Trotta, who was first an actress, then his assistant director, co-author and co-director. They get married in 1971.
Schlöndorff’s big breakthrough with the cinema audience came in 1975 with the adaptation Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum), which he directed together with Margarethe von Trotta. In 1980 and 1982, The Candidate and War and Peace, two highly political community films, followed, in an attempt to form a kind of political counter-information to television in a mixture of fiction and documentary scenes.

Schlöndorff achieved his greatest success with critics and audiences with the elaborate Günter Grass film adaptation Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum), awarded the Golden Palm in Cannes in 1979 and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in February 1980. Both honours, as well as the numerous other prizes, are regarded as signals of the international recognition of the new German film. After the Nicolas Born adaptation Die Fälschung (The Forgery), most of which was shot in Beirut in 1980/81, Schlöndorff shot the French-German co-production Eine Liebe von Swann (A Love of Swann) in Paris in 1983/84 with an international cast (Jeremy Irons, Ornella Muti, Alain Delon, Fanny Ardant), based on a chapter from Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time.

In 1985, Schlöndorff staged a film version of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in New York, with Dustin Hoffman in the title role. The political drama Die Stille nach dem Schuss (The Legend of Rita) premieres in competition of the Berlinale in 2000, winning the Silver Bear to the leading actresses Bibiana Beglau and Nadja Uhl. 

THE NINTH DAY, STRAJK, CALM AT SEA, and Diplomacy (2014, César 2015 French Film Awards), RETURN TO MONTAUK are some of his more recent films. 
He is currently working on a feature length documentary film on Global Regreening, especially on the Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) method of Alternative Nobel award winner Tony Rinaudo, shooting in Africa, India and Australia so far.