What do you think if you hear Berlin? Do you think of flashing lights, young urban culture, free spirit, the historical past? Berlin is a city that functions as a “projection screen” for human desires, a city where good and bad are often closely linked together. What medium, if not film, would be better to transport the “Berlin feeling”?
Berlin in KL this September will enter its second round. We will screen four iconic movies dealing with topics that formed Berlin. Every Thursday the viewer will be able to encounter the city’s development starting with M and closing with In weiter Ferne so nah (Far Away, So Close!).
All films are screened in German with English subtitles.
Thurday, 6 September 2018, 08:00 pm
M
Director: Fritz Lang
Country: Germany 1931
Duration: 117 min.
M is often associated with superlatives – a lot of critics see it as the best German criminal film, in statistics it ranges under the best German films ever. M is a chalk mark, a chalk mark that marks the coat of a children murderer that terrifies all people of Berlin. The city is up in arms, but it gets not only to the ordinary public. The organized crime feels disturbed due to increasing police raids and investigation and they decide to find M by themselves.
Thursday, 13 September 2018, 08:00 pm
Phoenix
Director: Christian Petzold
Country: Germany 2014
Duration: 98 min
Short after World War 2 the Jewish woman Nelly Lenz returns home to Berlin as a survivor of KZ Auschwitz. After experiencing violence in the KZ Nelly had to undergo a face operation. Believed to be dead she creates herself an Alter Ego “Esther” to investigate about her husband Johnny’s life. When he sees her he notices the similarity to his assumed dead wife and asks “Esther” to slip into the role of Nelly to get her inheritance. Nelly engages with this.
Thursday, 20 September 2018, 08:00 pm
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Country: Germany 2006
Duration: 137 min
East Berlin 1984: Gerd Wiesler, an agent of the secret service is being instructed to monitor the writer Georg Dreyman. Soon it turns out that the Cultural Minister instructed the supervision due to personal motives. Wiesler gets into a moral fix, but continues to monitor Dreyman. The insight into the life of the writer shows him a cultural world that he happily absorbs. The agent starts to pull the strings in his own ways.
Thursday, 27th September 2018, 08:00 pm
In weiter Ferne so nah (Faraway, So Close!)
Director: Wim Wenders
Country: Germany 1993
Duration: 144 min
The Angel Cassiel sadly wanders through Berlin, frustrated by himself being unable to change the fate of human beings. Unaware that this will make him humane too, Cassiel saves a girl from death. Being humane his frustration grows: the finiteness of human life follows him with every step he takes. Together with his friend Damiel Cassiel tries to escape the sorrow by doing good.
The films are screened by Goethe-Institut Malaysia in cooperation with fono.
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