The Documentary Issue

GFQ German Films Quarte rly 9 1 0 tHe DOCumentary issue 2 - 4 DIRECTORS thomas Heise & Cordula Kablitz-Post e PRODUCER Gunnar Dedio of lOOKsﬁlm u s ACTOR & FILMMAKER Hannes Jaenicke s i SPECIAL PORTRAIT rainer rother of the Deutsche Kinemathek CONTENTS GFQ 4-20 19 19 20 21 23 24 25 25 26 26 28 28 30 2 GFQ 4-20 19 CONTENTS i n tHis issue POrtraits neW sHOrts IMAGES WAITING FOR HISTORY BLACK SUN A portrait of director Thomas Heise ............................................... 4 Arda Çiltepe .................................................................................... 28 ON THE EDGE CARGO A portrait of director Cordula Kablitz-Post ...................................... 6 Christina Tournatzés ........................................................................ 28 DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES FÜR ‘NE HANDVOLL E A portrait of production company LOOKSfilm ................................. 8 FOR A FISTFUL OF E Dennis Demirbas ......................................... 29 MATTERS THAT COUNT LAB/P – POETRY IN MOTION 3: IDENTITY A portrait of actor & filmmaker Hannes Jaenicke .......................... 10 various directors ............................................................................. 29 PRESERVING & PROMOTING FILM HERITAGE THE RAFT An interview Rainer Rother ............................................................ 12 Sylvain Cruiziat ................................................................................ 30 NEWS & NOTES ................................................................................ 14 uPCOminG Films neW Features ALLE REDEN ÜBERS WETTER Annika Pinske ................................................................................... 31 ADAMSTOWN Patrick Merz & Henning Wötzel-Herber .......................................... 18 BAD BANKS – SEASON 2 Christian Zübert ............................................................................... 31 BAUMBACHER SYNDROME Gregory Kirchhoff .......................................................................... 19 BLUTSAUGER Julian Radlmaier ........................................................................... 31 LATTE IGEL UND DER MAGISCHE WASSTERSTEIN LATTE AND THE MAGIC WATERSTONE DEUTSCHLAND89 Regina Welker & Nina Wels ............................................................ 20 Randa Chahoud & Soleen Yusef ..................................................... 32 SUNBURNED ENFANT TERRIBLE Carolina Hellsgård ........................................................................... 21 Oskar Roehler ................................................................................. 32 TKKG HILFE, ICH HABE MEINE FREUNDE GESCHRUMPFT TKKG-DETECTIVE AGENCY Robert Thalheim ................................ 22 Granz Henman ................................................................................. 32 VIER ZAUBERHAFTE SCHWESTERN HOME FOUR ENCHANTED SISTERS Sven Unterwaldt ............................ 23 Franka Potente ................................................................................. 33 DIE WOLF-GÄNG KISS ME BEFORE IT BLOWS UP THE MAGIC KIDS – THREE UNLIKELY HEROES Shirel Peleg .................................................................................... 33 Tim Trageser .................................................................................. 24 NIGHTLIFE Simon Verhoeven .............................................................................. 33 neW DOCumentaries DIE SCHULE DER MAGISCHEN TIERE Gregor Schnitzler ............................................................................. 34 AUTOBAHN Daniel Abma ..................................................................................... 25 TRIBES OF EUROPA Philip Koch & Florian Baxmeyer .................................................... 34 BEKAR EVİ – DAS JUNGGESELLENHAUS BEKAR EVİ – THE BACHELOR HOUSE Dirk Schäfer ................................................................................... 25 BUTENLAND Shareholders & Supporters ............................................................ 37 Marc Pierschel ............................................................................... 26 Film Exporters ................................................................................. 38 IM STILLEN LAUT A QUIET RESISTANCE Therese Koppe ............................................ 26 Imprint .............................................................................................. 39 3 DireCtOr’s POrtrait GFQ 4-20 19 ) n n a m r e m m i Z e g n I © ( e s i e H s a m o h T imaGes WaitinG FOr HistOry A PORTRAIT OF DIRECTOR THOMAS HEISE 4 GFQ 4-20 19 DireCtOr’s POrtrait homas Heise is travelling a lot at the through out – for minutes, the camera goes brother, mother are all dead), MATERIAL is moment. His new documentary down an alphabetical list of the deported the film making the end of the GDR com - HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME is tour - Viennese Jews. And when it reaches the prehensible through a series of fragments Ting festivals all over the world, and names of Heise’s relatives, we hear no more from the years 1987 to 1993. More com - he has just returned from Toronto. The ear - of the private mail. The soundtrack falls prehensible than movie kitsch featuring nasty nestness with which his more than three- silent. Stasi henchmen could ever make it. and-a-half hour long film was watched there pleased him. “Anyone coming out, it was only This skillful interplay of cinematic means can And that is precisely because the film op - the passing audiences. People who find film be found in many films by Heise. In IMBISS erates at the edge, like the filmmaker himself, generally interesting and hadn’t seen how SPEZIAL, shot in October 1989 as a requiem who was forced to leave the film academy in long it was, and then expected action.” for the declining GDR, we see the work and the GDR. MATERIAL avoids the jubilant images of the fall of the Berlin Action is the wrong word for the Wall and instead shows how, formally simple but captivating the day before, all the self- arrangement of the film. Docu - critical, hopeful SED members ments are read out by Heise expected a change from their himself – letters, diary entries, wavering leadership, a depar - notes, essays. The text occurs ture for which it could no longer behind images that function as - summon the strength. Or how sociatively. “We filmed a lot of prisoners discuss with their forest,” Heise comments with guards what the turning point in wry amusement in regard to the the country means to them in genesis of HEIMAT IS A SPACE De cember 1989. IN TIME. This quantity of forest may come as a surprise, as the These are “images waiting for new film is about his own family. history”, as playwright Heiner Usually, such films would con - Müller – who was Heise’s men - sist of photos, film material, in - tor and fatherly friend – once put formation from contemporary it. So that this story can be un - witnesses, site visits. In Heise’s derstood, so that something can case, apart from a few private be preserved which provides photos, there are landscape explanations, but only at a shots and shunting trains. And distance. In these days of forest, of course. Trump’s lies, people crave reality, Heise says regarding the For Heise, such photographs interest in films like his in also help the director to become America, where HEIMAT IS A a stranger to himself, to main - SPACE IN TIME was shown at tain distance from the private. the New York Film Festival in the “You have to separate yourself,” Lincoln Center. In MATERIAL, Heise says at a snack bar not far someone says, “You can think of from his home in Berlin-Prenz - history as long and drawn out, lauer Berg. He regards “family but in fact it’s just a heap.” films” with horror, which is why he demands that his students at And nobody arranges this heap the Academy of Fine Arts in as cleverly and precisely as Tho - Vienna approach a person they mas Heise, probably the most do not know in documentary important German documentary form during their initial exer - filmmaker today. cises. One who doesn’t come from their own customers of a snack bar in Berlin’s Lichten - milieu. berg station. And we hear the employees’ Matthias Dell stories, their dreams, plans and disappoint - That’s also why he made this film about his ments – and radio news that Heise had re - family so late. And he made it so that it is far corded when lying in the hospital for three more than navel-gazing over his own sociali - weeks in the summer of 1989. Seemingly in - zation. HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME tells significant and ordinary aspects, which – in 20th century German history using the single tense juxtaposition with images from shortly example of the filmmaker’s family, one might before the historical moment, the fall of the say. Berlin Wall, the disappearance of the GDR – tell us much more than official speeches ex - The most breathtaking scene is the one about plaining that time. the Holocaust. There is the way that cor - respondence from the Jewish part of the Thomas Heise collects such recordings. The family in Vienna is read out off stage, other major film from his extensive oeuvre is gradually drying up: it deals with increasing MATERIAL, made ten years before HEIMAT IS impositions by the Nazis but expresses, A SPACE IN TIME, and also almost three neverthe less and right up to the end, the hope hours long. If HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME is that things cannot become worse. But the the film that brings order to the family’s unimaginable is present in the image history

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