German Films Quarterly 4 · 2005 DIRECTORS’ PORTRAITS Byambasuren Davaa & Douglas Wolfsperger PRODUCER’S PORTRAIT Clasart Film: Focusing on Quality PORTRAIT: AG DOK 25 Years of the German Documentary Association SPECIAL REPORT Digital Cinema in Germany german films quarterly 4/2005 focus on 4 DIGITAL CINEMA IN GERMANY portrait 9 A LESSON IN PERSISTENCE A portrait of the German Documentary Association directors’ portraits 12 A MEDIATOR BETWEEN TWO WORLDS A portrait of Byambasuren Davaa 14 FILMS THAT HOVER A portrait of Douglas Wolfsperger producer’s portrait 16 FOCUSING ON QUALITY A portrait of Clasart Film actors’ portraits 18 ENERGY AND HIGH STANDARDS A portrait of Burghart Klaussner 20 MANY FACES, MANY TALENTS A portrait of Katja Riemann 22 news in production 28 4TOECHTER Rainer Kaufmann 28 EBAY WORLD Stefan Tolz, Marcus Vetter 29 GEFANGENE Iain Dilthey 30 ICH BIN DIE ANDERE Margarethe von Trotta 31 KNALLHART Detlev Buck 32 LUCY Henner Winckler 32 DER MANN VON DER BOTSCHAFT Dito Tsintsadze 33 REINE FORMSACHE Ralf Huettner 34 SIEBEN ZWERGE – DER WALD IST NICHT GENUG Sven Unterwaldt 35 SOMMER ’01 AN DER SCHLEI Stefan Krohmer 35 THE THREE INVESTIGATORS AND THE SECRET OF SKELETON ISLAND Florian Baxmeyer 36 TKKG Tomy Wigand 37 DER UNTERGANG DER PAMIR Kaspar Heidelbach 38 DIE WILDEN KERLE III Joachim Masannek new german films 40 24/7 THE PASSION OF LIFE Roland Reber 41 BERLIN NIGHTS Gabriela Tscherniak 42 BREAKING THE RULES – ACROSS AMERICAN COUNTERCULTURE Marco Mueller 43 BRUDERMORD FRATRICIDE Yilmaz Arslan 44 DU HAST GESAGT, DASS DU MICH LIEBST YOU TOLD ME YOU LOVE ME Rudolf Thome 45 DIE GROSSE STILLE INTO GREAT SILENCE Philip Groening 46 JUNGLE SPIRIT Ingo Storm 47 DIE LETZTEN TAGE THE LAST DAYS Oliver Frohnauer 48 MAKING OF ZEPPELIN! Hans Guenther Pflaum 49 DIE MEGAKLINIK THE MEGAHOSPITAL Hans Andreas Guttner 50 OBABA Montxo Armendáriz 51 PELADÃO – ELF FREUNDE UND EINE KOENIGIN PELADÃO – SOCCER TEAMS AND BEAUTY QUEENS Joern Schoppe 52 SOMMER VORM BALKON SUMMER IN BERLIN Andreas Dresen 53 WAS LEBST DU? WHATZ UP? Bettina Braun 54 WELTVERBESSERUNGSMASSNAHMEN MEASURES TO BETTER THE WORLD Joern Hintzer, Jakob Huefner the 100 most significant german films (part 19) 56 DAS BOOT THE BOAT Wolfgang Petersen 57 JAGDSZENEN AUS NIEDERBAYERN HUNTING SCENES FROM BAVARIA Peter Fleischmann 58 LEBENSLAEUFE BIOGRAPHIES – THE STORY OF THE CHILDREN OF GOLZOW Winfried Junge, Barbara Junge 59 BERLINER BALLADE THE BALLAD OF BERLIN Robert A. Stemmle 61 film exporters 63 foreign representatives · imprint “Durchfahrtsland”(photo courtesy of Delicatessen/Edition Salzgeber) DIGITAL CINEMA IN GERMANY – THE WAITING GAME Digital cinema – everyone’s talking about it. Hardly a week seems to But it seems to be mainly talking and not so much action here in have gone by this year without a panel somewhere between Germany when compared with some other parts of Europe. Flensburg and Mittenwald on the pros and cons of digital vs. tradi- tional 35 mm projection. For example, there are the highly ambitious plans of the UK Film Council for the creation of a Digital Screen Network which should September, for example, saw Munich’s Media Business Academy reach around 250 screens in 150 theaters and proposes adopting “the devote a whole day event to the “cinema of the future”, while the highest standards currently foreseen for digital cinema”, the 270 Oldenburg International Film Festival staged a roundtable on High screen network of Digital Houses in Sweden are almost entirely Definition and Digital Cinema with director and HD specialist located in country areas and are linked with the desire to break free Christopher Coppola, filmmaker Michael Klier and distributor Torsten of traditional distribution, and the announcement of U.S. digital com- Frehse of Neue Visionen, and AG Kino’s arthouse trade fair in Leipzig pany Avica to create a network of 515 screens across Northern and featured a Digital Update to give arthouse cinema-owners an over- Southern Ireland to make Ireland “the world’s first digital nation.” view of the current state of play in their particular field. german films quarterly focus on digital cinema 4 · 2005 4 At the moment, around 40 German cinemas are participating in the CinemaNet Europe network, another 24 screens located at such venues as Berlin’s legendary Zoopalast cinema, Nuremberg’s Cinecitta multiplex and Munich’s Inselkinos (formerly Forum der Technik) have had digital projectors installed by the Belgian XDC company as part of a 100-screen network across Europe and have been screening such Hollywood blockbusters as Star Wars III, The Island, and Sin City in the digital Langner (photo Kai courtesy of KODAK) format; and the ROWO Digital group has put E-cinema technology in place at such cinemas as Munich’s Mathaeser Filmpalast and the Kinopolis multiplex in Landshut to present cinema advertising ahead of the main program. STANDARDS SET – LETHARGY OVER? This summer, the Digital Cinemas Initiative (DCI), an umbrella group formed three years ago by the U.S. studios and exhibitors, announced an industry standard governing the digital cinema roll-out by pre- senting a set of unanimous system requirements and specifications to help manufacturers create uniform digital cinema equipment through- out the United States. According to the DCI, it is expected that individual print costs would GERMAN RETICENCE be cut from $1,200 to about a quarter of that amount for the digital equipment and transportation charges would be eliminated as studios “In Germany, exhibitors are still rather reticent,” notes Andreas adopt satellite and fiber optic delivery systems. Kramer of the German cinema-owners association HDF-Kino e.V. “There is a situation where they say: ’Before we make any invest- The Germans, however, are not planning to accept the DCI standard ments in any direction, we will first wait and see what happens a- without further analysis: the distributors association VdF and the exhi- broad’. Many are looking to see what the Dutch do and how [the bitors gathered under HDF-Kino e.V. have commissioned the Fraun- Belgian multiplex operator] Kinepolis works out.” hofer Institut to establish a so-called “digital testbed” which would be undertaken probably from the middle of next year. The researchers’ findings would facilitate a level of transparency from which the various players would then be able to hammer out working models for the eventual roll-out of digital cinema in Germany. “All of the majors are saying that they would be ready if – and this ’if ’ is important – the business model is there,” says Thierry Perronnet, Marketing Director for Entertainment Imaging at Kodak. “What we hear from distributors and exhibitors is more of a waiting mode than anything else. People talk a lot about digital cinema but nobody is ready to start because they don’t know how much it is going to cost – and who is going to pay for it. That is the biggest question.” “The advantage of digital projection of commercials has been seen Kramer (photo Andreas courtesy of HDF-Kino) especially in the U.S. [where cinema advertising was hardly developed before] because you can divide it by regions and by cinema,” says Kai Langner, Kodak’s new General Manager for Entertainment Imaging in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Nordic Countries. “The real critical thing is the cost of conversion: when you look at Germany, for example, there are roughly 4,000 screens and today we talk about an investment of €100,000 per screen, i.e. €4 billion in total. One argu- ment will be that the prices will be dropping, but still you have to cover the costs rather fast. But it doesn’t make sense for the whole industry to have two systems side by side, so I think you should have the conversion completed in a three year period. I think, though, that it will be a country-by-country change and it won’t be very cost effec- tive at the start.” german films quarterly focus on digital cinema 4 · 2005 5 “They are not only wanting to see how reliable the technology is, but also how the price structure for the tickets changes. Moreover, this discussion comes at a point where the readiness to make investments on this scale is not so big given the current problems in the cinema sector in Germany,” Kramer says. Moreover, he believes that the discussion in Germany about digital cinema “has been undertaken without making any distinction between D-Cinema and E-Cinema, i.e. everything under 2K such as the areas of advertising and marketing and alternative content where I would also include the [CinemaNet Europe network’s] Delicatessen pro- gram. A question we have to address is: are we going to stay on the Eva Matlok (photo courtesy of Kino) AG level of E-Cinema here in Germany and Europe or will we manage to become partners in the DCI standard? There is also the issue of who has their finger on the button for sending films into the cinemas; the programming of films must not be allowed to be taken out of our hands and, moreover, there still isn’t any convincing business model yet for Europe.” A report on the impact of digital technologies published by London’s At the same time, many of the respondents “did not expect the sup- Metropolitan Film School at the end of September noted that for ply chain to change for exhibitors. They believed that their main exhibitors “digitially delivered content gives venues more flexibility, source of films would still be through distributors rather than sourcing control and choice. It follows that a film can be shown in irregular films directly from producers or the filmmakers themselves.” intervals according to audience response or seasonal appropriateness, since each cinema would have its own copy – there is no conflict be- CHANCES FOR THE ARTHOUSE MARKET tween a cinema wanting to holdover a print vs.