BEDWAYS A film by RP Kahl Synopsis Oneliner A huge, run-down apartment in Berlin Mitte. Two women and a man, rehearsals for a movie about love and sex, that will never be shot. Acting and reality mingle into a dangerous melange. Berlin is the shelter, love is impossible, flesh is the law. Short Director Nina Bader wants to shoot a film about love and sex and invites her actor-friends Hans and Marie for screen tests for a couple of days. For Nina love is not necessarily a matter of emotion - she is rather looking for an authentic depiction of sex. The intimate collaboration turns into experiments with film, love and bodies and finally has an impact on the private relationships between the three of them. It seems that the boundaries between acting and reality begin to disappear. Long A dilapidated, practically empty apartment in the Berlin district of ‘Mitte’. This is where Nina and two young actors named Hans and Marie have come together to leave behind the winter cold for a few days and do some screen tests for a film. Nina is a searcher; she wants her film to make feelings visible and intends to portray love by showing real sex. But the more blurred the borders between fiction and reality become, the less Nina seems inclined to make the film at all. Hans, who knows Nina from a brief encounter a long time ago, senses that she is searching for something else. Nonetheless, he and Marie both agree to go along with the play-acting. So far, each is convinced that they are pulling the strings. But Nina’s strategies of seduction weave an ever-tightening web around her protagonists. Nina’s credo that they should not play themselves or anyone else soon becomes a trap for Hans and Marie. No wonder that it becomes almost impossible to decipher where the acting ends and reality begins. The further Nina sets off down a path to an unknown destination, the more the actors shield themselves from each other and keep their feelings to themselves. Their longing for the outside world is a palpable force, but each attempt to open up to each other ends in an emotional blow below the belt. Without a script, communication becomes balancing act; coolness and distance would seem to be the only adequate means of protection. In this world, failure can only lead to a bittersweet happy ending. Cast Nina Miriam Mayet Marie Lana Cooper Hans Matthias Faust and Laura Tonke (Baader, Wintersleepers) Arno Frisch (Funny Games) Crew Writer/Director RP Kahl DP Fabian Knecht Costumes Gina Krauss Set Design Julia Laube Make Up Julia Hauer 1 AD Viviana Kammel Angelo Wemmje Editor Stephanie Kloss Sound Design Matz Müller Mix Matthias Schwab Produced by RP Kahl, Torsten Neumann Independent Partners Film and Christoph Thoke Mogador Film Associate Prod Angela Gläser Group.IE Music Sissimetall (Liveconcert), Die Haut feat. Blixa Bargeld, Chateau Laut, Kim Peers, Brokof, B.O.I, Francis Bacon, Hong Dong Music, Chicho Titelsong„Flesh is the Law“ by MyPark Credit Block INDEPENDENT PARTNERS FILM and MOGADOR FILM BEDWAYS written and directed by RP KAHL starring MIRIAM MAYET LANA COOPER MATTHIAS FAUST and LAURA TONKE ARNO FRISCH Music SISSIMETALL Titel Song „FLESH IS THE LAW“ MYPARK Director of Photographie FABIAN KNECHT Costumes GINA KRAUSS Production Design JULIA LAUBE Editor STEPHANIE KLOSS Sound Design MATZ MÜLLER Sound Mix MATTHIAS SCHWAB produced by RP KAHL TORSTEN NEUMANN CHRISTOPH THOKE Bedways Germany 2010. HDcam. 35mm. 79Min. Colour. Dolby E. Stereo 2.0 German. English subtitles. Screenings Berlinale – International Film Festival Berlin (2010 – Closing Film „Perspective German Cinema“ – World Premiere) Achtung Berlin Film Festival (2010 – Competition „New Berlin Film Award“) Moscow International Film Festival (2010 – Opening Film Competition „Perspectives“ – International Premiere) Ourense International Film Festival (2010 – Section „In the limits of the permitted“ – Spanish premiere) Raindance Film Festival (2010 – Official Selection – UK premiere) PornFilmFestival Berlin (2010 – Feature Film Competition) Clair-Obscur Filmfestival Basel (2010 – Tribute RP Kahl – Swiss premiere) German theatrical release: June 03, 2010 by Reverse Angel Pictures World sales: Jinga Films Ltd., London/ UK Contact Independent Partners Film. Bahnhofstr. 15. 26122 Oldenburg. Germany Office Berlin. Gipsstr. 23b. 10119 Berlin. Germany Phone +49.30.2831822. Fax +49.30.23455735. Mail [email protected]. Homepage www.indie-spirit.de Filmhomepage www.bedways.de English version www.bedways-berlin.de Personal Info RP Kahl RP Kahl was born in 1970 and studied Acting at the Ernst Busch School of Dramatic Art in Berlin/Rostock. He then founded the production company Erdbeermundfilm and made his first short Ausgespielt (1995). In 1997, he produced and starred in the award winning Silvester Countdown (Munich, San Sebastian, Toronto, Karlovy Vary) directed by Oskar Roehler. Angel Express was in 1998 his feature debut as a director, he also produced the film together with Luggi Waldleitner and wrote the script. RP Kahl then produced (and directed episodes of) the project 99euro-films (2001, Berlinale, Opening Film Perspective German Cinema), followed by Europe - 99euro-films 2 (2003, Locarno), and the documentary Sunday Girls („Maedchen am Sonntag“, 2005, Hessian Film Award for best Upcoming Director), part three of the 99euro-films series. In 2009/10 he produced, wrote and directed his second feature film Bedways. Filmographie RP Kahl Feature Films 1997 SILVESTER COUNTDOWN Director: Oskar Roehler Producer 1998 ANGEL EXPRESS 2001 99EURO-FILMS Director: various Producer 2003 EUROPE - 99EURO-FILMS 2 Director: various Producer 2005 MÄDCHEN AM SONNTAG (SUNDAY GIRLS) Documentary 2008 (1996) A GUN FOR JENNIFER Director: Todd Morris Rebuilt Version, Associate Producer 2010 BEDWAYS Shorts 1995 AUSGESPIELT 2001 ICH SCHWÖRE... (99euro-films) 2002 FLUG UA 093 2002 BITTE LAUT MITLESEN! 2003 TRANS EUROPA EXPRESS (Europe – 99euro-films 2) 2004 OLDENBURG OVERDRIVE 2005 WHITE WEDDING 2006 NUDE WOMEN 2006 MÄDCHEN IM PARK Reviews Selected Reviews MOSCOW INT FILM FESTIVAL „MIFF also seems to take great delight in presenting films that might be considered risqué even on the seen-it-all festival circuit. One such film – German director RP Kahl’s ‘Bedways’ – both delighted and divided the audience at its debut screening at the festival.“ (INDIEWIRE, July 2, 2010) „Authors rest responsibility for the three heroes playing their erotic ’funny games’ upon cinema with its voyeurism, where it is already hard to understand where simple ’looking’ ends and starts ’peeping’. This idea is arranged by Kahl with ultimatism (just as his protagonist Nina does in film) – with steel shine of digital image and aggressive soundtrack … There’s also an extremely ultimate final scene, where Nina stays alone with a potential viewer – it is notable that it is also a scene of a passionate masturbation. And well, maybe it’s not the most obvious way to speak to the audience, but we need to admit that it is extremely clear and straightforward.“ (MIFF DAILY 1/2010) Selected Reviews GERMAN THEATRICAL RELEASE “Go, libido, go! Hardcore drama, hardcore images: ‘Bedways’, a production with one hundred percent independent financing, tells the story of a film shoot in which the dividing lines between acted and real sex are blurred in a dangerous way. A cinematic experiment on itself – and the most exciting film from Berlin for a long time. As a result, we got a film that tells us about watching and lust in a self-scourging, erotic and stirring way for which almost only French productions or those of the radical Italo-American filmmaker Abel Ferrara are known.“ (SPIEGEL ONLINE, June 3, 2010) “Rolf Peter Kahl is one of the few truly independent German cinema narrators, there are not many like him who spot the erotic sparkling in everyday life. This Berlin studio-theatre play about a couple of actors who rehearse for a romantic film with real sex scenes, takes place at a crossroads that is hardly used. One road is that of Klaus Lemke, the other one that of Jacques Rivette.“ (FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU, June 2, 2010) “If there existed something like an underground cinema in Germany today, that is subversive films which back in the old days were screened as ‘midnight movies’, then ‘Bedways’ would be one of them. Now and then close to a psycho thriller, director RP Kahl, who also works as actor, develops with superior ease the descent into a dark paradise of love and lust.“ (FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG, June 5, 2010) “In this respect ‘Bedways’ is not only one of the most consistent and thought-out German films about sex and the eroticism of the camera’s view. It is also a declaration of love to the manic outlaws and uncompromising filmic auteurs who for the past 40 years have been attacking European cinema from its sidelines, occasionally even revolutionizing it… Kahl risks everything too. His portrait of a female filmmaker who finally can only find the authenticity and understanding she is striving for in her own lust, leaves behind all paths of German cinema, the well- trodden as much as the newer ones, so that probably only a few will want to follow him for now. But that is the price one has to pay, if one demands non-conformist, provoking art.“ (FILM-ZEIT, June 2010) “Thus ‘Bedways’ is not an example of German cinema tradition but is rather indebted to the European neighbours and basically committed to a radical auteur approach: It reminds one of Catherine Breillat’s ‘Sex is Comedy’ (2002) – the impossibility of performing true intimacy; or Abel Ferrara’s ‘Snake Eyes’ (1993), the fatal and suicidal mingling of private and professional passions; or even Andrzej Zulawski’s ‘Nachtblende’ (1975) about the longing for an impossible love in a world of art and artificiality. All these films circle around sex in front and behind the big screen, around the ambition of filmmakers to fathom the big mystery in sound and image.“ (SPLATTING IMAGE, NR.