MoMA PRESENTS 28TH ANNUAL SURVEY OF CONTEMPORARY GERMAN CINEMA Strength and Variety of New German Cinema Complements Special Program Celebrating Filmmaking in the German Capital Over Past 10 Years Kino! 2007 November 1–14, 2007 The Roy and Niuta Titus 2 Theater NEW YORK, October 17, 2007—The Museum of Modern Art presents Kino! 2007, its 28th annual survey of recent German cinema. The exhibition of 28 narrative and documentary films, both features and shorts, is presented November 1–14, 2007, in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters. In addition to continuing its focus on contemporary German cinema, this year’s presentation includes a series of films from the past 10 years entitled Kino! Berlin, part of Berlin in Lights, a New York-based celebration of the arts in Germany’s capital city, organized by Carnegie Hall. The films in Kino! Berlin are all set in Berlin and range from documentaries (the Hissen Brothers’ Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Wrapped Reichstag, 1996), to intense dramas such as Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s recent Oscar-winning The Lives of Others (2005). Kino! 2007 is organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media; in collaboration with German Films Service + Marketing (Munich) and its New York representative Oliver Mahrdt. Among the recently produced films in Kino! 2007 are the directorial debut of Hanna Schygulla—in the short film Hanna Hannah (2006), where the celebrated actress Schygulla, born into the Third Reich during World War II, muses on why her mother gave her a Jewish name; Igor Reitzmann’s documentary A Father’s Music (2006), which examines the double life of his father, the conductor Otmar Suitner; and Birgit Moeller’s debut feature Valerie (2006), set in a luxury hotel. (Moeller is the subject of the November 5th Modern Mondays, where she will introduce and discuss her film.) Other works in this year’s edition are by such Kino! veterans as Robert Fischer and Ulrike Ottinger, whose subjects are named in their films’ titles: respectively Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin (2006) and Prater (2007), a documentary portrait of Vienna’s amusement park, the oldest such park in the world; Christian Petzold, whose award-winning Yella (2007) is a gripping melodrama; Maria Speth, whose Madonnas (2007) presents a provocative portrait of a young woman; and Robert Thalheim, whose opening-night film And Along Come Tourists (2007) is about a young German sent to do civic service at the Auschwitz memorial in Poland. Complementing these works is Kino! Berlin, a selection of films set in Berlin from the past 10 years that celebrate the return of the city as a filmmaking capital. These include Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) and Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998), and of particular interest are Andreas Dresen’s well-regarded comic-drama Night Shapes (1998), which has yet to be distributed in the U.S., and the American premiere of Berlin—Pictures of a City (1998), Manfred Wilhelms’s wordless documentary about Berlin’s fourth architectural renaissance. Kino! 2007 is presented with the support of the Goethe Institut, New York, the assistance of Christian Dorsch, Managing Director, and Nicole Kaufmann, Project Coordinator, German Films; and the participating filmmakers, producers, and distributors. Images are available at www.moma.org/press No. 96 Press Contact: Paul Power, (212) 708-9847, or [email protected] For downloadable images, please visit www.moma.org/press Please contact me for user name and password. Public Information: The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019 Hours: Wednesday through Monday: 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday: 10:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m. Closed Tuesday Museum Adm: $20 adults; $16 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $12 full-time students with current I.D. Free, members and children 16 and under. (Includes admittance to Museum galleries and film programs) Target Free Friday Nights 4:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. Film Adm: $10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $6 full-time students with current I.D. (For admittance to film programs only) Subway: E or V train to Fifth Avenue/53rd Street Bus: On Fifth Avenue, take the M1, M2, M3, M4, or M5 to 53rd Street. On Sixth Avenue, take the M5, M6, or M7 to 53rd Street. Or take the M57 and M50 crosstown buses on 57th and 50th Streets. The public may call (212) 708-9400 for detailed Museum information. Visit us at www.moma.org KINO! 2007 SCREENING SCHEDULE [All films are from Germany and in German, with English subtitles, except where noted. *Asterisks denote Kino! Berlin films.] Thursday, November 1 7:00 Am Ende kommen Touristen (And Along Come Tourists). 2007. Written and directed by Robert Thalheim. With Alexander Fehling, Ryszard Ronczewski, Barbara Wysocka. Thalheim’s moving second feature (his first, Netto, screened at MoMA last year) takes place in Oswiecim, the Polish city where Auschwitz is located. In this tale of cultural adaptation, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the building of an unlikely relationship, a young German completing his civil service is assigned to care for an unpleasant elderly man—a Holocaust survivor who repairs the suitcases of murdered Jews for the Auschwitz museum and who refuses to quit the memorial site. In German, Polish, English; English subtitles. 85 min. (Introduced by Thalheim.) Friday, November 2 6:15 Prater. 2007. Germany/Austria. Written, directed, and photographed by Ulrike Ottinger. With Veruschka, Peter Fitz, Elfriede Jelinek. For 35 years Ulrike Ottinger has been at the vanguard of new German cinema. Her most recent feature, an enchanting mixture of documentary and “illusion,” is a portrait of the oldest amusement park in the world, the Prater, whose world fame and historical position give extraterritorial status to this Viennese landmark. Called a “desiremachine,” the Prater (from the Latin partum, or meadow—it used to be the Royal hunting grounds) is the colorful midway for dreamers, carnival workers, outcasts, and anyone seeking a little escape. 104 min. 8:30 Next Generation. 2006–07. A selection of 13 short films from 12 German film schools encompassing narrative, animated, and documentary cinema: Apple on a Tree, directed by Astrid Rieger, Zeljko Vidovic Doppelzimmer, directed by Erim Giresunlu); Infinite Justice, directed by Karl Tebbe Die gute Lage, directed by Nancy Brandt Whirr, directed by Timo Katz L.H.O., directed by Jan Zabeil, Kristof Kannegiesser Wunderlich Privat, directed by Aline Chukwuedo Sproessling, directed by Anne Beymann Truck Stop Grill, directed by Daniel Seideneder Fair Trade, directed by Michael Dreher Analog Brother, directed by Falik Peplinski Video 3000, directed by Joerg Edelmann, Joern Grosshans, Jochen Haussecker, Marc Schliess Outsourcing, directed by Markus Dietrich Program 95 min. Saturday, November 3 2:00 *Dem deutschen Volke (Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Wrapped Reichstag). 1996. Written and directed by Wolfram Hissen, Jörg Daniel Hissen. In 1995, Christo and Jeanne-Claude realized their decades-old dream of covering the Berlin Reichstag in fabric. Often described as the pair’s most ambitious project, the wrapped Reichstag is presented from every angle and in every light in this witty chronicle of a remarkable technical feat. In English, German; English subtitles. 98 min. 5:00 *Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin—Von der Schoenhauser Allee nach Hollywood (Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin—From Schoenhauser Allee to Hollywood). 2006. Written and directed by Robert Fischer. With Nicola Lubitsch, Tom Tykwer, Wolfgang Becker, Evy Bettelheim-Bentley. Fischer, a former curator of the Munich Film Museum who makes documentaries about cinema, tells the story of how a young son of a Jewish tailor in Berlin joined the theater at 19, began performing in film comedies at 21, and made his first film a year later in 1914. By 1918 Ernst Lubitsch had become one of Germany’s most important filmmakers, a position he maintained until he left for Hollywood in 1922. Rare film clips, photographs, and newsreel footage of Lubitsch and the city of Berlin, along with interviews with Lubitsch’s daughter, current German comedy directors, and noted film historians, trace the genesis of the “Lubitsch Touch” and fashion a cultural narrative about a man and his metropolis. In German, English; English subtitles. 110 min. 8:00 Madonnen (Madonnas). 2007. Germany/Switzerland/Belgium. Written and directed by Maria Speth. With Sandra Hueller, Luisa Sappelt, Coleman Orlando Swinton. Rita, a young woman wanted by the police, flees to Belgium to find her natural father. But all is not what it seems. Madonnas is an intense character study of a mother who, according to the filmmaker, “is very different from the one symbolized by the statue of the Mother of God with a child on her arm…I wanted to set the figure of Rita in a relationship of tension to this.” Speth’s second feature (her first, The Days Between, was also screened at MoMA) charts the behavior of a woman who violates the expectations of motherhood, presenting a provocative figure that is vulnerable, edgy, and quite unlike any other in contemporary cinema. In German, French, English; English subtitles. 125 min. Sunday November 4 2:00 Am Ende kommen Touristen (And Along Come Tourists). Thursday, November 1, 7:00. 4:30 Prater. See Friday, November 2, 6:15. Monday, November 5 5:00 Yella. 2007. Written and directed by Christian Petzold. With Nina Hoss, David Striesow, Barbara Auer. Petzold, one of the major figures in new German cinema, is a frequent contributor to Kino! (The State I Am In [2000], Wolfsburg [2002], Ghosts [2005]). Hoss won the Best Actress Award at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival for Yella, which features a determined woman who escapes from an abusive marriage into a position of power.