German Cinema 2009 – A Year in Review
January 6, 2010BIG SCENES – BIG CINEMA
THE INTERNATIONAL – Showdown at the Guggenheim in New York
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS – Christoph Waltz is charm and evil incarnate as a Nazi SS-officer
JOHN RABE – How the Swastika saved hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives.
CRISIS-PROOF CINEMA
Crisis? What Crisis? German movie ticket sales jumped 13.6% in 2009 for an 800 million Euro box office. German films accounted for a third of tickets sold, with hits VICKY THE VIKING and MEN IN THE CITY leading the way.
GUILT AND SIN
THE READER und THE WHITE RIBBON are two German films that were showered with awards at international festivals and made an impact on the international market. Both centre on the very German theme of guilt. In THE WHITE RIBBON, which just won the top prize at the European Film Awards, director Michael Haneke examines a strict protestant village in Germany, 1913, to see how totalitarian structures are built up on the everyday authority of church, work and family.
In THE READER, the subject is repressing guilt and an impossible love between a schoolboy (David Kross) and a former concentration camp guard (Kate Winslet).
HEROINES OF FAITH
Two historic figures in the Catholic Church – one the church made a saint, the other it denies ever existed: Hildegard von Bingen and Johanna von Ingelheim. Both reborn on the big screen in VISION – THE LIFE OF HILDEGARD VON BINGEN and POPE JOAN.