The IFI German Film Festival offers audiences a broad selection of recent German cinema, showcasing major new features and documentaries, in what has been a great year for German language cinema, most notably the internationally acclaimed and Palme d’Or winning The White Ribbon. This year’s line-up continues Germany’s artistic exploration of the tumultuous history of the 20th Century; more resonant than ever in light of the recent anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Inevitably stories relating to German partition are very much in evidence; the offbeat comic drama Peaceful Times features a defector to the West pining for the security of East Berlin; The Miracle of Leipzig traces the routes of the fall of the Wall to religious protests in Leipzig; and Germany 09 brings together thirteen of the country’s best filmmakers in a series of shorts reflecting on the twenty years since reunification.
A particularly strong documentary thread this year includes German Souls – a glimpse in to a secretive sect in Chile led by ex-Nazi Paul Schafer; award-winning Alias that tells the story of a German discovering his secret Lebanese heritage; and Bastion of Sin which looks at an amateur all-Turkish cast of women in a modern production of Medea., and the aforementioned The Miracle of Leipzig which presents eyewitnesses from both sides of the conflict in the lead up to the fall of the Wall.
WWII casts an inescapable shadow across German cinema and many of the country’s best and most provocative films confront this legacy head on. This year features three major biopics of unrecognised or ambivalent figures of the period; John Rabe tells the story of a reluctant German hero who saved thousands of lives in Japanese-occupied China, Hilde follows the legendary and controversial chanteuse Hildegard Knef, while Berlin ’36 tells the extraordinary story of the Jewish high-jumper Gretel Bergmann in the run up to the 1936 Olympics. Bergmann, a talented Jewish athlete, was manipulated by the Nazis to train for the Olympics only to be replaced by a cross-dressing male athlete. The film assumes additional resonance in the wake of the controversy over the gender of the South African gold medal winner at this year’s World Athletic Championships held in the very same stadium as the 1936 Olympics.
Effi Briest, Theodor Fontane’s classic heroine (every bit as intriguing as Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary), is tackled by Hermine Huntgeburth in sumptuous 19th century period style. The film doesn’t shy away from some explicit erotic scenes but allows the adulterous teenager an unexpected escape denied her in the original and Fassbinder’s famous but austere 1974 adaptation.
This year’s IFI German Film Festival is presented by the IFI in association with the Goethe-Institut Irland and German Films Services + Marketing.
Tickets and the full festival programme will be available online at www.ifi.ie, by phone on 01 679 3477 and in person through the IFI Box Office from Tuesday 24th November.
IFI GERMAN FILM FESTIVAL CALENDAR
BERLIN 36 - 6.30pm DEC 3
HILDE - 6.00pm DEC 4
THE CROCODILES - 1.30pm DEC 5
GERMANY 09 - 6.00pm DEC 5
GERMAN SOULS - 2.00pm DEC 6
LONG SHADOWS - 4.30pm DEC 6
STORM - 6.30pm DEC 6
ALIAS - 5.15pm DEC 7
BASTION OF SIN – 7.00pm DEC 8
PEACEFUL TIMES 6.40pm DEC 9
A WOMAN IN BERLIN 6.00pm DEC 10
GERDA’S SILENCE 6.45pm DEC 11
THE MIRACLE OF LEIPZIG 4.30pm DEC 12
EFFI BRIEST 6.30pm DEC 12
LULU & JIMI 4.00pm DEC 13
JOHN RABE 6.10pm DEC 13
