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Film guru Sarah Ward takes a closer look at German entertainment screening in Australia. Here you'll find everything from reviews and interviews, to festival previews. #KinoInOz
©3 Days in Quiberon When the 2018 German Film Awards were held in August, one movie proved an unlikely three-time winner. Starring Cate Blanchett in multiple roles, and presented as both an art gallery installation and a film, Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto collected the ceremony’s trophies for best production design, costumes and makeup.
©Blue Velvet Revisited via the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Deployed for decades to describe the dreamlike quality of David Lynch’s work, ‘Lynchian’ is now officially a word. Just this month, it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary along with more than 100 other film-related terms and phrases, such as Kubrickian, Spielbergian and Tarantinoesque.
© Backlot Films Acclaimed German filmmaker Wim Wenders two most recent efforts — 2017 drama ‘Submergence’ and 2018 documentary ‘Pope Francis: A Man of His Word’ don’t represent the director’s best work, and ostensibly, the pair couldn’t seem more dissimilar.
© The Field Guide to Evil In ‘The Kindler and the Virgin’, one of ‘The Field Guide to Evil’s eight portentous yet perceptive short films, a man is promised wisdom and glory. A white-clad woman accosts him in a snowy pass, and whispers words he didn’t know he wanted to hear: if he consumes three hearts of the freshly deceased, he’ll gain untold knowledge and power.
© MIFF Vast in size but specific in purpose, essential to many but visited fleetingly by most, airports overflow with juxtapositions. But as Karim Aïnouz’s documentary ‘Central Airport THF’ explores, the former Berlin airport now serves vastly different purposes for the two different groups that frequent its grounds.
© Victory Day With ‘Victory Day’, Sergei Loznitsa confirms an idea that his filmography has always favoured: that the art of watching is indeed an art. As with Austerlitz before it, the Berlin-based Ukrainian director’s latest documentary peers at a place brimming with history and watches the people who walk across the site, turning their reactions into an observational portrait of humanity processing the past.
© Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse Like much that unsettles, ‘Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse’ commences with a distinctive sensation. As the camera looks down on a snowy expanse, and at the woman and child slowly making their way across it, the vastness of the image — the all-encompassing nature of the icy ground, and the possibility that its sheet of menacing cold could stretch on forever — strikes a noticeably disquieting chord.
© Melbourne International Film Festival For its 67th year, the Melbourne International Film Festival is set to take over the city’s cinemas with a diverse lineup of new and retrospective features, shorts, documentaries and virtual reality pieces. Among the 393-title 2018 program, German filmmaking boasts a link to 24 films; however MIFF’s lineup branches beyond the expected names and movies.
© Netflix The woods outside of Winden are full of secrets. The houses inside of the town, the nuclear power plant sitting on its borders and the labyrinthine caves beneath it, too. In Netflix’s first German-language original series ‘Dark’, mystery blankets the air as thick as the persistent fog; however this is a place haunted by more than everyday intrigue.
© Revelation Perth International Film Festival With ‘Parallel Planes’ and ‘The Cleaners’, Nicole Wegner, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck typify a growing trend — of German documentarians finding their subjects abroad. Film critic Sarah Ward takes a closer look at the two documentaries screening at the 2018 Revelation Perth International Film Festival.
© RWFF Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s iconic film ‘The Marriage of Maria Braun’ is a feature of desire and futility, of resourcefulness and inevitability, and of honestly assessing a plethora of contradictions on a human and societal level. It screens as part of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective at the QAGOMA in Brisbane.
© The Wizard of Babylon The largest retrospective on German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder ever held in Australia runs at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane until July 4, 2018. For ‘Kino in Oz’, film critic Sarah Ward talked with Australian Cinémathèque associate curator Rosie Hays about this rare chance to delve into the auteur’s works, influence and importance.
© Sydney Film Festival ‘In the Aisles’ isn’t an account of a sweeping romance. Rather, with writer-director Thomas Stuber adapting Clemens Meyer’s short story of the same name with the author, the film settles into the ebbs and flows of a space that offers its own forms of solace, and of a relationship that does the same.
© Sydney Film Festival A picture might be worth a thousand words, but a thousand photographs still can’t tell a person’s entire story. For Romy Schneider, a lifetime of film roles and paparazzi shots certainly couldn’t capture the Austrian-born star’s complexity, or convey the complicated woman behind the public facade. But '3 Days in Quiberon' convincingly takes the viewer beyond the surface of Schneider’s stardom and her final attempt to control it.
© Wings of Desire Turning loneliness into lyrical inner monologues, 'Wings of Desire' might be the most poetic film ever made. Each instance of hurt, longing and unhappiness becomes a tender cry in a city brimming with sorrow; indeed, the Berliner voices would echo like a chorus were they to ever release their thoughts both aloud and in tandem.
Detail © German Film Festival As part of the ‘Kino for Kids’ program six German-language features are making their Australian premieres at the 2018 German Film Festival. Eager cinephiles-in-waiting can explore a range of films. For ‘Kino in Oz’ Sarah Ward picks her three to look out for.
© The Silent Revolution When a class of high schoolers choose to make a statement by not making a statement in writer/director Lars Kraume's ‘The Silent Revolution’, their aghast elders prove verbose in response.
© Sydney Film Festival Good things come in small packages at the 2018 Sydney Film Festival, at least where German cinema is involved. While the festival’s full lineup features 326 films from 65 countries across a twelve-day period from June 6 to 17, it’s a case of quality over quantity when it comes to 'Deutsch' filmmaking. Indeed, amidst SFF’s eight German features and documentaries resides some of the country’s top talents.
© Road to Montauk Nostalgia is modern-day cinema’s hottest commodity; if a movie isn’t capitalising upon it courtesy of filmmaking’s recurrent fondness for sequels, remakes, reboots and the like, then it’s selling it in various guises. Somewhat surprisingly, 'Road to Montauk' falls into both categories — one in a standard fashion, the other not so.
© Human Flow Making the trip from his Berlin studio to the Sydney Biennale to unveil his latest work, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei once again contemplates a familiar topic: the plight of the millions considered displaced, fleeing horrific circumstances in their homeland, and trying to cross international borders — and waters — in search of a brighter future.
© Watu Wote. For her graduation project ‘Watu Wote: All of Us’ at the Hamburg Media School, director Katja Benrath ensures what could’ve been a bleak tale instead shines with resilience and the spirit of defiance.
© The Lives of Others Every year, the announcement of a fresh batch of Academy Award nominees sparks a fresh round of shock and surprise. Film critic Sarah Ward looks at the coveted Oscars in regard to the German contenders over the years. A deep-dive into screenland.
© Netflix Space may be infinite, but the tales filmmakers keep setting within its inky expanse all seem to leap from a small pool of scenarios. ‘The Cloverfield Paradox’ is a science-fiction film made for the big screen with a mid-tier budget that has quietly been released on Netflix. For Kino in Oz, Sarah Ward analyses what viewers can expect.
© Gerhard Richter - Painting To enter ‘Gerhard Richter: The Life of Images’ at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art is to have strips of his paintings dance in front of your eyes. That’s not simply a creative explanation of the response that springs within the viewer, as they peer upon walls adorned with the German artist’s work. Rather, given that 'Strip (927-9)’ greets visitors at the entrance to the exhibition, it’s an accurate description. Taking in the piece in all of its glossy glory, attendees can expect its stripes to appear to pulsate and move.
