http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=7066
The Goethe Institute compiles a unique selection of German films for
its Carte Blanche program
February 14th, 2008
By Whitney Mallett
The McGill Daily
"There are German songs that can make a stranger to the language
cry." – Mark Twain
"Since my first trip to Saxony and Thuringia in 2000, I gained access
to a part of myself that I had known only half before," says
Quebecois journalist and literary critic Stéphane Lépine. "In fact, I
have the impression that I come back to Dresden like a man who is
revisiting the country of his childhood."
Carte Blanche is a ten-film series selected by Lépine for the Goethe
Institut's winter program. He chose the films based on their lasting
effects on him, decades after seeing them for the first time. Relying
solely on his memories in selecting the films, Lépine refrained from
viewing them before they were screened publicly.
Most of the films are from the period of New German Cinema in the
late 1960s to the 1980s, a genre categorized in part by low budgets
and influence from the French New Wave. All of the films deal with
the nation's complex history and equally complex identity.
A highlight will be the Canadian premiere of the only contemporary
film in the series, Nach Dresden. Showing at the end of the month,
the film profiles a man's return to Dredsen 70 years after escaping
the Holocaust. Also showing this month are Malina, showcasing the
inner struggle of a woman dealing with incest in post-Nazi Germany,
and Tarot, an adaptation of Goethe's Elective Affinities. The series
will finish in March with Reiner Fassbinder's 12 hour magnum opus
Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Germany in Autumn (1978) is a startlingly beautiful film that has
already been screened in the series. The film was made in response to
political terrorism spearheaded by the Red Army Faction (RAF), a
communist group, in August 1977. The collaborative effort – nine
directors participated in the project – is a collection of scenes
showing the nation's climate following the incident: documentary
coverage of funerals, interviews, and fictive tableaux portray the
sense of paranoia and the desire for peace. In one of the more
powerful segments, co-director Fassbinder stands naked before the
camera with his male lover and mother, discussing the horrific events.
The film assumes an informed audience. Its purpose is to comment on
the events following RAF terrorism, not to explain their
circumstances. For one unfamiliar with the incident, the film is at
times hard to follow, but its engagement and sense of urgency are not
lost due to the occasional lack of context.
The film addresses the complications inherent in dealing with acts of
political terrorism; for instance, footage of victims is juxtaposed
with interviews with imprisoned RAF members. In the wake of so much
violence and political unrest, the film grapples with the difficulty
of taking a coherent stance on how the government's should have dealt
with the crisis. By the end of the film, it becomes clear that
despite the directors' personal biases, the situation could and
should have been handled with fewer casualties. These complexities
also speak to Germany's struggle with national identity: the film
reminds the viewer of the country's particularly violent past, with
clips depicting the wartime atrocities of the 20th century. "I was, I
am, I will be again." The film leaves us with the RAF's final
statement, but the speaker is ambiguous – either the terrorist group
or Germany itself.
Also shown was The Chronicles of Anna Magdalena Bach, a movie as much
about Bach's life as it is about West Germany in the 1960s. A Marxist
film, it focuses on the subject and is deliberately devoid of any
overarching themes. The film is stark, with almost no action, and
relies solely on Bach's music and monotone readings of Anna Magdalena
and Bach's correspondence. The final scene recalls Bach's death
without emotion or reaction. Although frightfully dull, the film
demonstrates the revived interest in Marxism during the 1950s and
1960s in West Germany.
Together, these films portray the often-overlooked sense of political
dissatisfaction that occurred in West Germany. The ideological
warfare between East and West Germany remains a vital part of the
country's history. These films acknowledge and discuss the readily
ignored Communist and Marxist movements that arose in West Germany
during the Cold War.
Following the past hundred years of political turmoil in Germany, the
nation's cinema is faced with the question of what it means to be
German. The films in Goethe's Carte Blanche series provide
innovative, thought provoking responses to these question.
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For more information on the Carte Blance film line-up visit
goethe.de/ins/ca/mon/enindex.htm.
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