Berlin & Beyond 2012 in San Francisco

For those of you in the San Francisco Bay Area, the 17th annual Berlin & Beyond Film Festival began this evening with an opening night gala of Christian Petzold's Barbara, which took home the Silver Bear for Best Director at this year's Berlinale, in addition to being selected as the official 2012 German submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. Presented by the Goethe Institut, the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival showcases the latest in German, Swiss, and Austrian cinema, as well as German-language films from the rest of the world in the case of Aleksandr Sokurov's version of the oft-told and -filmed legend of Faust, which screens Friday, September 28th, at 9pm at the Castro Theatre.

The latest film from director Veit Helmer (Tuvalu, Absurdistan), Baikonur will screen as the festival's centerpiece selection on Saturday, September 29th, at the Castro Theatre, and the festival closes on Thursday, October 4th, with Marten Persiel's East German skater documentary This Ain't California.

Other notable films at this year's festival include Achim von Borries' (Love in Thoughts) WWII drama, 4 Days in May (4 Tage im Mai); Dagmar Schultz's documentary about lesbian poet Audre Lorde, entitled Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992; Maggie Peren's Color of the Ocean (Die Farbe des Ozeans), which played at last year's Toronto International Film Festival and stars Sabine Timoteo and Spanish actor Álex González; David Wnendt's tale of neo-Nazi teen girls, Combat Girls (Kriegerin); Christian Schwochow's backstage drama Cracks in the Shell (Die Unsichtbare), which won the Best Actress prize for Danish actress Stine Fischer Christensen at last year's Karlovy Vary International Film Festival; Anno Saul's The Door (Die Tür), starring another renowned Danish actor, Mads Mikkelsen; Hans-Christian Schmid's Home for the Weekend (Was bleibt), which played in competition to mixed reviews at this year's Berlinale; and Hendrik Handloegten's Summer Window (Fenster zum Sommer), with actors Nina Hoss and Lars Eidinger, who can be seen elsewhere at the festival in Barbara and Home for the Weekend, respectively.

Switzerland and Austria are both represented by three films each this year. The Swiss line-up includes two documentaries, Nicolas Steiner's Battle of the Queens (Kampf der Königinnen), which chronicles the traditional cow fights in the south of Switzerland, and Martin Witz's The Substance: Albert Hofmann's LSD, which traces the discovery of LSD in the early 1940s. The Swiss trio is rounded out with The Foster Boy (Der Verdingbub), a period drama from television-director Markus Imboden, starring Katja Riemann and newcomer Max Hubacher. This year's Austrian selection includes actor Karl Markovics' acclaimed directorial debut Breathing (Atmen), which premiered at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs at the Cannes Film Festival last year; Julian Pölsler's The Wall (Die Wand), starring Martina Gedeck and recipient of the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at this year's Berlinale; and Michael Glawogger's documentary about prostitution in Thailand, Bangladesh, and Mexico, Whores' Glory.

In addition to the contemporary films at this year's festival, there will be a tribute to Mario Adorf with four of the actor's films playing over the course of the week: Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel), Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Lola, Georg Tressler's Ship of the Dead (Das Totenschiff), and Lola Randl's The Rhino and the Dragonfly (Die Libelle und das Nashorn). Please visit the Berlin & Beyond Film Festival's official site for showtimes and any other information you might need.

Fassbinder's Elusive Sci-Fi Miniseries Welt am Draht on DVD in Germany!

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's three-and-a-half-hour-long mini-series Welt am Draht (World of Wires or World on a Wire in English), an adaptation of Daniel F. Galouye's Simulacron-3 (also adapted for the Hollywood dud The Thirteenth Floor), will finally crawl out of obscurity in Germany this coming February. It will screen at the 2010 Berlinale, fully resorted with the supervision of co-cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and a DVD release from Arthaus/Kinowelt will follow on 18 February in Germany. Welt am Draht stars Klaus Löwitsch, who would later work under Fassbinder in The Marriage of Maria Braun, Despair (another of RWF's elusive features) and alongside him in Shadow of Angels (again, rare); Günter Lamprecht, Gottfried John, Margit Carstensen, Ulli Lommel and Kurt Raab co-star, with Werner Schroeter, Peter Kern, Rudolf Waldemar Brem, Eddie Constantine and Ingrid Caven (in an uncredited role) in smaller roles. Unfortunately for those who don't speak German, the Arthaus disc will not contain English subtitles, so keep your fingers crossed that an English-friendly edition follows shortly afterward. More details about the DVD release (in German) can be found at Kinowelt's site.

The Decade List: Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes (2000)

Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes [Water Drops on Burning Rocks] - dir. François Ozon

Water Drops on Burning Rocks was the first of François Ozon's bountiful offerings in 2000, the year in which he presented the two best films of his career (I have yet to see Ricky, however). Adapting the film from an unpublished play written by a nineteen-year-old Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ozon mapped out his own career, in both his finer and weaker points. Unlike fellow second generation Douglas Sirk admirers like Todd Haynes or Pedro Almodóvar, Ozon's fascination with the melodrama could be attributed best to Fassbinder. While Haynes took a more direct approach, Ozon drew inspiration through the filtration of Sirk's legacy in Fassbinder, acknowledging his own (intended) similarities to the director with Water Drops on Burning Rocks and later Sous le sable, Le temps qui reste and Angel. The film, then, would showcase the talents of both artists before Ozon ventured on his own later in the year.

For Fassbinder, the play wonderfully embodies the sinister humor of his notable early works, like Katzelmacher and Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?, but it's The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant where the most similarities can be found. With all the action confined within the walls of a single apartment, the single set piece transforms into the carefully adorned fighting ring for the four characters. It could be suggested that the claustrophobic restriction of the set would be the catalyst for the uncoiling misery in Franz's (Malik Zidi) life in the same way Catherine Deneuve's apartment in Repulsion would trigger her own demons. However, the apartment better represents the incubation chamber of Franz's despair, being left alone for weeks while his older lover Léopold (Bernard Giraudeau) travels on business. The key to Franz's unhappiness, like Petra von Kant's, lies within him as he becomes unable to extinguish the fact that he's fallen in love with someone who (likely) doesn't love him; the walls just amplify the anguish. Also like Petra (Margit Carstensen), he finds the outlet for its release in other people, spitting malice in the face of his former fiancée Anna (Ludivine Sagnier) just as Petra would to her secretary Marelene (Irm Hermann). Anna, though, is hardly the innocent witness to Franz's transformation. Between the two films (Petra von Kant was released nine years after Fassbinder would have written Water Drops), the most noticeable difference can be seen in the reversal of roles between the two central pairs of lovers, pegging the older Léopold as the predator in contrast to the younger Karin (Hanna Schygulla), whose involvement with Petra suggests self-advancing manipulation.

For Ozon, traces of Water Drops on Burning Rocks can be found in almost all of his subsequent works. Divided into four acts, the film moves from the playfully sexy to the dreadfully bleak, though the path isn't as straightforward as one might assume. Water Drops on Burning Rocks doesn't descend into the austere with each passing act; in fact, it retains its borderline misanthropic humor even after things get hopeless for Franz and Véra (Anna Thomson), Léopold's former lover who had a sex change in order to rekindle the spark in their dying relationship. The moment where Léopold phones Franz's mother at the end of the film painfully recalls the final moments of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?; this coldness is shared by both of Franz's lovers, with Anna's line "Who's going to father my children now?" placing her on the same careless plane as Léopold.

In terms of characterization, Véra becomes the film's most tragic figure. Officially entering the film in the fourth act after showing up earlier at Léopold's door twice, she is subjected to Léopold's cruelty within her first steps into the apartment. Despite these initial signs of hostility from Léopold (he purposefully refers to Véra as an old "copaine" in order to correct himself with the masculine form of the word to insult her), she plays along with his game of sexual manipulation until it becomes clear that she's only being used to hurt Franz and to seduce Anna. For Franz, Véra's return gives him a glimpse of his own doomed future; however, he succumbs to the hopelessness before Véra even reveals her own inability to stop loving Léopold. Véra emerges as the tragic figure when the film lets her humanity surface. Unlike Franz, she didn't succumb to the unbearable mimicry that occurs in Franz during the third act. She retains the sad hope Franz holds in the second act, when his awareness of Léopold's nature is still balanced by attempts to reconcile his lover's terminal dissatisfaction. Thomson, who enjoyed a wave of popularity in France after the starring in Amos Kollek's Sue and Fiona, gives Véra the perfect amount of compassion and sorrow, which makes the film's final shot, in which the audience learns all they need to know about her future, ever so desolate.

Looking back at Water Drops on Burning Rocks, you can almost see Ozon's entire career up to now inside of it. Between the amazing fourth-act dance number to Tony Holiday's "Tanze Samba mit Mir" (8 femmes), the crippling aspects of a relationship gone sour (5x2), the knowing touches of melodrama (Le temps qui reste), the pop music cues of Françoise Hardy's version of "Träume" (Une robe d'été) and a character's inability to accept the end of a relationship (Sous le sable), all of his films appear to have stemmed from this one film. Although his body of work may vary as much in quality as it does thematically, the same can't be said for Water Drops on Burning Rocks.

With: Bernard Giraudeau, Malik Zidi, Ludivine Sagnier, Anna Thomson
Screenplay: François Ozon, based on play Tropfen auf heiße Steine by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cinematography: Jeanne Lapoirie
Country of Origin: France
US Distributor: Zeitgeist Films

Premiere: 13 February 2000 (Berlin International Film Festival)
US Premiere: June 2000 (New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival)

Awards: Teddy Award: Feature Film (Berlin); Best Feature Film (New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival)

List #1 for 2007

Here's my first list of the year. There'll be at least two more (best, worst) and maybe another (performances), but here are your best new-to-region-1-DVDs of 2007, in alphabetical order. I didn't have the time or patience to annotate the list, so please forgive (I've been catching up on The Wire, which is better than fucking sliced-bread. (Naturally, the Twin Peaks Gold Box would have made the cut, but I disqualified it as everything but the pilot was already available)

Army of Shadows [L'armée des ombres] - dir. Jean-Pierre Melville - Criterion. With Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret. France/Italy. 1969.

Berlin Alexanderplatz - dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder - Criterion. With Günter Lamprect, Karlheinz Braun, Hanna Schygulla, Brigitte Mira, Barbara Sukowa. West Germany. 1980.

The Films of Kenneth Anger: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 - dir. Kenneth Anger - Fantoma. Sets includes Fireworks, Puce Moment, Rabbit's Moon, Eaux d'artifice, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandos, Invocation of My Demon Brother, and Lucifer Rising. With Anger, Marianne Faithfull, Anais Nin. 1947-1972. USA.

Mala Noche - dir. Gus Van Sant - Criterion. With Tim Streeter, Doug Cooeyate. 1985. USA.

The Milky Way [La voie lactée] - dir. Luis Buñuel - Criterion. With Paul Frankeur, Laurent Terzieff, Michel Piccoli, Pierre Clémenti, Delphine Seyrig. 1969. France/West Germany/Italy.

Muriel [Muriel, ou Le temps d'un retour] - dir. Alain Resnais - Koch Lorber. With Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein, Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée. 1963. France/Italy.

Performance - dir. Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg - Warner. With Mick Jagger, James Fox, Anita Pallenberg. 1970. UK.

Sombre - dir. Philippe Grandrieux - Koch Lorber. With Marc Barbé, Elina Löwensohn. 1998. France.

Sweet Movie / WR: Mysteries of the Organism - dir. Dusan Makavejev - Criterion. With Carole Laure, Pierre Clémenti, Anna Prucnal / With Milena Dravic, Ivica Vidovic, Jackie Curtis. 1974/1971. France/Canada/West Germany / Yugoslavia/West Germany.

Viva Pedro: The Pedro Almodóvar Collection - dir. Pedro Almodóvar - Sony Pictures. Set includes: Bad Education, All About My Mother, Talk to Her, The Flower of My Secret, Live Flesh, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, as well as new-to-DVD titles Law of Desire and Matador. With Carmen Maura, Penélope Cruz, Marisa Paredes, Antonio Banderas, Cecilia Roth, Javier Bardem, Assumpta Serna, Darío Grandinetti, Rossy de Palma, Rosa Maria Sardà, Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez, Javier Cámara, Gerladine Chaplin, Paz Vega, Leonor Watling, Chus Lampreave, Eusebio Poncela, Francesca Neri, Liberto Rabal. 1986-2004. Spain.

Short Cuts 22 december 2006

The Third Generation (Die Dritte Generation) - dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder - 1979 - West Germany

Like Bruce LaBruce’s uproarious The Raspberry Reich, Fassbinder’s The Third Generation brilliantly satirizes the dealings of social terrorism. In The Raspberry Reich, our heroine, Gudrun (Susanne Sachsse) proudly proclaims, “I don’t care about what’s going on in Guatemala, Chechnya, or Cambodia; all I care about is my orgasm!” The Third Generation doesn’t exploit the chic draw to terrorism, but, like Reich, the incompetence of the folks involved. Petra (Margit Carstensen) is far more concerned with making up stories about her husband beating her to cover up for her lesbian tendencies than any real political cause. In fact, I don’t think we ever understand why our band of terrorists are even attempting to kidnap a political leader in the first place. Social terrorism is, then, reduced to the boredom of the middle-class, the desire to take phony action to justify one’s self. Though he’s rounded up a wonderful cast (Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Harry Baer, Bulle Ogier, Udo Kier, Eddie Constantine), I find it difficult to call The Third Generation one of Fassbinder’s finer works. It’s effectively banal (like Beware of a Holy Whore), but it’s extremely quiet for both a Fassbinder film and a film of this subject.

Jackass Number Two - dir. Jeff Tremaine - 2006 - USA

Jackass Number Two has the astounding feat of being the only film I’ve seen all year to fully, successfully accomplish exactly what it wanted. Of course, it’s ambition doesn’t exactly mirror that of The Queen or Shortbus, but it’s all a matter of relativity. The film is a reunion of sorts for the punkish daredevils (Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Bam Margera, etc.), set to lower the bar of bad taste and shock value (jerking off a horse, creating a rectal beer-bong, among many other perversities). These jokes and stunts would simply qualify as fatalistic debauchery if there weren’t such a joyous camaraderie involved. Seeing a bunch of grown men shaving off their pubic hair and gluing them onto a friend’s face would likely offend most people, but there’s something genuine and pure about these boys’ childlike, homoerotic gross-out vignettes. The film includes a cameo from the maestro of bad taste, John Waters (whom Knoxville befriended working on the lousy A Dirty Shame), truly putting into perspective the actions in the film. Jackass is the wet dream of a man like Waters, a bunch of goofy, scantily-clad men running around offending people and partaking in dubious life-threatening stunts, but all in the name of entertainment and friendship. There are moments of brilliance, like when Pontius turns to the camera, straight-faced, after drinking horse semen and states, “I’m really ashamed of myself right now.” That the director chose to include some notable blunders and moments like the one above exposes the surprising humanity of the film. And what’s not to love about a film that ends in a glorious musical numbers with nods to both Busby Berkley and Buster Keaton?

Heading South (Vers le sud) - dir. Laurent Cantet - 2005 - France/Canada

Laurent Canet’s fourth feature, Vers le sud, manages to be his most fascinating and complex picture, after Time Out (L‘Emploi de temps), Human Resources (Ressources humaines), and Les Sanguinaires. Starring the transcendent Charlotte Rampling as a stone-cold regular of a Haitian beach resort, the film carefully addresses tough issues: racism, classism, political upheaval, and the sexual desires related to them. The resort, headed by Albert (Lys Ambroise), serves as a hideaway for middle-aged, affluent white women to engage in their heated sexual desires for the black island boys. New to the resort is Brenda (Karen Young), a recently divorced southern woman hoping to rekindle the steaming love affair with the young Legba (Ménothy Cesar). Vers le sud is troubling in many senses, both good and bad. On a critical level, there are subplots that simply don’t work, such as a jealous rivalry between Rampling and Young, or, more specifically, don’t penetrate or provoke nearly as much as the rest of the film. Yet within the film, the counter between the intellectual, sophisticated ideas of race for these women and their searing sexual passion for these wild savage men pierces the flesh deeply. There’s no candy-coating of politically correct final revelation among any of these women, as they all seem fully conscious of the way they’re supposed to be feeling. There’s a frightening truth to all of what happens in the film’s final act as one of the locals very coldly reassures Rampling, “tourists never die here.” The women in the film never follow the logically path that an astute viewer would intellectually devise for them, as they all seem fixed in their inaccurate self-images. Vers le sud is both a flawed picture and a richly difficult one, far more potent and shrewd about its issues than most films dealing with similar subjects.

A Scanner Darkly - dir. Richard Linklater - 2006 - USA

There’s always a tug-of-war of authority when it comes to films like A Scanner Darkly, where a filmmaker with a well-recognized style and thematic approach adapts a piece of writing by someone with just as much recognizable character and method. Imagine Fellini adapting a D.H. Lawrence novel if you will. Phillip K. Dick, of course, isn’t as important of a writer as Lawrence, but you can understand the comparison. His writing style is certainly recognizable, just like Linklater’s directing. Using the painted animation that he did with Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly follows undercover cop Bob (Keanu Reeves) and his growing addiction to a drug called Substance D (think Rush, if you will). The film is set in a not-so-distant future, where a vast majority of the United States has become addicted to this dangerous drug. Linklater never overuses his animation, only occasionally imagining drug sequences where Robert Downey Jr. turns into a bug. The tug-of-war of authority never manages to hinder A Scanner Darkly, though it feels as though Dick may have won the struggle. The film feels like Linklater wearing a mask similar to that which Keanu Reeves wears inside the police offices. A Scanner Darkly occasionally addresses questions of existence, but much softer than he does in any of his other, better films. The film is more concerned with government conspiracy and double-crossings than it is of typical Linklater themes. Granted, government conspiracy may be the topic of conversation in several of his characters; it is never the focus of any of his films. A Scanner Darkly may ring up lesser-than-usual Linklater (if you aren’t counting, say, The Bad News Bears or The Newton Boys), but it never manages to become throwaway or gimmicky, which is all to the credit of the director.

Friday Morning: Dual Roles, Karen Black, Visionary Trannies, Middle-Class Malaise, and Tinto Brass' Love of Ass

Here's a rundown of a couple of films I watched in between posting my four-part 100th blog. Each of these films have been released on DVD within the past few weeks.

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (Warum läuft Herr R. Amok?) - dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Fengler - 1970 - West Germany

Similarly to Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? falls under the category of films that you essentially “get” more than half-way through. But in a good way. You find yourself sitting through most Todd Solondz's films saying the same things (well, in the case of Palindromes, you probably realize there’s nothing to “get”), but it’s much different when it comes to this film. It’s most similar to Katzelmacher, where we receive single-takes of long scenes that seem to go on longer than our comfort level would allow. Specific scenes like one where Kurt Raab tries to find a record of a song he heard briefly on the radio play like Curb Your "Begeisterung" in its awkward hilarity. The girls at the record store laugh at Raab, just as we do. When the film comes to its climax, we are not greeted with a worthy tension-release as in films like Breillat’s Fat Girl; instead it climaxes with a huge dud. The dud, though, completely works, as even in Raab’s escape we find him to be utterly pathetic. There’s also a strange relief and optimism in our pessimistic final twist, as you almost want to applaud the tragic Raab for doing what we all could have subconsciously wanted to do. Also see: Michael Haneke's The Seventh Continent.


Tiresia - dir. Bertrand Bonnello - 2003 - France/Canada

Based on a Greek myth about a person both man and woman at the same time, Bertrand Bonnello’s new film presents us with a man (Laurent Lucas) who kidnaps a transsexual prostitute named Tiresia (Clara Choveaux), holding her captive in his cellar. As time passes, Tiresia begins to transform back into a man, as she’s not able to take her hormones. I don’t like to give away much about films when I write about them, but like the majestic Tropical Malady, Tiresia completely changes its form about an hour in. After being left for dead and blinded, Tiresia (now played by Thiago Telès) develops a clairvoyance, seeing events in the future and cautioning those he sees in his visions. A friend of mine called Bonnello’s first feature, Le pornographe, a disaster, remarking that his use of hardcore sex during one scene was simply a way to get more people to see a bland film about a son trying to reconnect with his father. I didn’t dislike it as much, but it left very little imprint in my memory. Tiresia, though dark in theme, works as a mood piece about faith instead of addressing really any issue of gender. It’s certainly a film that most audiences would easily reject, yet it’s almost easier to just allow Bonnello to take you where he wants you to go. Tiresia plays by its own rules and that alone is commendable. It also helps that Bonnello accomplishes a haunting mood and atmosphere, even if it's not easily discernable what he’s doing or where he’s going.


Cheeky! (Tra(nsgre)dire) - dir. Tinto Brass - 2000 - Italy

Tinto Brass still makes films as if it were the 1970s. We open Cheeky! with our heroine, Carla (Yuliya Mayarchuk), strolling through a London park like Jayne Mansfield in The Girl Can’t Help It to an amusingly high-cheese score, where it just so happens everyone around her is engaging in lusty sex. Everywhere she turns, there’s a woman uncrossing her legs to reveal she forgot to put her panties in the laundry that morning. Or there’s a couple in heat, appeasing one another’s sexual urges. Of course, Carla, looking like an Eastern-European streetwalker dressed up as Brigitte Bardot, joins in on the fun, wearing a see-through skirt and exposing her buttocks to passer-byers. There’s a story that follows involving Carla’s tight-ass boyfriend and her search for an apartment, but really this is only an excuse to introduce Carla to as many sexual partners as possible or place her in a situation where others are about to bang. The playfulness of Cheeky!’s sexuality is admirable and refreshing, even if the film is simply pretext for close-ups of Mayarchuk’s ass and sexual experimentation.

Firecracker - dir. Steve Balderson - 2004 - USA

I saw this horrible film a couple of months ago called Stillwater, a thriller about a man's search for his past that made my student films look like Antonioni, and remarked, "if you're going to be fucking Lynchian, at least throw in some dancing midgets." Though I only stated that in my Netflix "Two Cents," I'm convinced Steve Balderson saw that remark and one-upped me. If he was to be Lynchian, he was gunna give me a midget with pasties on. God bless him for that, but fuck him for everything else. He tried so hard to make this film look like he was the heir apparent to Lynch that he actually tried to get Dennis Hopper to play a character named Frank (Hopper backed out, thankfully). Set in Kansas, Firecracker is about an abusive brother (Mike Patton, of Faith No More) who pesters the shit out of his pussy, piano-playing kid brother (Jak Kendall) against his mother's (Karen Black!!) wishes and ends up dead. Somehow this is all linked to a travelling carnival, where he is having an affair with the main attraction of a girlie show (Karen Black!!! again). It's a terrible fucking mess, shot in both black and white and color (a huge pet peeve of mine) and filled with a plethora of blank references to Lynch. Balderson's first feature, called Pep Squad, was equally messy and just as unsuccessfuly lofty in ambition, a black comedy slasher film that eventually turned into a ridiculous indictment of America. He couldn't direct "actors" then, and, even with top talent like Karen Black (!!!!), he still can't. Even on the grounds of seeing Ms. Black play dual roles, one of them a character obviously written for a woman twenty years younger, I cannot allow you to satisfy this curiosity. (Note: Balderson couldn't and didn't read my remarks about Stillwater, as Firecracker was made a year before Stillwater, not that I really needed to clarify this or anything...)