Kino! 2005
November 2–10, 2005

A wide-ranging and eclectic selection, the twenty-sixth annual survey of contemporary German cinema encompasses fiction and documentary. Five of the eight features in this year’s program are made by Kino! veterans: Jutta Brueckner, Andreas Dresen, Dani Levy, Gordian Maugg, and Christian Petzold. Manfred Wilhelms, known in Germany for his documentaries, is presented for the first time in the United States with a film about a Berlin-born New Yorker, the photographer Henry Ries. Eleven students from German film schools are included in a single program, Next Generation; featured also is Franz Mueller’s graduate thesis, Science Fiction. The exhibition concludes with Marc Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl—The Final Days, which recounts a grim chapter in German history. All films in German with English subtitles, unless otherwise noted.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media, in collaboration with German Films Service + Marketing (Munich), and its New York representative, Oliver Mahrdt. Thanks to Christian Dorsch, Managing Director, and Nicole Kaufmann, Project Coordinator, German Films, and to all the distributors, producers, and directors participating in this series, including First Run Features and Zeitgeist Films in New York.

Alles auf Zucker! (Go for Zucker!). 2005. Germany. Directed by Dani Levy. Screenplay by Levy, Holger Franke. With Henry Huebchen, Hannelore Elsner, Udo Samuel. This deftly scripted German-Jewish comedy won six Lolas, Germany’s Oscar equivalent. Two estranged brothers—a gambler from former East Berlin and a religious Frankfurt Jew now living in Israel—must reconcile to inherit their mother’s estate. 90 min.
Wednesday, November 2, 6:15. T1

Die Hitlerkantate (The Hitler Cantata). 2005. Germany. Written and directed by Jutta Brueckner. With Henry Huebchen, Floriane Daniel, Sophie von Kessel. A young woman in 1938 Berlin, infatuated with Hitler, persuades the Nazis to commission a cantata for the leader’s fiftieth birthday. She chooses a music professor—a former leftist now living comfortably within the Third Reich—as the composer. Suspicious, authorities appoint her to get closer to him. 119 min.
Thursday, November 3, 6:00; Friday, November 4, 8:30. T1

Gespenster (Ghosts). 2005. Germany. Directed by Christian Petzold. Screenplay by Petzold, Harun Farocki. With Julia Hummer, Sabine Timoteo, Marianne Basler. Petzold, whose State I Am In explores the weight of her parents’ fugitive life on teenage love, now conversely tackles the effect of maternal love on a fugitive. A woman who believes her baby was abducted thinks she has found her lost daughter in a young vagabond. 85 min.
Thursday, November 3, 8:30; Sunday, November 6, 5:00. T1

Next Generation. 2005. Germany. Eleven short fictional, experimental, and animated works from seven German film schools: The Final (Mara Eibl-Eibesfeldt); I Took the Red Pill (Ramesh Pallikara); The Child (Steffen Blechschmidt); The American Embassy (David Sieveking); Jam Session (Izabela Plucinska); Christina Without (Sonja Heiss); The Tourist (Lancelot von Naso); Rallye (Romeo Gruenfelder); Lal (Dirk Schaefer); Curd Soap (Alexander Kiesl, Sebastian Stolle); and dim (Ann-Kirstin Wecker). Program 99 min.
Friday, November 4, 6:30; Monday, November 7, 8:15. T1

Willenbrock. 2005. Germany. Directed by Andreas Dresen. Screenplay by Laila Stieler, based on the novel by Christoph Hein. With Axel Prahl, Inka Friedrich, Anne Ratte-Polle. Dresen, whose comedy Grill Point was a highlight of Kino 2003, returns with this tale of schadenfreude. A successful businessman from the former East with a wife and young mistress witnesses his life fall apart through a series of misfortunes. 108 min.
Saturday, November 5, 2:30; Thursday, November 10, 6:00. T1

Zeppelin! 2005. Germany. Directed by Gordian Maugg. Screenplay by Maugg, Alexander Haeusser. With Olaf Rauschenbach, Agnieszka Piwowarska, Alexander May. Maugg, celebrated for his early film Olympic Summer, returns with Zeppelin!, a melodrama incorporating new footage, some made to look old, and superbly edited historical newsreels. In this fictional back story to the 1937 explosion of the Hindenburg Zeppelin in New Jersey, a young man whose grandfather was a Hindenburg crew member learns the secret of his grandfather’s death. 105 min.
Saturday, November 5, 5:00; Sunday, November 6, 2:00. T1

Science Fiction. 2003. Germany. Written and directed by Franz Mueller. With Arved Birnbaum, Jan Henrik Stahlberg, Heidi Ecks. A metaphysical fantasy without special effects. The surprising premise of Science Fiction is pure speculative fun in the tradition of Groundhog Day and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 113 min.
Saturday, November 5, 7:30; Wednesday, November 9, 6:00. T1

Henry Ries—Der Flaneur aus Berlin (Henry Ries—Walking in Berlin). 2000. Germany. Directed by Manfred Wilhelms. Documentary filmmaker Wilhelms is admired in his native Germany but virtually unknown in the United States. He is introduced here with a film about Henry Ries (1917–2004), a Jewish ex-Berliner who fled Hitler in 1938, joined the American army, and returned to his destroyed native city in 1945, later becoming a New York Times photographer covering the devastated landscape of postwar Germany. Wilhelms accompanied Ries on a tour of the resurrected city in 1999. 109 min.
Monday, November 7, 6:00; Wednesday, November 9, 8:15. T1

Sophie Scholl—Die Letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl—The Final Days). 2005. Germany. Directed by Marc Rothemund. Screenplay by Fred Breinsdorfer. With Julia Jentsch, Alexander Held, Fabian Hinrichs. The White Rose was a clandestine group of Munich students that distributed leaflets resisting Hitler during World War II. Rothemund’s fictional film incorporates historical record to depict Sophie Scholl, arrested in 1943 and interrogated by a Gestapo officer who attempted to break her will. 115 min.
Thursday, November 10, 8:15. T1

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