Film Society screenings of German cinema 2010

As in the previous years, in 2010 the New Zealand Film Society, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, will show a variety of outstanding German films. From Absurdistan to East Berlin, from comedy to drama, this year's selection has something to offer for everyone.

Absurdistan, Germany 2008 / 87 min.. Director: Veit Helmer

Somewhere between Asia and Europe lies the God-forsaken desert village of Absurdistan, which a grand total of 14 families somehow manage to call home. For the village, the biggest problem is water... but for the village women, the biggest problem is their lazy men, who won’t lift a finger to remedy the situation. The women decide to take a drastic measure: they go on a sex strike, refusing to make love until their husbands overcome their indifference.

Cherry Blossoms - Hanami (Kirschblüten - Hanami), Germany 2008 / 121 min., Director: Doris Dörrie

A story of selfless love that is also a poetic journey into the meaning of life itself. Trudi is the only one who knows that her husband is terminally ill with cancer. When his doctor suggests that the couple undertake one last trip together, Trudi persuades her husband to accompany her to visit her children and grandchildren in Berlin. However, the members of their family are far too wrapped up in their own lives to be able to take care of the couple. After a theatre trip to see a Butoh dance performance, Trudi and Rudi decide to go and stay at a hotel on the Baltic coast. And then, out of the blue, Trudi dies. Rudi is completely at a loss. He has no idea what to do with his life, until he decides to go to Japan to visit their youngest son, Karl.

Comrades in Dreams (Leinwandfieber), Germany 2006 / 100 min.. Director: Uli Gaulke

This film is about several people for whom the cinema is their life. One of them is Han Jong Sil from North Korea. She enjoys life – in spite of being caught between propaganda, her own desires and crop yields – and hopes to improve people's lives with her films. Penny Tefertiller from Wyoming in the USA has also devoted her life to the community by providing the young and the lonely with a stopping off point. The hale and hearty, self-confident Lassane and his comrades-in-arms Luc and Zakaria from Ouagadougou are trying with all their might to show films in Burkina Faso, one of the world's poorest countries. Theirs is a risky business that causes them to neglect their families and propels them into financial adventure. And all so that they can breathe new life into a run-down open air cinema.

After the Fall (Nach dem Fall), Germany 1999 / 85 min., Directors: Frauke Sandig, Eric Black

“After the Fall” is a documentary about the almost total disappearance of an edifice that was once 160 kilometres long. Today, some ten years after the fall of the wall in 1989, virtually nothing remains of the structure that once surrounded West Berlin. Meanwhile, some 50,000 new buildings have been erected in the capital. The total eradication of the wall is described here by different people and from different points of view.

Interviewees include an American historian, a church minister in Berlin and a Bavarian demolition expert. The common tenor of their views is that the wall and its traces were eradicated too quickly with the intention of clearing away the past.

Berlin is in Germany, Germany 2001 / 93 min., Director: Hannes Stöhr

Brandenburg penitentiary 2001: Martin Schulz is released after 11 years of imprisonment. As a former citizen of the German Democratic Republic, he experienced the fall of the wall from his prison cell. Upon release, he receives the items in his possesion at the time of his arrest: A blue East German identification card, an East German driver's license, and a wallet full of East German money. Martin is full of hope when he returns home, but hardly recognizes East Berlin again. The "New Berlin" has already taken over and the "Old East Berlin" clings desperately to its last remaining traits. The eleven-year absence is like a time machine and Martin runs into one difficulty after another while finding his place in this "new" world.

Summer in Berlin (Sommer vorm Balkon), Germany 2005 / 105 min., Director: Andreas Dresen

Hot summer. Nike has a balcony, Katrin has a son, Ronald drives a truck, Tina's a waitress, Oskar and Helene are old and alone. At the beginning, middle or end of their lives – they all ask the same question: Can love last through the seasons? Or is it something affecting the brain that just comes and goes?

Summer in Berlin is the story of two girlfriends, who, from their balcony - between heaven and earth - gaze down at their turbulent and difficult universe, where the right men are all too often exactly wrong, and to get ahead even a good-looking woman had better be strong.

Sun Alley (Sonnenallee), Germany 1999 / 101 min., Director: Leander Haußmann

The Soviet Union is big brother; the rest of the world is the enemy of the people, and the Berlin Wall is actually a bulwark againt fascists. This is the German Democratic Republic, the land where Michael lives. He wears bell-bottoms and a home-printed Rock & Pop T-shirt. The apartment is cramped; the neighbour works for the secret police; there's an uncle from the West to smuggle in pantyhose; and a West German passport which causes his mother to age before his very eyes. But Micha is focused on his goal: doing whatever it takes to win the heart of the prettiest girl at school. It all happened a very long time ago, but if Micha doesn't tell the story now, we'll never know what it was like, back then in the seventies, in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, at the back end of the Sun Alley.

In Sun Alley director Leander Haussmann and screenwriter Thomas Brussig take us on a trip through East Germany. This is no feature-length grouse: it's a heartfelt and sympathetic look - the re-discovery of a world that has long since ceased to exist.