How lucky are we to be blessed each year
by two German film festivals. Long time programming wizard Ingrid Eggers (for
many years the brains behind the Goethe Institute’s Berlin and Beyond Showcase
at the Castro) last year demonstrated her survivor’s instincts with a sublime
one day film banquet, the aptly titled German Gems. This year Eggers regains
her old first festival of the new year slot, completing a triumphant comeback
with a full weekend at the Castro (January 14 through 16) as well as a one day
set of encore screenings at Point Arena.
This weekend’s program – nine
features (including three docs) and one short – is like a deluxe survey course
in modern German language cinema with fiction/nonfiction, history and modernity
all getting their moments on screen.
For more information and for comments consult
1-Keep Surfing: The gem of the Gems is Bjorn Richie
Lob’s hypnotically lensed exploration of Munich’s river surfing culture that
provided a delicious way to baptize my new high-def TV. A ten-year work in
progress – it apparently took Lob a chunk of that decade to convince his
river-surfing pals to share their stories on camera – Lob demonstrates why
“surfing” the Eisbach River
became first a pastime then a veritable addiction for a core
of “river rats” of all ages.
After spending the first chapter
establishing how this oddest of sports got its footing with Munich youth
plunging their boogie boards off the back of tourist boats plying the Eisbach –
including boys who rode the wave with a sausage and a beer to fortify them –
the filmmaker plumbs the mythology of river surfing demonstrating ways in which
it can more than compete in thrills and hazards with its better established
ocean cousin. A surfing dad nervously recalls how he saved his young daughter,
the tongue of whose boot got caught between submerged rocks; other river vets
delight with tales of evading surf banning cops; and then there’s the story of
how a grouchy river surfing convert figured out an ingenious way to keep the
waves coming 24/7.
Lob’s cameras frame unique close-up
perspectives on the torsos of young German men who completely abandon
themselves, with long hair flying (this is the place for those hungering for a
full menu of blonde German guys) to the glory of riding the Eisbach ‘till they
drop or run out of money. One fascinating story shows how a local boy learns
his moves on the river and then graduates to the “adult” world of ocean
surfing, becoming fluent in French for an Internet sports channel. The film
climaxes in a unusual pilgrimage by German surfers to a special and especially
dangerous British Columbian site where the skills of ocean and river surfing
converge. This largely German language doc features English guest spots from
famed world class surfers Nick Carroll and Kelly Slater. (Saturday/1-15-11/2pm)
2-Mahler on the Couch: It’s hard to believe that
Gustav Mahler found time in fifty-one years to create ten of the world’s most
compelling symphonies, switch religions (from Jewish to Catholic to evade the
19th century’s ominously rising tide of nationalist fueled bigotry),
become a world acclaimed opera conductor and in his final decade marry a young
aspiring composer frau – whose career he would squelch – and then wind up in
his final year on the couch of one Sigmund Freud. Veteran Percy Adlon
(co-helming with son Felix) provides a goofy, if passionate, depiction of the
Mahler/Freud summit: both men lived in their heads and were the product of
large families. This couch talk serves mostly as a framing device for the
Adlon’s portrait of Mahler’s April/September marriage to his rambunctious young
bride Alma nee Schindler (Barbara Romaner) who gave up her musical
ambitions to give Mahler two daughters and the sheltered summers he needed to
set free his composing juices.
Adlon – whose eccentric eighties
comedies (Sugarbaby/Bagdad Café) provided chuckles and the
inspiration for a long running Castro eatery)
doesn’t hesitate to give his story touches of operatic
excess and farcical bedroom hi-jinks: the most effective being Mahler’s attempt
to ward off the advances of a much younger suitor, famed architect Walter
Gropius (the virile handsome Friedrich Mucke).
While this may disappoint
hard core Death in Venice fans -- seduced by Luchino Visconti’s lush
rendering of Mann’s novella into believing that Dirk Bogarde’s Mahler
impersonation and hankering for the young Tadzio was torn from life – it should
prove diverting on the Castro screen.
(Opening Night/Friday/1-14/7pm)
3-David Wants to Fly: What happens when a naïve but
talented and doggedly persistent young filmmaker discovers that his idol (Blue
Velvet genius David Lynch) is both more and less than the man he looked up
to. David Sieveking (who bares an uncanny resemblance to Aussie wunderkind
actor Noah Taylor) gives us as much as we can stand to see about the Potemkin
village that is the modern Transcendental Meditation movement. The English
fluent director will be on hand for a post film Q&A. (Sunday/1-16-11/4pm)
4-Celebration of Flight: An elderly pilot (Daniel
Rundstrom) relives his career flying for kings (including Emperor Haille
Selassie) while in the present tense engineering one final dream: the
construction of a single prop plane to enter into a Florida fight show. The
nearly 80-year-old Lundstrom amazes with his stamina and the patience with
which he tutors a sixteen-year-old assistant. Both director Lara Juliette
Sanders and pilot Lundstrom appear for a Castro Q&A.
(Sunday/1-16-11/2pm)
5-She Deserved It: The pitiless killing field of
adolescence is harrowingly brought to the screen by Thomas Stiller in a
fractured melodrama that is neither for the squeamish or the after school
special crowd. Stiller makes the controversial call to frame the piece from the
perspective of a cold-hearted teen killer – Liv Lisa Fries is uncomfortably
charismatic as a punk girl gone bad who commits a stomach churning crime:
killing her high school rival with the help of her hunky boyfriend. The film’s
peak moment comes in a prison confrontation between Fries and the mother of the
dead girl. As always with films that threaten to “glorify” the bully, this one
will divide audiences, but it courageously goes a lot further than Hollywood
would in providing edgy entertainment and some plausible catharsis. With
director Q&A. (Saturday/1-15-11/9pm)
6-Mountain Blood: Philip J. Pamer’s lavishly mounted
history drama draws on the German fetish for “mountain films” with a scary
reminder that the wars that ravaged Europe in the 20th century had
their roots in the Napoleonic era.
The composer and editor will do an after film Q&A.
(Sunday/1-16-11/6:30pm)
7-Dischantments: Andreas Pieper’s film school debut
shows a talent for eliciting naked passion from an unknown cast.
(Sunday/1-16-11/9pm)