Dear all,
I would like to draw your attention to our forthcoming film season dedicated to German director Roland Klick (Bübchen, Deadlock, Supermarkt, Lieb Vaterland Magst Ruhig Sein, White Star). Screenings start tomorrow, Thursday, 19 September at the Goethe-Institut and continue to Wednesday 9 October.
Please see full programme here or in the post further below.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en11531490v.htm
The 33 Cambridge Film Festival will show a smaller selection of Klick's films between Monday 23 and Friday 27 September.
http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/films/2013/by/strand/79
Kind regards,
Maren Hobein
Goethe-Institut London
[log in to unmask]
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INTO UNKNOWN TERRITORY — THE CINEMA OF ROLAND KLICK
THURSDAY 19 SEPTEMBER – WEDNESDAY 9 OCTOBER 2013
GOETHE-INSTITUT LONDON
“…a film for the cinema should always be a step into unknown territory." Roland Klick
From 19 September — 9 October 2013, the Goethe-Institut London, in collaboration with the 33rd Cambridge Film Festival and Filmgalerie 451, Berlin, presents Into Unknown Territory — The Cinema of Roland Klick. This first UK overview of the work of maverick director Roland Klick will include five of his feature films, all of his shorts and the UK premiere of Sandra Prechtel’s 2013 documentary Roland Klick - The Heart is a Hungry Hunter, which premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Roland Klick will be at the Goethe-Institut for Q & As following the UK premiere of his 1968 debut Bübchen (23 September) and the screening of his cult classic Deadlock (24 September). Roland Klick will also be presenting White Star at the Cambridge Film Festival with a Q&A as part of their retrospective focus (25 September).
Starting to make his first shorts in 1963/64, Roland Klick (b. 1939) dared to make films like no one else in West Germany at the time. His ambition was to make socially engaged films for a wider audience. Film + Audience = Cinema; this simple equation plus the indefatigable enthusiasm of a cinephile drove Klick to create films that were story and character-led, emotionally and visually intense, action-packed, highly cinematic, well-versed in genre, and always exploring new ground. His films reached the audience but they also stirred controversy. He won four Federal German Film Awards, but was slated by film critics and exponents of the more intellectual New German Cinema. His film Deadlock was invited to the Cannes competition, but ended up being shown in a “special screening” that no one attended. He was meant to direct the international success Christiane F. – We Children From Bahnhof Zoo (1981), but fell out with producer Bernd Eichinger. It should have been his big break, but though hyped as the new wunderkind of German Cinema following the promising start of Bübchen in 1968, Klick’s big break never came and by the late 1980s he had withdrawn from directing for the cinema.
In spite of bad luck, bad timing and the constant struggle for funding, Roland Klick created a body of films that has earned him a loyal following and the respect of fellow filmmakers. These have ranged from Steven Spielberg, who invited him to Hollywood in the 70s, to El Topo (1970) director Alejandro Jodorowsky, who named Deadlock as an influence, and, more recently, Berlin school director Christoph Hochhäusler, whose film Low Profile (2005) shares the use of a non-descript suburbia as a setting as well as a refusal to explain the characters’ motives with Klick’s Bübchen.
Running parallel and beyond the Roland Klick focus at the 33rd Cambridge Film Festival, the Goethe-Institut season opens with a double bill screening and UK premiere of Sandra Prechtel’s documentary Roland Klick - The Heart is a Hungry Hunter (2013), a comprehensive re-discovery of Klick’s work and an insightful portrait of the man himself, plus a programme of Klick’s early shorts Christmas, Ludwig, Two and the 50-minute nouvelle-vague-inspired Jimmy Orpheus. Roland Klick will come to London for the screenings of Bübchen (23 September) and Deadlock (24 September), two films that represent the opposite extremes of Klick’s filmography: the former a chilling study of the social fabric around a boy that kills his younger sister, the latter a glaring and relentless desert show-down inspired by Italian Westerns. The season continues with Klick’s gritty Hamburg-set small-time crook saga Supermarket (1974) captured by the dynamic camera of Jost Vacano (Das Boot, Robocop, Total Recall) and featuring a restless, hounded performance from newcomer Charly Wierzejewski alongside a young blonde-wigged Eva Mattes (Stroszek, Germany, Pale Mother). Berlin is the setting for the last two films in the season. With Dear Fatherland, Be At Peace Klick enters spy film territory, staging a tightly knitted plot around a kidnapping against the background of a flourishing East-to-West escape business in 1964. With White Star Klick returns to the Berlin of the 1980s, where Dennis Hopper, in one of his best performances, plays a washed-up music manager who cunningly manoeuvres and exploits clashes between punk and synthpop camps to catapult his protégé to stardom.
VENUE Goethe-Institut London
TICKETS £3, £5 double bill 19 Sep, £15 season ticket. Booking essential
(free for Goethe-Institut language students and library members)
BOOKING 020 7596 4000, [log in to unmask]
INFORMATION www.goethe.de/london
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en11531490v.htm
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FILMS AND SCREENING SCHEDULE
ALL FILMS WILL BE SHOWN IN ENGLISH OR WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
ROLAND KLICK - THE HEART IS A HUNGRY HUNTER
THU 19 SEP 2013 6.30PM
Enthusiastically received at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, Sandra Prechtel’s new documentary takes us on a fascinating journey of re-discovery through the work of a director whose vision and talent was strangely out of tune with the context in which he worked. “He was a dreamer inside a German – not an easy thing to be!” recalls actor David Hess, who appeared in Roland Klick’s 1983 film White Star. Yet, as Prechtel’s filmic portrait of the maverick director reveals, Klick learned to take his defeats with humour and has lost nothing of his enthusiasm for the cinema. With excerpts from Klick’s films, interviews with the director and comments from actors such as Eva Mattes and Otto Sander or colleagues such as Hark Bohm, the documentary not only provides a compelling introduction to Klick’s work, but also gives great insights into the fortunes and hazards of the film business.
Germany 2013, colour & b/w, Blu-ray (HD) 80mins, with English subtitles. Written and directed by Sandra Prechtel. With Roland Klick, Otto Sander, Eva Mattes, Hark Bohm, David Hess, Jost Vacano.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en11531771v.htm
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ROLAND KLICK SHORTS
THU 19 SEP 2013 8PM
CHRISTMAS / WEIHNACHT
A young boy walks through a city during Christmas, admiring all of the holiday’s paraphernalia.
FRG 1962/63, b/w, Blu-ray (35mm), 10mins, no dialogue. Written and directed by Roland Klick.
LUDWIG
A very young Otto Sander (the other angel in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire) plays a young quarry worker in a poor Bavarian village where he is generally regarded as the village idiot. Best Foreign Short, International Short Film Festival Tours 1962.
FRG 1963 / 64, b/w, Blu-ray (35mm), 16mins, with English subtitles. Written and directed by Roland Klick. With Otto Sander, Elke van Schoor.
TWO / ZWEI
Both live in a tower block. He is a young office assistant, she an aging stripper. Their lives don’t cross until that one day when they meet twice.
FRG 1965, b/w, Blu-ray (35mm) 26mins, with English subtitles. Written and directed by Roland Klick. With Peggy Parnass, Til Erwig.
JIMMY ORPHEUS
Locked out of his shelter, a young dockworker spends the night wandering the streets of Hamburg, first alone, then in the company of a young woman he encounters by chance. He likes her, but one moment she is there and the next she’s gone. A nocturnal journey, as light and spontaneous as a nouvelle-vague film.
FRG 1966, b/w, Blu-ray (35mm), 52mins, with English subtitles. Written and directed by Roland Klick. With Klaus Schichan, Ortrud Beginnen.
Total Running Time: 104 Minutes
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en11532286v.htm
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BÜBCHEN
MON 23 SEP2013 7PM
In his gripping feature film debut Roland Klick tells the story of an ordinary suburban family and how it is affected by a crime. There are police detectives, interrogations, suspects, visits to the crime scene. But Klick is not interested in the solution of the crime. We know who committed the murder and this knowledge is chilling. Neither is he interested in explaining the killing and resulting deeds to us. His focus is on describing the interplay of social milieu and the contingencies of a seemingly ordinary day that make a crime possible for which there seems to be no obvious motive. Controversially received on its first release, the film was re-released two years later under the title Der Kleine Vampir (Little Vampire).
FRG 1967 / 68, colour, Blu-ray (35mm), 87mins, with English subtitles. Written and directed by Roland Klick. With Sascha Urchs, Sieghardt Rupp, Edith Volkmann, Renate Roland, Jürgen Jung, Hubert Suschka, Elisabeth Ackermann, Ulrich Beiger, Hans Kahlert, Gerda-Maria Jürgens.^
Followed by a Q & A with Roland Klick.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en11532386v.htm
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DEADLOCK
TUE 24 SEP 2013 7PM
Taking a giant leap from the claustrophobic Bübchen, Klick chose the wide horizons, white emptiness and blinding glare of the Israeli desert as the timeless stripped-down setting for this wild hallucination of a film. The plot is archetypal gangster material staged as Western with machine guns and roaring cars instead of horses. In a deserted mining-town somewhere in Mexico three men fight over a suitcase of money. It is a relentless showdown with moments of noise and action bursting into periods of brooding calm. The pounding high-pitched soundtrack by German Krautrock legends Can, use of lens flare, extreme close-ups and the intense presence of the unreal sun-bleached landscape push the film towards the psychedelic. Zabriskie Point has been cited as reference, El Topo director Alejandro Jodorowsky named as admirer. One of Klick’s greatest successes, it was awarded the Federal Film Award in Gold in 1971 for Production Design and it was invited to the competition in Cannes. But due to the interventions of a camp of German critics and filmmakers it was only shown in a “special screening”, which due to a massive downpour remained largely unattended, leaving the film to be more or less forgotten until it slowly gained a cult following. Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/33872656
FRG 1970, colour, Blu-ray (35mm, widescreen), 88mins. English language version. Written and directed by Roland Klick. With Mario Adorf, Marquard Bohm, Anthony Dawson, Mascha Elm Rabben, Sigurd Fitzek, Betty Segal.
Followed by a Q & A with Roland Klick.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en11532400v.htm
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SUPERMARKET / SUPERMARKT
TUE 1 OCT 2013 7PM
After the abstract and stylised Deadlock Klick was keen to make a film that was anchored in a specific social context and he wanted to shoot in a big city. The result is the fast-paced Hamburg-set Supermarkt, often referred to as Klick’s masterpiece, which follows the trajectory of 18-year-old small time crook Willy, who becomes a case study for a journalist, falls for a girl (played by a blonde-wigged Eva Mattes), and eventually plans a supermarket heist. Klick wanted someone who could really run to play Willy and thus picked non-actor Charly Wierzejewski who turned out to be perfect match for the role. And needing a cameraman that could keep up with his rebellious, hounded protagonist, he chose Jost Vacano (Das Boot, 1981) known for his dynamic camera work. For Supermarkt Jost developed new techniques to stabilise his hand camera that pre-dated the introduction of the steadycam in the USA two years later. Supermarkt proved that genre and action could ring true in a film shot in Germany. It became Klick’s most successful film and earned him a Federal Film Award for Best Direction in 1974. Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/34439718
FRG 1974. Colour, Blu-ray (35mm, widescreen), 80mins, with English subtitles. Written by Roland Klick with Georg Althammer and Jane Sperr. Directed by Roland Klick. With Charly Wierzejewski, Eva Mattes, Michael Degen, Walter Kohut, Michael Rehberg, Eva Schukardt, et al.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en11532412v.htm
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DEAR FATHERLAND, BE AT PEACE (LIEB VATERLAND MAGST RUHIG SEIN)
TUE 8 OCT 2013 7PM
Initially hired to re-write the script, Klick ended up directing this adaptation of a novel of the same title by best-selling author Johannes Mario Simmel, whose convoluted plot Klick strips down to make it work on the big screen. In 1964, just three years after the building of the Berlin Wall, when the business of smuggling experts and specialists from East to West Berlin is flourishing, Bruno, just released from prison in East Berlin, is hired by the East German secret service to venture into West Berlin and kidnap one of the leaders of the escape ring. Not keen to go through with the job, Bruno informs the West German authorities who promptly turn him into a double agent. With the secret services of the Allied Powers also interfering, it soon becomes clear to Bruno that he cannot trust anyone. Using the chance to work on a fully funded film project, Klick puts his energy into creating a solid piece of genre cinema. Ex-Hamburg-St. Pauli baron Heinz Domez, another Klick discovery, plays Bruno. Jost Vacano once more operates the camera and is awarded a Federal Film Award in Gold for it.
FRG 1976, colour, Blu-ray (35mm, widescreen), 92mins, with English subtitles. Written by Roland Klick based on the novel by Johannes Mario Simmel. Directed by Roland Klick. With Heinz Domez, Catherine Allégret, Georg Marischka, Günther Pfitzmann, Rudolf Wessely, Paul Glawion, Margot Werner, Rolf Zacher, et al.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en11532421v.htm
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WHITE STAR
WED 9 OCT 2013 7PM
Music had always been an important ingredient of Klick’s films. He even wrote scores and tracks himself. It may be due to his rage over the painful “divorce” from producer Bernd Eichinger during the preparations for Christiane F. – We Children of Bahnhof Zoo that White Star did not become a glorious rock saga but a scathing critique of a PR-obsessed music business. Convinced that the no-future message of punk is out, and the synthpop of his protégé Moody – stage name White Star - is the future, music agent Ken Barlow stops at nothing to direct media attention towards his unknown star. It’s Dennis Hopper in all his many facets: inspiring in his enthusiasm, repugnant in his calculating ruthlessness, pitiful in his delusion and desperation. “It was the most emotionally demanding film I have ever made, and therefore the most dangerous one – to me”, Hopper said about the film. But at the height of his cocaine addiction and totally unpredictable Hopper was just as dangerous to the film, its budget, its original story, its director. Klick knew it was the price he had to pay for getting Hopper at his best. But unlike Hopper’s Barlow, Klick managed to keep control and to bring his project to an end. The film was awarded a Federal Film Award in Silver for Production. Roger Corman bought the film, which also features American horror star David Hess as Hopper’s hired agent provocateur, and released it in a totally re-edited version under the title Let It Rock. Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/34585946
FRG 1981-83, colour, Blu-ray (35mm) 92mins, English language version. Written by Roland Klick with Thilo von Arnim and Karen Jaehne-Lathan (American adaptation). Directed by Roland Klick. With Dennis Hopper, Terrance Robay, Ramona Sweeney, David Hess, Peter Kybart, Robert Rice, Eric Engbretson, et al.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en11532434v.htm
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CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL SCREENINGS:
All Cambridge Film Festival screenings at Cambridge Arts Picturehouse
www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk
ROLAND KLICK - THE HEART IS A HUNGRY HUNTER
MON 23 SEP 2013 3PM, TUE 24 SEP 3013, 3:45PM
DEADLOCK
TUE 24 SEP 2013 9PM
WHITE STAR
WED 25 SEP 2013 6PM
Followed by a Q & A with Roland Klick.
SUPERMARKET / SUPERMARKT
THU 26 SEP 2013 6:15PM
ROLAND KLICK SHORTS
JIMMY ORPHEUS, WEIHNACHT, LUDWIG, ZWEI
FRI 27 SEP 2013 4:30PM
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FORTHCOMING SCREENINGS AT THE GOETHE-INSTITUT
SPECIAL SCREENING: Ramon Zürcher: The Strange Little Cat
Followed by a Q & A with Ramon Zürcher
WED 25 SEP 2013 7PM
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en11539388v.htm
PERFORMING DOCUMENTARY: Documentaries from Austria, Germany and Switzerland
Followed by discussions
TUE 19 – SAT 23 November 2013
PHILIP SCHEFFNER: The Halfmoon Files
Followed by Q & A with Philip Scheffner and Merle Kröger
TUE 3 DEC 2013 7PM
PHILIP SCHEFFNER: Revision
Followed by Q & A with Philip Scheffner and Merle Kröger
WED 4 DEC 2013 7PM
‘NATURE CULTURES’: THE POLITICS OF WILDLIFE: Philip Scheffner: The Day of the Sparrow
Followed by a panel discussion
THU 5 DEC 2013 7PM
‘NATURE CULTURES’: THE POLITICS OF WILDLIFE: Hannes Lang Peak
Followed by panel discussion and book launch
FRI 6 DEC 2013 7PM
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