Valeska Grisebach: WESTERN & TWO EARLIER FILMS, Goethe-Institut London, 14 + 28 March 2018
On the occasion of Valeska Grisebach’s widely acclaimed new film WESTERN by New Wave Films on 13th April, the Goethe-Institut will present a preview of the film and her two earlier films BY MY STAR (MEIN STERN) and SEHNSUCHT (LONGING).
DATES:
WED 14 MARCH, 7PM
Double Bill: BE MY STAR & LONGING
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21173511
WED 28 MARCH, 7PM
Special Preview: WESTERN
https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21125406
ABOUT THE FILMS
Mein Stern (Be My Star)
A love story. A boy and a girl. They set off on the adventure of a relationship. Nicole is fourteen years old and is sure that something important will soon happen in her life. This expectation becomes reality when she meets a boy of the same age named Christopher. He is one of the celebrities of the neighborhood. They become a couple. The fact that Nicole's mother started working nights presents the perfect opportunity: Her parents' apartment is available as a stage on which Nicole and Christopher play husband and wife. They attempt to realize the ideas of love they have formed by observing adults. But things are not as simple as they may seem. This story takes place during a time in the young peoples' lives in which everything seems possible, they hang around public places as if they were movie stars expecting autograph hunters at any minute. At the same time, a job, their own bank accounts, and adult life is waiting. Or maybe it isn't. Time is running out.
Austria / Germany 2001, Colour, 16mm (Blow-up 35mm), 61 mins, German with English subtitles.
Written and directed by Valeska Grisebach. With Nicole Gläser, Christopher Schöps, Monique Gläser, Jeanine Gläser, Sebastian Rinka, Christina Sandke.
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Sehnsucht (Longing)
A man and a woman live in a village not far from Berlin. Out here, it feels as though the city were miles away. The couple have loved each other since they were children. They are inseparable. Both are now in their early thirties; he is a welder and a member of the auxiliary fire brigade. She works a few hours a week as a home help and sings in the choir. Their blissful relationship is so untrammeled by life’s little ups and downs that others regard them with a mixture of astonishment and mistrust. They give the impression of being as innocent and unsuspecting as a couple of children. One day, the man goes on a business trip to a large town with the fire brigade. After a night of heavy drinking and carousing he wakes up in another woman’s apartment. He can barely remember what went on. His efforts to find out what did occur lead to a passionate affair.
Germany 2006, Colour, 35mm, 88 mins. German with English subtitles.
Written and directed by Valeska Grisebach. With Andreas Müller, Ilka Welz, Anett Dornbusch, Erika Lemke, Markus Werner, Doritha Richter, Detlef Baumanngi.
UK Release May 2007, BFI Distribution.
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Western
A German construction crew is to build a hydroelectric power station in a remote part of Bulgaria. An EU infrastructure project that everyone knows about - except for the locals. The construction work is not well prepared and threatens to come to a standstill. As the time passes, the workers and the local villagers slowly get to know each other relying on basic English and gestures for their communication. Different alliances and friendships but also rivalries develop. The foreign country and the stunning scenery awaken the German men's sense of adventure, but they are also confronted with their own prejudices and the mistrust of the locals. Director Valeska Grisebach brilliantly manages the tension inherent in this difficult constellation while giving space and complexity to her characters who, like in her other films, are played by non-actors giving stunning performances. A horse, a dispute over water supplies, lonely men that speak little, a duel of some sort seems immanent – Grisebach uses all these typical elements of the Western to tell a very specific, carefully plotted story set in today’s Europe where work will take people more and more often into unfamiliar territories.
Germany / Bulgaria / Austria / Monaco 2017, 121 mins. Director: Valeska Grisebach
With Meinhard Meinhard Neumann, Vincent Reinhardt Wetrek, Adrian Syuleyman Alilov Letifov, Veneta Veneta Frangova, Vyara Vyara Borisova, Wanko Kevin Bashev.
The film will be released in the UK on 13 April by New Wave Films.
http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/
Valeska Grisebach was born in Bremen, Germany. She studied German Studies and Philosophy in Berlin, Munich and Vienna. She is a graduate of the Vienna Film Academy, where she trained in directing under Michael Haneke. Her features include Be My Star, which was nominated for the Adolf Grimme Award in 2002 and won the FIPRESCI Prize at Toronto International Film Festival and the main prize at Torino Film Festival, and Longing (2006), which was shown in the competition at the Berlin International Film Festival. Her latest film Western (2017) premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017.
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