February 2002 - Nr. 2
New German Cinema Hits
San Francisco
TWIG - A new generation of German filmmakers is stepping into the spotlight this week at San Francisco’s Berlin & Beyond festival, the leading U.S. forum for contemporary German-language film. The week-long series of film screenings opened Thursday (January 10) with the U.S. premiere of Zutaten fuer Traeume (Ingredients for Dreams), by Heidelberg director Gordian Maug. A total of twenty motion pictures from Germany, Austria and Switzerland will be featured at the festival this year, organized by the Goethe Institute and San Francisco’s Castro Theatre.
The winner of Berlin & Beyond’s Best First Feature Award is Nathalie Steinbart’s Endstation: Tanke (The Middle of Nowhere), a crime story set in the former East Germany. Festival highlights also include Academy Award nominee Das Experiment, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel; Wilfried Huismann’s Lieber Fidel, the story of Marita Lorenz and her love affair with Fidel Castro; and Andres Veiel’s Black Box Germany, which won the 2001 European Film Award for best documentary. A series of shorts by up-and-coming German film students will be screened on Sunday. More information on the festival can be found at www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco.
