Dear Film Friends

Welcome to the 12th Annual Berlin & Beyond Film Festival.

Each year we strive to present a wide range of cinematic experiences— intense, enlightening, piercing and hilarious—and so it is with this year’s selection.

The festival opens and closes with two delightful features; Andreas Dresen’s charming, award-winning SUMMER IN BERLIN will raise the curtain, and final call will be Dorris Dörrie’s THE FISHERMAN AND HIS WIFE, a romantic comedy that puts a color-splashed contemporary spin on the old Grimm’s tale.

The panel discussion topic FILM & VIOLENCE reflects recurring themes in a number of this year’s films, and they, so it seems, reverberate the incessant violence in the world at large: Mirko Borscht’s debut feature COMBAT SIXTEEN, Detlev Buck’s KNALLHART / TOUGH ENOUGH, Matthias Glasner’s THE FREE WILL, and Andres Veiel’s THE KICK will be part of the discussion with European and local filmmakers.

This year’s MK Award for Best First Feature goes to Birgit Möller’s VALERIE. The four other contenders for this prize are also impressive debuts: PINGPONG, WHOLETRAIN, COMBAT SIXTEEN, and GOING PRIVATE.

There were so many great shorts this year that we decided on two SHORT FILM PROGRAMS; be sure to look for THE MOZART MINUTE, a series of one-minute takes on Mozart by 26 Austrian filmmakers. Music lovers may also enjoy: HERE WE COME, which showcases break dancers in former East Germany and won Kinofest Lünen’s Audience Award; MONKS, an award winning documentary about the five American GIs who started the first avant-garde anti-Beatles beat band in cold war era Germany; and EINSTÜRZENDEN NEUBAUTEN, a film of the experimental band’s 2004 performance in the Palast der Republik. Blixa Bargeld will emcee the show!
Laughs and adventure await young audiences, who are sure to enjoy WILDE HÜHNER / WILD CHICKS (Germany), MEIN NAME IST EUGEN / RASCALS ON THE ROAD, (a Swiss box office hit), and LAPISLAZULI, IN THE EYE OF THE BEAR (by Austria’s Wolfgang Murnberger, director of SILENTIUM). Note: The LAPISLAZULI screening will be free for all Bay Area schools.

This year’s newly restored silent film discovery is NATHAN THE WISE / NATHAN DER WEISE. Manfred Noa’s topic—religious tolerance—is as timely today as it was when he filmed Lessing’s famous play in pre-Nazi Germany. Stefan Drössler, director of the Filmmuseum in Munich, will introduce the film, and Dennis James will accompany on the Castro’s Mighty Wurlitzer.

There is much more, come and check it out!

We would like to thank our sponsors and donors for helping us so generously to sustain the festival. And we would like to thank you, our much appreciated audience, for your support. We hope that you will be as thrilled as we are with this year’s program.

Ingrid EggersUlrich Everding

Presenters
Goethe-Institut
Castro Theatre
Co-Founder/Organizer
Ingrid Eggers
Interns
Melanie Duong
Melike Karamustafa
Julia Wülker
Marketing / Special Events
Kit Schulte
Publicist
Larsen Associates
Print Traffic
Daniela Kellner
Volunteer Coordinator
Ninfa Dawson
Catering / Special Events
Fred Martin

Print & Web Design
Sigi Torinus
Printing
Friendship Printing

Ingrid Eggers


Ulrich Everding