Kelab Seni Filem presents in collaboration with Goethe-Institut Malaysia –
German Film Program #25: Germany’s Great Directors
Sat-Sun 11-12 February 2012
@HELP University, Pusat Bandar Damansara, KL
Enquiries:
012-2255136
Admission by membership: RM60 for 1 year (students RM30); RM40 for
6 mths; RM30 for 4 mths; or RM10 per day.
Free admission for:
* Alliance Francaise members
*HELP University & HELPCAT students
* Students of German at:
- Goethe-Institut Malaysia
- German-Malaysian Institute
- UPM
- Kolej Bandar Utama
- INTEC-UiTM)
Each
film will be introduced by Dr Torsten Schaar, series programmer and lecturer in German at INTEC-UiTM.
Sat 11 Feb 1.15 pm
Rotation
Director: Wolfgang Staudte; 1949, 80 min
Wolfgang
Staudte was called "Germany's conscience". Until the mid-1960s all his
movies threw light
on Nazism, sometimes on less obvious aspects. The title refers both to a
part of a newspaper printing machine, and to the rotation of
generations. Mr. Behnke mostly stays away from politics. But when he is
offered promotion on condition that he becomes a Nazi
party member, he accepts. However, he also provides printing tools for
illegal writings. His young son reports him, and he is imprisoned. Some
years after the war, father and son reconcile. The movie starts and ends
with parallel scenes. First, the father and
his girlfriend are sitting in the grass. Last, the son and his
girlfriend are sitting at exactly the same place, and the girl says that
everything is just repeated. But with a strong feeling of
responsibility the son says that “it must not be repeated.”
Sat 11 Feb 3.30 pm
Young
Törless (Der junge Törless)
Director: Volker Schlöndorff; 1966, 87 min
At
an Austrian boys’ boarding school in the early 1900s, shy, intelligent
Törless observes
the sadistic behavior of his fellow students, but does nothing to help a
victimized classmate – until the torture goes too far. Törless
struggles with the dilemma of evil, as he finds himself going against
the moral values that he has been brought up to respect.
Instead he begins a cerebral journey while he studies the degrading
behaviour of his two peers. Ideas of how evil and good can coexist
within a person begin to baffle Törless, as he struggles with his desire
to further his understanding of the evil nature within
him. He continues to flirt with evil while trying to stay on the good
side, yet eventually he comes to a clearer understanding of what is
right and wrong. Based on Robert Musil's novel The
Confusions of Young Törless, published in 1906.
Sat Feb 11 Feb 6.00 pm
Metropolis
Director: Fritz Lang; 1927, 150 min
Metropolis,
directed by the legendary Fritz Lang, is among the most famous of all
German films and the mother of sci-fi cinema. The film depicts a
dystopian future in which society is thoroughly divided in two: while
anonymous workers conduct their endless drudgery below
ground their rulers enjoy a decadent life of leisure and luxury. When
Freder ventures into the depths in search of the beautiful Maria, plans
of rebellion are revealed and a Maria-replica robot is programmed by mad
inventor Rotwang and master of Metropolis
Joh Fredersen to incite the workers into a self-destructive riot. Metropolis
is presented
here in a newly reconstructed and restored version, as lavish and
spectacular as ever thanks to the discovery of 25 minutes of footage
previously thought lost to the world. Lang's enduring epic can finally
be seen for the first time in 83 years as the director
originally intended.
Sun 12 Feb 1.45 pm
Nosferatu
Director: F.W. Murnau; 1922, 93 min
Nosferatu
was the first screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
It remains among the most potent
and disturbing horror films ever made. The sight of Max Schreck's
hollow-eyed, cadaverous vampire rising creakily from his coffin still
has the ability to chill the blood. Nor has the film dated. Murnau's
elision of sex and disease lends it a surprisingly contemporary
resonance. The director and his screenwriter are true to the source
material, but where most subsequent screen Draculas (whether Bela
Lugosi, Christopher Lee, or Gary Oldman) were portrayed as cultured and
aristocratic, Nosferatu is
verminous and evil. (Whenever he appears, rats follow in his wake.) The
image of the diabolic Nosferatu,
bathed in shadow, sidling his way toward a new victim, imagery of hills,
clouds, trees and mountains, oblique camera angles and jarring
close-ups – the devices that crank up the tension were all to be found
first in Murnau's chilling masterpiece.
Sun 12 Feb 4.00 pm
The Divided Sky (Der
geteilte Himmel)
Director: Konrad Wolf; 1964, 110 min
Following
a nervous breakdown, Rita Seidel returns to the village of her
childhood. She uses this
period of convalescence to mull over her past: She met Manfred
Herrfurth, a chemist ten years her senior, and fell irresistibly in love
with him precisely because his mind was so utterly unlike her own. He
was uncommon-ly intelligent and a keen observer of
both people and things. Many things were new and thrilling; town life
itself as well as her work. But living with Manfred turned out very
differently from what she originally dreamt of. He was embittered and
after seeing a chemical process which he has developed
rejected, he became totally discouraged and left for West Berlin. He was
convinced that Rita would follow him. But she did not. Being separated
from him, taking leave of her great love triggered a psychological
crisis and breakdown. Of course, some wounds will
remain, but Rita is a strong woman who will overcome this crisis.
Sun 12 Feb 7.00 pm
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Die
Ehe der Maria Braun)
Director: R.W. Fassbinder; 1978, 115 min
After
her husband disappears in the last days of World War II, Maria uses her
beauty and ambition
to prosper in 1950s Germany. This film is Fassbinder’s biggest
international box-office success, a heartbreaking character study as
well as a pointed metaphorical attack on a society determined to forget
its past. It is the first film of his BRD (Bundesrepublik
Deutschland) trilogy tracing the history of postwar Germany through the
eyes of three remarkable women (the others were Lola
and Veronika Voss). It garnered him the international acclaim he had always yearned for and
placed his name foremost in the canon of New German Cinema.
S P R E A D T H E W O R D
