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The Week in Germany: Culture December 8, 2006 German Cinema Roundup German moviegoers seem to have rediscovered something they forgot about some time ago - the German film. 2006 is shaping up to be the best year for German productions in decades, and the laurels are piling up for German productions at home and abroad. U.S. moviegoers will get a look at some of the highlights in 2007. Could 2007 be the year that German films break out of art-houses with another hit like "1998's Run Lola Run"? TWIG certainly hopes so. Here is a roundup of the latest encouraging developments: German productions acheive 25 percent market share in Germany for the first time in decades These prizes capped off an extremely successful 2006 for German film as a whole. A string of successful new productions has allowed German films to take a market share in their home country of 25 percent in 2006 for the first time in decades. Among them is Tom Tykwer's film version of Patrick Süskind's novel "Perfume – The Story of a Murderer" (Das Parfum - Die Geschichte eines Mörders). Others are the fairytale parody "Seven Dwarves - the Forest is not Enough", done by Otto Waalkes, and Sönke Wortmann's football documentary "Germany. A Summer Fairytale". Bernd Eichinger's thriller about the murderous perfume maker, filmed at a cost of around 50 million euros, has thus far been seen by a cinema audience of 5.3 million. This aromatic drama is being brought to US cinemas on December 28 by DreamWorks. Links:
"The Lives of Others" snags the top prize at European Oscars Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s drama “The Lives of Others” was named European film of the 2006 at the 19th European Film Awards last Saturday in Warsaw. The first-time director’s film about an officer of the East German secret police who spies on a famous playwright and his girlfriend beat out “Volver” by Pedro Almodovar, Ken Loach’s “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”, “The Road to Guantanamo” by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross, “Breakfast on Pluto” by Neil Jordan, and “Grbavica” by Bosnia’s Jasmila Zbanic. Donnersmarck also picked up the European Screenwriter 2006 and actor Ulrich Mühe won the European Actor 2006 award for his performance as Gerd Wiesler, a Stasi officer who begins to sympathize with his surveillance targets. Links:
Wim Wenders returns to Germany for latest film project As German cinema blossoms artistically and commercially, Wim Wenders is once again turning his lens, long-focused on America, toward his native Germany. After a number of films set in the American West, including “Paris, Texas” and “Don’t Come Knocking” Wenders, who was awarded the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987 for his ode to a then still divided Berlin in “Wings of Desire”, has announced that he will return to familiar territory in his next film. Reticent with the details, the director described his new project as follows: “I never speak about a movie that I have still not started yet. I know that it will be about Germany and it will take place mostly in the East, a part of the country that I have only had the chance to know for the past 15 years.” Links:
Sundance to present three German films Meanwhile, the next Sundance International Film Festival taking place in Park City, Utah, from 18 to 28 January, 2007, will feature three German films in its official program. "Comrades in Dreams", by Uli Gaulke, will be feature in the world cinema competition’s documentaries category. In addition, two German-international co-productions will be screened in the world cinema dramatic category – the German-Belgian co-production "KHADAK", by Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens, and the Israeli-German co-production "Sweet Mud" by Dror Shaol.
Creator of “Prison Break” working on US remake of “Das Experiment” In other film news, Illinois-born Paul Scheuring, the creator of the hit American television drama “Prison Break”, is working on a U.S. remake of the German film “Das Experiment”, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. This gripping and disconcerting film, starring Moritz Bleibtreu of “Run, Lola Run” fame, was based on the infamous “Stanford Prison Experiment” of 1971 that separated two groups of men into “inmates” and “guards” in a fictional prison setting, with disastrous consequences. As recently reported by German-born, New-York based film journalist Andreas Fuchs, Scheuring has written a script for the American version of the film and plans to start filming by next spring.
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