BERLINER SCHULE MOVIE TALK

Sunday, March 25 - 2:45pm

Berliner Schule Movie Talk with Marco Abel & Benjamin Heisenberg

Sunday, March 25 at 2:45 p.m.

The MRRMAC's "Retrospective of Contemporary German Cinema" invites you to explore over the next two weeks a cinema that is largely unknown in the U. S. but that has recently received much positive attention in Europe. The world's most famous film magazine, the Cahiers du Cinema, recently coined the phrase nouvelle vague Allemande upon seeing a number of films made by young German directors who in their native country are associated with the so-called "Berlin School." Likewise, the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound devoted a special feature to contemporary German cinema in its December 2006 issue. Although its focus went beyond the films of the Berlin School--S & S also calls attention to some of the more successful mainstream films German cinema has produced in the last few years, including the Oscar nominated Downfall (2004) and The Lives of Others (2006), as well as winners of major international film awards such as Good Bye, Lenin! (2003), The Edukators (2004), and Head-On (2004)--they too took note of this new Teutonic film 'movement'. Simply put, the Berlin School constitutes the first significant collective attempt at advancing the aesthetics of cinema within German narrative filmmaking since the New German Cinema of the 1970s.

Berliner Schule curator Professor Marco Abel and filmmaker Benjamin Heisenberg will lead the discussion about contemporary German cinema following the 12:50 p.m. screening of Sleeper by Heisenberg. Admission to the Movie Talk series is free and open to the public. Admission to Schlaefer/Sleeper is at The Ross' regular admission prices.

Born in Koeln, Germany, Marco Abel is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he teaches film theory and film history. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Violent Affect: Literature, Cinema, and Critique After Representation (University of Nebraska Press), as well as essays on contemporary American literature and film published in journals such as PMLA, Modern Fiction Studies, Angelaki and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He is currently working towards a book-length study of post-wall German cinema.

Born in Tuebingen in 1974, Benjamin Heisenberg studied sculpture at Munich's Akademie der bildenden Kuenste from 1993-1999. He also began studying film at the Academy for Film and Television in Munich in 1997. In 1998, he co-founded the German film magazine Revolver, whose mission of the magazine is perhaps best expressed in the foreword to its 4th issue where the editors write, "film is an art of movement and as such essentially obligated to change human beings. We have to talk about what we want to happen. How should we live? How should we love? Which stories do we need? Each question pertaining to the cinema is political. This magazine wants to be more than merely a collection of texts. At stake is a larger state of affairs. The point is to stand up. To fight! For a new society, a new love, a new cinema." Heisenberg exhibited video installations at galleries and museums in Munich, receiving various awards including the Leonard and Ida Wolf memorial prize and the municipal prize for plastic arts of Munich. After several short and experimental films, Heisenberg co-wrote with Christoph Hochhaeusler the script for the latter's 1st feature, Milchwald (This Very Moment, 2003). Heisenberg's debut feature-length film Schlaefer (Sleeper, 2005) was shown at the prestigious "Un Certain Regard" section at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005. He is currently at work on his 2nd feature.