The State of German Cinema

from Christian Petzold's "Barbara"

Over at the Goethe Institut site there is a discussion about the current state of German cinema. 

From an outsider’s view it would appear that German film is going strong with recent successes by Christian Petzold, Wim Wenders and his documentary Pina, films by Fatih Akin, and 2007 Oscar-winner The Lives of Others, among others.

 

One the one hand, "the German film industry is currently blessed by a greater variety and richness than it has had for decades.” 

However, in order to receive funding from the German Federal Film Fund a producer must demonstrate that the film has already been signed by a distributor and so there is concern that some films that receive distribution are not worth being screened and prevent innovative films from receiving funding: “it is not surprising that there should be a trend to funding proven forms, stories and names. The air on which artistic risk lives is getting thinner and thinner, because the public image of funding institutions is also at stake and uncertain ventures may endanger it.” 

 

There’s more on German film here. 

The "Flowering" of Turkish Cinema

A number of very fine Turkish films have been released in the U.S. in the last few years, including films by Fatih Akin and Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

Writer Kieron Corless in Sight & Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute, reviews the latest effort by Asli Ozge--Men on the Bridge--and claims that the film is further evidence that "Turkish cinema continues to flower."

(Men on the Bridge) represent(s) the best of what’s happening in sections of (Turkish) cinema: a willingness to grapple with the big themes and ask the right questions, a socially engaged cinema largely untainted by didacticism, which is generally purveyed in solidly naturalist style and firmly embedded in ordinary lives and real worlds, usually at the sharp end of economic circumstance.