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Berlin & Beyond - 2006 Festival coverage
Contributed by Sara Schieron
Wednesday, 11 January 2006
German film has a vibrant heritage. Replete with dynamic camera work
and complex melodramatics, this vivid past is both highlighted and
contributed to by the films in the line-up for this year's Berlin & Beyond Film Festival. With co-presentations by the San Francisco Film Society, the SF Silent Film Festival
and the SF Jewish Film Festival, this festival is orchestrated by the
Goethe Institute and patronized by the San Francisco Film Community and
the International Community alike.
Dubbed Berlin & Beyond to include work from all German-speaking
regions (Germany, Switzerland and Austria) the festival has a penchant
for screening a mix of audience friendly films with more unconventional
fair. This year's list boasts a great number of films featuring
Germany's past, present and future, as well as some notable Celebrity
Guests. The line up includes a panel on Resistance in Film (see
coverage of this event), the Screening of a silent feature made by two
Noir Directing Greats: Edgar Ulmer and Robert Siodmak, a "best of"
selection of prizewinners from German Film Schools, and finally a
Closing Night Film that has become an international success. The
closing night film Barefoot, a love story delving into the tenuousness
of sanity, boasts a long list of European celebrities. With a party
following the closing, the events aren't singularly intellectually
stimulating they're resplendent with libations and worthwhile
entertainment.
The opening night pre-screening party was awash in German dialects.
Though accents and idiomatic phrases varied from clique to clique, the
crowd was a surprising amalgamation of cineastes, Émigré and neophytes,
all curious about the opening film. Two wine tables, a digestives table
and two draft beer stands later, the crowd entered the screening
whetted with Riesling, Spaten and Kirsch, ready to weather the
appropriate congrats and appreciation speeches.
Co-presented by the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the opening
film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, won the Best Picture Awards at the
Berlin Film Fest, The European Film Awards and the German Oscars. Marc
Rothemund, the director of Sophie Scholl took the stage to introduce
his film, and to charmingly alert us of the Q&A he would offer
following the screening. "Stay for the discussion later because I know
a lot", he said in a pleasing accent. And explained that his research
for the film began him on a path which lead him to none other than the
festival's tribute guests, Michael Verhoeven. Verhoeven made one of the
most recognized films on the subject of Third Reich Resistance in 1982.
The White Rose, which is regarded as a classic and was screened as part
of the Verhoeven Tribute on Friday, tells the story of the White Rose:
their writings, their meetings and their ideologies. However,
Verhoeven's White Rose film, as well as the other film on the White
Rose, (Percy Adlon's 1982 film Funf letzte Tage), end with the arrest
of Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans and their friend Christophe Probst.
Celebrating the characters of the White Rose group as virtuous and
incontrovertible idealists these films did not delve too far into the
final days of these historical icons. For lack of better reason, there
was no document that could verify or validate any information about the
final days...until now.
Marc Rothemund uncovered documents that had been hidden by the Third
Reich Gestapo during the war. Having found these documents, he used
them, along with a great number of personal letters written to and
about Scholl, to compose this portrait of her. A national character as
frequently referenced in Germany as JFK is in America, Sophie Scholl
was a member of one of the four groups known to resist against Hitler
during the third Reich. The only female in the group The White Rose,
she and a clutch of fellow college students participated in the
composition, mass production and distribution of resistance-minded
leaflets. Though the members had no unified religious orientation, they
resisted in the interest of human sanctity and did their work to
persuade citizens to recognize the impermanent and possibly disastrous
future of the War.
The film begins with the precarious distribution of the fifth White
Rose Leaflet in a grand gallery at the Munich University. Sophie has a
large pile of leaflets remaining before the classes get out and not
enough time to distribute them as discretely as she did the others.
Valorously, she pushes the stack over the third floor outlook, and
resistance leaflets shower the gallery - a visionary act. When the
janitor catches them, the Gestapo is called in and so begins their
final four days.
As Scholl is perceived as a martyr of sorts: a kind of Mother Mary to
the resistance, the nature of her testimony had not received a great
deal of attention. Rothemund said in his Q&A: "before this, we did
not know that she was lying to survive, just like everyone else". Julia
Jentsche, who is winning awards all over the world for her portrayal of
Sophie Scholl, is brilliantly indefinite. Both humane and stalwart,
she's consoled by her ideals but protective of the fate of others. Her
coy smile, more plain-faced than coquettish, veils everything in a
finish of desperation and ardor.
Though the film is not without its schmaltz and the music a little
"cloak and dagger", it has a clean and intelligent narrative that
presents a view of the history that is fantastically multifaceted:
allowing for readings that explore the history as both a human drama
and the journey of a hero. Based on a 14-page letter written by her
cellmate Johanna to Sophie's parents after her execution, the film
contains a good number of prophetic and moving moments that are so
personal and so silently priceless, it's hard to believe that anyone
witnessed them. Almost an inverse of the expressionism that Germany is
so famed for producing; this epic chamber play is a model for future
retellings. (Shamefully, I understand that Hollywood plans to produce a
story about the White Rose with Christina Ricci as the heroin. I just
keep telling myself that the story is important and she wasn't so bad
in The Ice Storm.)
When Rothemund approached Verhoeven for advice on his research, he
seemed to also be seeking permission. After asking the cinema legend if
he should make the film, Rothemund says Verhoeven has told him "You must
make the film, because it is our work to tell history for the future".
Thematically appropriate to begin this year's Berlin & Beyond, the
festival will promise to offer its audience pictures of the past
(Silent Film Screening), the future (German Film Schools) and the
present (Panel on Resistance in Film). And true to their work as
educators, the Goethe-Institute can only hope we're paying attention.
Festivals 
