Following the panel on Resistance in Film, Berlin & Beyond put on a short series of films as part of a tribute to Veteran Director Michael Verhoeven. Beginning with a screening of Verhoeven's 1982 classic THE WHITE ROSE on Friday January 13th, the tribute screenings hit their peak with a showing of the documentary film THE VERHOEVENS. Felix Moeller's 2003 documentary about the legendary family of artists comfortably ushered the audience into an appearance by the film's central character, and Tributed Director. To the applauding crowd he said, "It's very cold in this beautiful cinema but your welcome is very warm." Goethe Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award in hand, Verhoeven said, "When I made my film, I never thought of what the film might do. I felt it was worthwhile because I cared about it and it came out later that others felt it was important. It's always a good sign if a filmmaker is allowed to make films that hurt. There are so many things in human life that hurt a person or a community and it's so important to make films about them. If you do a hurting work at the end comes proof that you should do this, that it is good."

Son of the famed German comedy director Paul Verhoeven, Michael Verhoeven's films have a history of bringing political and social issues to public attention. His body of work has earned him awards from around the globe, and his considerable contributions to German Television are largely unrecognized by the American market. Truth be told, Michael Verhoeven is not a commonly recognized name in the US. I might contend that his lack of presence in America has something to do with his position outside of the New German Cinema Movement in the 70's. Filmmakers like Herzog and Fassbinder were recognized for being on the "cutting edge" of the German Youth Cinema movement, but as Verhoeven was (literally) a son of his "father's cinema" and his wife (Senta Berger) had performed in a few Hollywood productions, he had a unique role outside of the going radical-film movement of the time. At the same time, we could credit his lack of attention in the US to his body of Television work, to which we lack access. We might also credit his deeply rooted interest in his home turf, which makes his films less marketable to the general American palate. Perhaps this conjecture is myopic, but his films travel well and yet they seldom find their ways onto our shores. Exception granted to his Best Foreign Film Oscar Winner from 1989.

Addressing the topic of his Oscar Winner THE NASTY GIRL, Verhoeven explained that his film was not intended to be the "true story" of Ann Elizabeth Rosmus, the real woman who challenged the history of her town of Passau. What Verhoeven did was use her story as "artistic material". To distance the history from the art (a practice he repeats in a few of his films, OK being an example), he set the story in his home Bavaria. He, however, filmed the movie in Passau. And he said, "The town wanted so much to look liberal they went out of their way to help us." Though the film features his stock strong female character, and the theme of insurgence, Verhoeven made a point of mentioning the activism of his film is not intended to be a solitary activism. "Film", Verhoeven conceded, "does not have the power to change much. But step by step, and as I work in big concepts with small films, I think we all will make change...if we work together."

THE NASTY GIRL, which is a tender comedy that intermingles political resistance with a tone of screwball romance, features Lena Stolze, German Sweetheart, as the persistent young student Sonja, who just knows something happened in her home town during the Third Reich.

Following the feature, which was met by generous applause, Janis Plotnik, founder of the SF Jewish Film Festival, Interim Director for the Film Arts Foundation, and Film Instructor at Stanford, initiated a Q&A with the director about his body of work.  "You went to the state to get money for NASTY GIRL, and the film is such an indictment of the church and municipalities, it seems that to go to the City or State for funding of that shows... well let me use the Yiddish word "chutzpah"." Verhoeven responded, "We asked but no one would give us money for two years. Then, the tide turned because so many journalists had written about it and in the meantime it became popular."

Verhoeven, then addressed the actual political effect of his films, in particular the effect of THE WHITE ROSE.  "At the end of THE WHITE ROSE, there is an epilogue stating that the judges of the people's court who had sentenced these executions during the Reich, none of them were punished for their work. They still worked in Justice and Government. The German Government didn't know what to do when this information was made public. So, their answer was to ban the film abroad. In the end it was better they didn't support me. Because of their opposition the film became stronger and I became stronger because I had to have the drive to keep up."

Verhoeven's most recent film, about the Wehrmacht, will be premiering shortly in the Berlin Film Festival. The project, which took 8 years to make, was filmed in Russia. "I looked for eye witnesses but they were very hard to find because the crimes happened in 1941. We did find witnesses who were children in '41 and the film is based on this original material and first hand accounts." Verhoeven's film, which centers around the crimes of the Wehrmacht and the complicity that British Captor Officers may have offered them by ignoring their discussions about planned human rights abuses, will challenge the prevailing representations of the Wehrmacht army as a "Clean" Army. "The Wehrmacht really was involved in human rights abuses but people think we have to deny this because "this army has to stay clean" but the English Army knew what the Werhmacht was planning and they paid no attention to it because they were only interested in military secrets." The film, entitled UNKNOWN SOLDIER, will be another in his legacy of politically minded portraits of the landscape of his nation. "I haven't had any problems with it yet", he said, "because no one's seen it yet."  Presumably, we can hope the film meets resistance so that it might change the landscape of history, as have his other contributions to the cinematic cannon.