AUDI FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS

Germany Rising

The 10th annual Audi Festival Of German Films returns to Cinema Paradiso from Thursday, April 14, to Monday, April 18. Tickets and full program details can be found at lunapalace.com.au.

Even a passing mention of “the rise of Germany” can still send nervous tremors from Westminster to Warsaw. Such is Germany’s unsavoury history, the country still evokes deep suspicion internationally.

But the blunt reality is Germany is on the rise; a country finally (and somewhat delicately) burying its ghosts and moving on into the 21st Century. You need only to be a casual consumer of news to notice the greater inches devoted to the country in newspaper columns. Between rescuing Greece from default and vying for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the former bogeyman of continental Europe has become its greatest power and de facto leader; much to the detriment of the French.

While the country embraces its new found confidence - both economic and social - however, its film industry remains preoccupied with Germany’s dark history; again reflected in the 10th annual Audi Festival Of German Films.

“That will possibly never leave us,” festival director Klaus Krischok says of Germany’s guilt over its past. “But it’s the question of which past are we so concerned about - for a very long time German filmmakers were looking into how we deal with the past from 1933 to 1945; the Nazi period. With time flowing down a gentler river obviously there are different pasts and different presents to negotiate; for instance the GDR [German Democratic Republic] past. Political historical subjects are very much the core of what German filmmaking has been for the past 50 years; that’s not going to change.”

While the festival’s WA program is drastically more lean than its east coast counterparts, there are still many highlights on offer which explore a quest to define German identity, such as The Weissensee Saga; a tele-series of life behind the Berlin Wall. Also screening is the German classic Berlin Is Germany; the story of an East German prisoner released into a now unified - and wholeheartedly consumerist - Berlin.

“Coming to terms with the past is something that runs through German filmmaking,” Krischok concludes. “However if I look at my program today the emerging subject is very much identity - who are we today. I think the role of art in society is to question.

“The films in the program are both political and profound - which you would expect from German cinema. And there’s also a new tendency in German cinema that says ‘look, we also need to entertain people’, and we have entertaining ways of telling people good stories, serious stories, meaningful stories in an entertaining way.”

_JULIAN TOMPKIN