Will Bowen | Noticias del Centro

What is going on in German cinema? No one seems to know, exactly. Not German actors, directors, or even those that put on German film festivals.

But this is just a symptom of a larger problem. We do not seem to know or hear that much about what has been called the “closed book” of modern day German culture and society.

For example, even closer to home, according to the German Consulate in San Diego, there are approximately 92,000 Germans residing in our town, but aside from Oktoberfest, you might not even know it.

To try and rectify this situation, the German Consulate of San Diego, in conjunction with the Goethe Institute, Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, and California German American Chamber of Commerce, decided to put on a film festival each October at The Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) in Balboa Park.

This past October 2012 was the second successful year and the plan is for the festival to continue in the future for years to come.

“The purpose of the festival is to bring the German cause of expressionism to the United States,” said Dr. Stephen Holmes, the Honorary German Consulate.

Angelika Villagrana, a printmaker by trade and director of the festival, shared her ideas about the origins of the festival. “German businessmen initiated the idea of a film festival because they did not want their potential American customers to think that Germany was just about stolidness and precise engineering,” she said.  “They wanted people to see that Germany has a cultural life, too.”

Eckart Rotermund, the Cultural Consultant at the German Consulate is the person that actually founded the festival.  Rotermund and his wife Ellie live six months of the year in San Diego and six months in Germany, in a small town near Hamburg.

“This year we had four wonderful movies which show the spectrum of the social and psychological problems in Germany,” Rotermund said. “These films show the different colors of German culture. They are emotionally honest and powerful. They are not just entertainment and they often do not have a happy ending. They deal with important issues such as immigration, Neo-Nazis, what is going on inside the family, and with jobs.”

“American movies and TV are very popular in Germany, especially the TV show NCIS, which is on twice a week at 8 p.m. – the prime time for [television] viewing,” said visiting German journalist Barbara Renner, who attended the festival.  “German-made films are the non-mainstream ‘indie’ alternative to the dominant American cinema. German films are generally much more gritty, deep, emotional, and complex than their American counterparts. They make you think.”

Rotermund summed up the difference between American and German films as, “American films are more about creating illusions because that is what Americans want. Europeans are interested more in reality as it is.”

“The films we presented are relevant and represent a good cross section of the movies being made in Germany today,” said Penny Hill, a local artist and a volunteer for the festival. “The value in viewing them is that the issues depicted in these films are very similar to the issues we are facing here in the United States.”

Pia Thrasher, another festival volunteer who is a professional actress from Berlin, said, “German filmmakers take risks that they don’t in Hollywood. The current generation of German filmmakers confront things in the German past which were previously taboo. It takes courage to look for the ugly truth.”

The festival this year consisted of four films. The opening film, called Kreigerin or Combat Girls, is the story of how two young women become involved with the Neo-Nazi punk movement, which is a very small but present movement throughout Europe. At this year’s German version of the Oscars, this film won a bronze medal in the best film category, a gold for best screenplay and another gold medal for best actress – Alina Levshin – the star of the movie.

Levshin was on hand for the screening of her film at the festival. She grew up in the city of Odessa in the Ukraine where both her parents were engineers. When she was six years old, her family immigrated to Germany where her father became a jewelry maker and her mother got a job at a physical therapy clinic.

“When I was young I studied ballet,” Levshin said. “I realized at [an] early age that I felt very comfortable performing in front of others on the stage. I knew that this was what I wanted to do with my life.”

Levshin said she tried and failed for two years to get into acting school, but once she stopped trying to please others and decided to be herself, she was accepted into the Conrad Wolff Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam.

“Kreigerin was actually meant to be on TV. It is an experimental or alternative film, but it did so well at the film festivals we submitted it to, we decided to mass release it as a commercial movie.”

Since neither Levshin nor any of the other actors in the film were experienced with Neo-Nazism, she said they watched over 40 hours of documentary footage to help get the roles down.

“My conclusion from playing this part is that the Neo-Nazi kids have been hurt and what they really want is to be loved,” she said.

Thrasher characterized Levshin’s acting in Kreigerin as “ very brave.”

Prior to Kreigerin, the only professional acting Levshin had done was a 10-part TV miniseries about the Russian mafia called, ‘In The Face of Crime.’  She said she identifies with and strives to be like American actress Scarlett Johansson and French actress Juliette Binoche.

The closing film of the festival, called Die Unsichtbare (or Cracks in the Shell), was another wonderful psychological drama about a young actress named Josephine, portrayed by Stine Fischer Christensen, who lands the lead role in a play called Camille.

Josephine’s demanding and emotionally intense director puts her through all sorts of cathartic experiences to prepare her for the role in the play and to develop her personality. This film won for best actress in the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and was also Best Film at Bozen.

Although not quite at the level of the grand German cinema of a few decades ago when German directors such as Hertzog, Fassbinder, Wertmueller, and Wenders were releasing blockbuster German films to an eager America, the current crop of German cinema is producing some excellent and powerful films, with particularly noteworthy female acting, which continue the tradition of Neo-realism developed in Italy right before WWII.

For further information about German films see germancurrentssd.org and German-films.de.

Will Bowen writes about arts and culture. He can be reached at [email protected].