Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Barry Avrich about Prosecuting Evil
Barry Avrich
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Ben Ferencz was a diminutive boy, the son of a bootmaker, who spoke no English, living in Hell’s Kitchen. 25 years later he’s heading a legal team as a chief prosecuter at the Nuremberg Trials in post-war Germany. How did he get from here to there? And where did he take his of belief in international law and the responsibility of governments for their war crimes?
Prosecuting Evil: the Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz is the title
of a new documentary that tells Ben Ferencz’s story in his own voice, from the Nuremberg Trials to the International Criminal Court. He narrates his own life in a series of interviews, illustrated with ample period photos, news footage and personal pics and documents. Supplemented by words from family, colleagues and famous lawyers (like Rosalie Abella and Fatou Bensouda) the film deals with justice on an international level.
It’s written and directed by award-wininng Canadian producer and filmmaker Barry Avrich, well known both for his documentaries (Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story; Blurred Lines: Inside the Art World) and his films of Shakespearean plays.
I spoke to Barry in studio at CIUT 89.5 FM.
Prosecuting Evil premiered at TIFF18 and is opening today in Toronto at the Ted Rogers Hot Docs CInema.
Christoph Schlingensief: Approach those you fear. Films discussed: The German Chainsaw Massacre, The 120 Days of Bottrop, Foreigners Out! Schliegensief’s Container
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Christoph Schlingensief was a performance artist, TV producer and filmmaker known for his pranks. A Till Eulenspiegel for the new millenium. He was born in 1960 in Oberhausen, Germany and made his first film while still a kid. He became a devotee of avant garde film, music videos, mainstream Hollywood, and the New German Cinema.
His work incorporates Brechtian theatre techniques and its exaggerated, in-your-face style. In any given film you can find contemporary art, TV clips, historical footage, and even samples of his own past work, edited into the project. He became widely known in German-
speaking Europe — though not outside it — for his TV shows, especially an impromptu talk show shot on Berlin’s U-Bahn. Sadly, he died of cancer in 2010 at the age of 49.
You’ve probably never seen his work, so this week, I’m going to talk about a special series of three movies now playing in Toronto, sponsored by the Goethe Institut (and co-presented by the Laser Blast Film Society and KinoVortex). There’s a look at German unification using cannibal serial killers, an epitaph to New German Cinema in the form of naked people running rampant, and a take on right-wing politcs and xenophobia using a mock reality show… that “deports” undocumented immigrants!
The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990) (Das deutsche Kettensägen Massaker a.k.a. Blackest Heart)
It’s Germany just after the reunification of East and West. Almost everyone has moved westward, but a tiny few remain in the East. This includes the beautiful but downtrodden Clara (Karina Fallenstein) who is repeatedly abused by her drunk husband. She fights him off with a kitchen knife, jumps into her Trabant and heads for greener 
pastures. But little does she know, she’s going from bad… to wurst.
She meets up with her boyfriend Artur only to see a stranger slash up poor Artur’s body. And when she seeks help at roadside inn, she’s accosted by a sex-craazed lesbian dressed in black (Sussanne Bredehöft, who also plays Clara’s husband), 
and her equally weird colleagues. Behind closed doors they put rubber masks on anyone who stays there and brutally chops them up before grinding them into sausage. Can Clara defeat these evil cannibals? Or will she end up on someone’s BBQ?
The German Chainsaw Massacre is the second chapter of Schlingensief’s German Trilogy. It’s a genuine horror movie, but so over-the-top that you can’t take it seriously. Its actually very funny, in a disgusting sort of way, mimicking American slasher movies while also satirizing German fears of reunification. (I think it’s also a comment on how ordinary people in the East were treated like pack animals — or sausages! — to feed the hungry West German labour market.)
The 120 Days of Bottrop (1997)
Whatever happened to German Cinema? Schlingensief wants to know. Where are the great directors like Fassbinder, the stars like the beautiful Romy Schneider and 70s heartthrob Helmut Berger? So he decides to get Fassbinder’s stars back together again to film a remake of Pasolini’s most controversial movie: Salo or 120 days of Sodom.
The original film was about Nazi occupied northern Italy, where they conducted horrific S&M orgies using people as sex slaves for their entertainment. This new
version, though, is a low budget German art film, and the actors only agree to come out of retirement for the chance of working with Helmut Berger (or maybe sex with the nude models.)
But professional jealousy and rivalry soon takes over, and everything falls apart. The “director” is a mock-Fassbinder complete with fake moustache, while the cast is composed of leches and divas who are going crazy, entering dementia or attempting suicide.
Can this film ever be made? And will Helmut ever show up?
This film is a panoply of meta-references to other movies. Schlingensief is there as Jesus on the cross (who a Klansman tries to set on fire) alongside medieval nuns (Pasolini-style), New York pop-art fashion (Warhol-style), with cameo performances ranging from the omnipresent Udo Kier, to Roland Emerich, Germany’s big-budget schlockmeister. Bottrop is a funny (if ridiculous) satirical look at the last gasp of New German Cinema.
Foreigners Out! Schliegensief’s Container (2002)
Dir: Paul Poet
It’s June 2000 in peaceful, culture-loving Vienna, when something unheard of happens. The conservative party forms a coalition with the ÖVP, Austria’s extreme rightwing Freedom party, headed by Nazi apologist Jörg Haider. The ÖVP is populist and xenophobic, portraying asylum seekers as drug dealers and killers (sound familiar?). That’s when Christoph Schlingensief set up a display – inside a shipping container – right beside Vienna’s Opera house, called Please Love Austria, to commemorate 
this coalition.
He brought in a dozen people of varied ethnicities, dressed them in fright wigs and let them live there for a week on display, in person and online, 24/7. And like the reality show Big Brother, viewers are asked to vote to evict two contestants each day. The catch is, these evicted contestants, whom he says are illegal immigrants, are led off by security guards and (supposedly) deported! And just in case you didn’t get the message, a huge white banner on the container’s roof says: Ausländer Raus! (Foreigners Out!) And Schlingensief gleefully announces the colour of the people Austrians vote to deport – dark skin first, light skin later.
Naturally, this art installation triggers extreme reactions. On the far right, people began to shout and demonstrate to deport all foreigners. Some leftists take it at 
face value, and attempt to storm the container to “rescue” the so-called foreigners and tear down the sign. And many in the middle hate the negative attention it brought to Austria… though it’s Austria that voted Haider in.
This documentary covers the art installation and the public reaction to it over its week-long run. And punctuated it with the media coverage it received, notably from the Krone group of wildly popular tabloids, who many blame for Haider’s election.
The show never overtly takes the standpoint of the immigrants. They’re just props in his sideshow. Rather it exposes society’s creepiest undercurrents that are usually kept hidden. And it illustrates Schlingensief’s theory that the best way to expose the worst beliefs is to repeat them out loud where everyone can hear them. The louder the better.
It’s only through exaggeration that we can show reality. This exhibit ran almost twenty years ago, but I think anyone can see that it’s more relevant now than ever.
The German Chainsaw Massacre, 120 Days of Bottrop, and Foreigners Out! Schliegensief’s Container are playing on May 10th, 15th and 17th at the Tiff Bell Lightbox as part of Goethe Institiute’s three-part tribute to avant garde filmmaker Christoph Schlingensief.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Source: Christof Schlingensief: art without borders, (c) 2010, Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer, editors, with a foreward by Alexander Kluge.
Daniel Garber talks with director Adam Bhala Lough about Alt Right: Age of Rage at #Hotdocs
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos by Jeff Harris.
In post-WWII America, the extreme right operated undercover. Klansmen wore hoods and Nazis were reviled in the mainstream. But recently — especially since the election of Donald Trump — the 
ultra-right has re-emerged as a significant, recognizable group. And under self-proclaimed leaders like Richard Spencer, they have redubbed themselves the “alt right”. But what is the alt right, who are its members and what do they want?
Alt Right, Age of Rage is a new documentary that looks at this rise, which culminated in the notoriously violent, 
torchlit rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. The film follows neo-Nazis like Spencer and their encounters with anti-fascist protesters like Daryle Lamont Jenkins. The film was directed by Adam Bhala Lough, known for documenting fringe 
political groups, whether on the left, the right or neither. Alt Right: Age of Rage had its Canadian debut at Hotdocs Toronto’s International Documentary Film Festival.
I spoke with Adam in studio at CIUT.
He talked about the “Alt Right”, Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, white supremacy, platforming, Charlottesville, The Southern Poverty Law Centre, Daryle Lamont Jenkins, Antifa… and more!
Alt Right: Age of Rage premiered at Toronto’s Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival.
Three Historical Dramas. Films reviewed: Budapest Noir, An Act of Defiance, Bye Bye Germany
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com.
Spring Film Festival Season continues in Toronto, with Hotdocs rounding up its fnal weekend. Remember, daytime tickets to these amazing documentaries are free for all students and seniors.
And starting up now is Toronto’s Jewish Film Festival, featuring comedies, dramas, TV and documentaries from around the world. This week I’m looking at three historical dramas now playing at TJFF. There’s a mystery/thriller set in Budapest in the 30s, a comedy/drama in Frankfurt in the 40s, and a courtroom drama in Pretoria in the 60s.
Budapest Noir
Dir: Éva Gárdos
It’s 1936, and everyone in Budapest is preparing for the state funeral of Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös. Everyone but cynical reporter Szigmond Gordon (Krisztián Kolovratnik). Crime’s his beat, not politics and cigarettes and bourbon
are his life’s blood. And his only distraction is a beautiful woman. So he’s pleasantly surprised when he meets a mysterious woman in a downtown cafe. But today’s potential love interest is tomorrow’s news story when he finds her body in a pool of blood.
He calls on his ex-girlfriend Kristina, a photographer (Réka Tenki) to take pics of the crimes scene. (She’s back in Budapest after smuggling shocking photos out of Germany.) But when he tries to 
investigate the murder, he faces roadblocks at every turn, with no one but Kristina to help him. The chief of police, the politicians, and even members of the underworld seem to be blocking him from finding the truth. And for some reason her body has disappeared from the morgue.
His search leads him to pornographers, fascist gangs, a coffee
importer, a secret communist meeting, a madame at a brothel, and a punch-drunk boxer, all in an attempt to solve the mystery. Will he find what he seeks? Or is he digging too deep, uncovering things journalists aren’t supposed to see?
Budapest Noir is a look at the underbelly of a huge city in turmoil in turbulent times. It’s presented in a film noir style, narrated by a Bogart-type character complete with trenchcoat and hat, and borrows images from dozens of famous movies. Occasionally it veers from pastiche into parody with all its hollywood memes, but generally it’s a solid and well-acted homage, full of surprises.
An Act of Defiance
Dir: Jean Van De Velde
It’s 1963 in South Africa. The police raid a secret meeting in a farm house in Rivonia, arresting everyone there. The meeting was by the heads of umKhonto we Sizwe, the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress. Charged with sabotage, the accused face death by hanging, and it looks like they’re heading that way. Until a respected white Afrikaner lawyer, Bram Fischer (Peter Paul Muller), agrees to head the defence team. The 
defendants include Walter Sisulu, Harold Wolpe and none other than Nelson Mandela himself.
But the prosecutors are working hand-in-hand with the police, the 
government and the secret service. They tap phones, record private lawyer-client conversations, and send spies out at night to take pictures through windows. Turns out Fischer is not just a random defence lawyer helping out; he has deep ties to the anti-apartheid movement. As the trial progresses, he and his 
family become the targets of underhanded campaigns. Can he convince a conservative judge to save the defendents’ lives? Or will they, and he, end up in the gallows?
This is a fascinating and intense courtroom drama, about a 
period of South African history largely unknown outside of that country. It includes Mandela’s famous “I’m prepared to die” speech given during the trial, but he and the other defendents are minor characters. It’s mainly about Fischer and his family, including his wife Mollie (beautifully played by Antoinette Louw) and the fight against apartheid. It also includes some thrilling moments about the family avoiding an evil police force.
This is another good film to catch.
Bye Bye Germany (Es war einmal in Deutschland)
Dir: Sam Garbarski (Based on the novels of Michel Bergmann)
It’s occupied Frankfurt just after WWII. A quarter of a million holocaust survivors are living in DP (displaced persons) camps in central Europe, run by allied forces. They’re waiting to emigrate to America or Palestine. But in the meantime they have to support themselves. Enter David Bermann (Moritz Bleibtreu) a sweet-talking teller of tales with a pencil thin mustache and a mysterious past. He says his family has been in 
dry goods for generations. So he recruits a ragtag bunch of salesmen to help peddle his linens. But they wonder why he keeps disappearing for hours at a time. Where does he go?
He’s being interrogated by the stern but beautiful Special Agent 
Sara Simon (Antje Traue) a German-speaking G.I. assigned to weed out war criminals and collaborators from among the refugees. Why was Bermann given special treatment by the SS? His answer? He told funny jokes. Will Sara believe his outlandish stories? Will his business venture pan out? And will he and his friends make enough money to say Auf Wiedersehen to Deutschland?
Bye Bye Germany is a very entertaining, but bittersweet, memoir of life as a jew in postwar Frankfurt. Antje Traue is the perfect foil for Bleibtreu’s charming but sketchy Bermann. I liked this movie.
You can catch Bye Bye Germany, An Act of Defiance and Budapest Noir at TJFF over the next two weeks. Go to TJFF.com for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with director Håvard Bustnes about his new doc Golden Dawn Girls
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s the 2010s in Greece. The EU and northern European banks are foreclosing on Greek debt, demanding the country adopt austerity measures. There is talk of Grexit — Greece 
pulling out of the European Union altogether. Newcomers, fleeing war in the Middle East and Africa, are seeking refuge on their shores. And new political parties are springing up amidst the turmoil, with one, the leftist Syriza, eventually rising to prominence. But on the extreme right, another party arises. Golden Dawn combines Nazi regalia, fascist ideology, and anti-immigrant violence in its attempt to seize power. What is Golden Dawn, 
what does it stand for, and who are the people in its inner circle?
A bold new documentary looks at the party from an insiders’ point of view. The filmmaker gained access by appealing to the women closest to the party leaders – a 
mother, a wife and a daughter – who offer their candid insights while the men are in jail. The documentary is Golden Dawn Girls, by the noted Norwegian filmmaker Håvard Bustnes.
I spoke to Håvard in Norway via telephone from CIUT 89.5 FM in Toronto.
Golden Dawn Girls will have its North American premier at Toronto’s Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival on May 1st, 2018.
Strong female roles. Films reviewed: In the Fade, The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches PLUS Forever My Girl
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s funny. A few years ago I was wondering what happened to all the female movie stars? They had been pushed into the margins, with hardly any good female roles. This year, though, there are more great female performances than you shake a stick at. Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird, Francis McDormand in Three Billboards, Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water, Daniela Vega in A Fantastic Woman, Claire Armstrong in Dim the Fluorescents, Annette Bening in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, and so on.
So this week I’m looking at some more powerful performances by women in very intense movies. There’s a woman in Hamburg confronting Nazi terrorists, and an isolated teenager in rural Quebec reacting to the outside world.
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches (La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes)
Wri/Dir: Simon Lavoie
It’s some point in the distant past in rural Quebec. Two brothers with dirty faces and scruffy hair (Marine Johnson and Antoine L’Écuyer) live with their father on an isolated farm in the woods. They’re close enough to the next village to hear churchbells in the distance, but they never go there. It’s a grand old stone manor filled with empty rooms and whole sections blocked off. The teenaged boys are forbidden from seeing them. If you go there, says their father (Jean-François Casabonne) you will die.
The house is lit by church candelabra arranged on altars with lanterns carried through the dark halls. The boys can read but most books are forbidden. They listen to liturgical records on their wind-up gramophone. And the younger brother sometimes visits a terrible monster, locked up in a dark shed. He feeds it apples and pieces of bread through gaps in a wooden cage.
The boys dress in frontier clothes and priest’s hassocks. Younger brother has to keep watch – his bullying older brother often jumps him in the woods and does something to him he doesn’t understand. He keeps his chest tightly 
wrapped in cloth – his father insists. But he still has questions. He has seen pigs mating in the sty. Why don’t I have a penis? His father says, I told you, it fell off when you were younger. He also believes babies are made out of clay.
It’s a rough life, but it’s all they know, save for faint memories of a beautiful woman in a white dress, and two little girls in pinafores. In fact they can’t remember ever seeing someone from the outside. Until one day when a young man (Alex Godbout) drives to the house on a motorcycle. The town needs to survey the property, he says, but Père and Frère chase him away with their rifles. Is he a knight in shining armour? Or does 
he signal an invasion by the churchgoing villagers? And when something happens to Père, the two boys discover the house’s secrets, and some of their own. Like the fact that the younger brother… is pregnant!
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches is a powerful, surreal drama with an almost fairytale feel. It tells the story of naïve teenagers whose father (who went mad) is their only source of information. It’s shot in stunning black and white, and is filled with sinister images of the all-pervasive Québec church. It’s creepily fascinating with fantastic acting by L’Écuyer and Johnson. This is a great — but highly disturbing — movie.
In The Fade (Aus dem Nichts)
Wri/Dir: Fatih Akin
It’s present-day Hamburg. Katja Sekerci (Diane Kruger) is a happily married woman with a young son named Rocco. She likes artistic tattoos, going to saunas with her best friend Brigitte and making love to her husband. Nuri is of Kurdish ancestry, but wears his hair like a samurai. They were married when he was still in prison. Now he runs a translation office in a Turkish section of town.
Katja’s life is nearly perfect until something devestating happens. An explosioin levels her husband’s office killing him and their son. It turns out it was a bomb, possibly the work of terrorists. And Katja thinks she knows who did it. She saw a blonde woman park her bike right in front of the office on the day of the explosion. In fact she even spoke to her so she knows she’s German. But the police, the press, even her own mother, keep looking at the victim as the cause of the killing. Is it the Turkish Mafia. Islamic 
terrorists? Drugs?
Katie talks with Danilo her lawyer and good friend (Denis Moschitto) to make sense of it all. They realize it must be be a right wing terrorist — a nazi — who did this. Eventually the police make an arrest based on her description, and two Nazis, a young couple named Edda and Andre Möller (Hanna Hilsdorf, Ulrich Brandhoff) are put on trial for the killings. But will they be convicted?
In the Fade is a great dramatic thriller that combines Katja’s grief and sorrow with her need for vengeance. It’s told in three chapters: her interactions with her family, in-laws and the police; the trial itself; and the heart-pumping aftermath, when she decides to track down and punish the killers. Diane Kruger is just fantastic as Katje, the best I’ve ever seen her, and she puts her whole body and soul into the part. You can really feel her anger, grief and frustration, but she never overacts.
I liked this movie a lot.
Also opening today is this romantic drama:
Forever My Girl
Wri/Dir: Bethany Ashton Wolf (based on the novel by Heidi McLaughlin)
Liam Page (Alex Roe) is a Country & Western superstar. He writes and performs his own songs with a back-up band. He can fill a New Orleans stadium with adoring fans. Teenaged girls will chase him, screaming, down a city street when he appears in public. They love his smooth voice, handsome face and his sentimental songs. But offstage Liam is a real prick. He’s emotionally vapid, sleeping with different groupies each night. He’s rude and abusive toward his affable, bearded manager Sam (Peter Cambor) and his LA publicist Doris. And he’s addicted to alcohol and drugs.
He carries only one thing to remind him of his life as a smalltown boy: an old flip phone with a recorded 
message. But after a tragic turn of events, he finds himself back in his hometown, St Augustine, LA, for a funeral. He may be famous, but in “the Saint” his name is mud. You see, he was engaged to marry his highschool sweetheart Josie (Jessica Rothe) eight years earlier, but left her standing at the altar, without an explanation or apology. When she sees him now, Josie greets him with a sucker punch. And he discovers he has a 7-year-old daughter named Charly (Abby Ryder Forston) that Josie has been raising on her own.
Can Liam change his ways and conquer his demons? Will Josie ever talk to him again? Can he spend time with his precocious daughter? And can his father, the town preacher, forgive his selfish son?
I’m not a big fan of country music or conventional romances involving small-town churchgoers — this is not the kind of movie I rush to see. It takes few risks and most of the characters walked straight out of Central Casting. But I found it entertaining anyway. I assumed the aw-shucks, southern boy Liam was played by a non-actor, a country singer who basically played himself — woodenly, at that — and performed his own tunes. Turns out I was way off the mark. This UK actor had me convinced he was a real country singer from the Deep South!
In the Fade and Forever My Girl open today in Toronto; check your local listings. The Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches is playing at Canada’s Top Ten festival; go to TIFF.net for details. Also opening today is Hostiles (read my review here) and My Piece of the City (listen to my interview with director Moze Mossanen here).
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
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Daniel Garber talks with Andrew Gregg about Skinhead, his new documentary on CBC Docs POV
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Neo-nazis, white supremacists and the alt right have captured headlines for more than a year now. Vandalism has escalated to demonstrations, shootings to terrorism. And some say the election of Donald Trump has given these groups new power in mainstream politics. But surely that’s an American phenomenon, with no traction in Canada….right? A new 
documentary looks at the extreme right in Canada and pokes holes in the illusions of complacent Canadians.
The documentary is called Skinhead. It tell the story of a former skinhead and white supremacist named Brad, his beliefs, and what led him to 
abandon his ideology. Skinhead is written and directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Andrew Gregg. (I previously interviewed him here and here.)
I spoke with Andrew in studio at CIUT 89.5 FM.
Skinhead will be broadcast on CBC TV on Sunday, November 26th at 9:00 pm.
Runaways. Films reviewed: Across the Waters, Wonderstruck
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Film Festival season continues in Toronto. Planet in Focus is an environmental film festival that bring eco heroes – like astronaut Roberta Bondar – to Toronto along with amazing documentaries from around the world. Everything from a grocery co-op in Brooklyn to a plastic recycling plant in Shandong, China to Genetically Modified Organisms, which are, well, everywhere. Go to Planetinfocus.org for more information.
ImagineNative is indigenous films and media arts, including an art crawl around the city, a wall is a screen, and many workshops, breakfasts and events. It has scary movies, westerns, docs, dramas, animation and so much more. Go to imaginenative.org for details.
This week I’m looking at two movies about people running away. One has a boy and a girl running away to New York City to find family. And the other has a father fleeing Copenhagen to save his family.
Across the Waters
Dir: Nicolo Donato (Brotherhood)
It’s 1943, in German-occupied Copenhagen. It’s an uneasy peace, but because of an agreement the Germans leave the Danes alone. Arne (David Dencik) is a guitarist in a jazz band. He is passionately in love with his wife Miriam (Danica Curcic) and they spend all their free time having sex. But only after they put their 6 year old son to bed. Jacob (Anton Dalgård Guleryüz) likes listening to Danish poems and playing with his teddy bear. Everything is going fine – no need to worry about the Nazis; this is Denmark, not Poland. Until that knock on the door comes one night – the Germans are coming! Run! Now!
The family is Jewish and the Nazis are there to take them away.
There’s only one way to escape; and that’s by boat to neutral Sweden. But how? They make their way north to a small port called Gilleleje, where they hear the fisherman are helping people across the sea. But when they get there things aren’t as good as they hoped.
One fisherman named Kaj is demanding high fares. But Arne and Miriam are nearly broke. There are way too many refugees in the town to keep 
them a secret from the Nazis. While some of the locals – the police chief, the pastor – are risking their lives to save fellow Danes, others have questionable motives. Who can be trusted, and who is collaborating? And will the family escape to Sweden?
Across the Waters is a fictional retelling of a true story. 
The movie is Danish but it was shot in Ireland to give it that period, seaside look. I always like a good WWII drama, and there have been some great Danish films, like Flame and Citron and Land of Mine, that deal with the topic. This one is smaller and more of a family drama than an action thriller, but it does keep the tension and suspense at a high level. (Including a scene reminiscent of Melville’s Army of Shadows.)
Worth seeing.
WonderStruck
Wonderstruck
Dir: Todd Haynes
It’s the late 1970s in Gunflint Lake, Minnesota. Ben (Oakes Fegley) is a 12 year old boy who lives with his aunt’s family. He suffers from strange dreams since his mom, a librarian, was killed in a car accident. Some nightmares involve being chased by wolves, but others are stranger still. They tell a continuous story, night after night, and they’re silent, and in black and white — just like an old movie.
These dreams tell a parallel story about Rose (Millicent Simmonds) a 12-year-old girl who lives in her father’s mansion in 1927 like a bird in a gilded cage. He’s a rich, divorced man in Hoboken, New Jersey. Rose’s head is in the stars – she spends most of her days reading title cards at silent movies or collecting photos she cuts 
from magazines. She’s obsessed with a certain pale-skinned movie actress named Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore).
Rose doesn’t go to school. But when she discovers her local theatre is switching to talkies she she knows it’s time for a change. She’s deaf and can only communicate by writing things down or reading words on a screen. So she bobs her hair and takes the ferry into Manhattan where she hopes to find the legendary actress.
Ben, meanwhile, is an orphan. His mom never told him who his birth father was. But looking through her things he finds an old 
bookmark with a message. It was tucked into a book about a museum collection, and the message was written by someone named Danny who visited their town before he was born. Could this be his dad?
But when he tries to call him up long distance, lightening strikes — literally. The electric shock travels through the phone line, leaving Ben deaf (just like Rose). But he catches a bus to New York City anyway, arriving at the Port Authority carrying just the name of a bookstore and a handful of cash. There he meets another 12-year-old named Jamie (Jaden Michael) who befriends him and says he’ll help him find his (possible) dad.
Jamie gives Ben a place to stay… a storage rooms at the Museum of Natural History (where Jamie’s father works). Will Ben find his dad? And will Rose find the movie star? Can two deaf 12-year-olds 
survive in a huge city? And what connects the two runaways?
Wonderstruck is a wonderful kids movie about seeking the unknown. It’s full of dreams, coincidences, and flashbacks, too many for it to be a real story. But it works great as a kids’ fantasy. It’s also beautifully made, using amazing animated paper models to tell part of the story. And through ingenious special effects, it incorporates the two main characters into what looks like period footage — of streetlife in New York in the gritty but colourful 70s, and the fuzzy black-and-white 20s.
Just wonderful.
Wonderstruck opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. Across the Waters is playing Sunday afternoon as part of the Chai Tea and Movies programme. Go to tjff.com for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Goethe Films: Margarethe & Barbara. Films reviewed: Hannah Arendt, Rosa Luxemburg, Marianne & Juliane
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Margarethe von Trotta is a leading German director and one of the only women in the New German Cinema (Neuer Deutscher Film) of the 60s, 70s and 80s. She co-wrote and co-directed (with Volker Schlöndorff) the first commercially successful film of that movement – The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. Though her films are about dynamic women and told from a female point of view, von Trotta has distanced herself from some schools of feminist cinema. She creates movies about women, but not “Frauenfilm” (women’s movies).
She started her career as an actress, so she knows how to draw amazing performance from her actors. And she has a decades-long working relationship with one actor in particular: Barbara Sukowa.
Barbara Sukowa is a reknowned actor with a beautiful, square face that she completely transforms to match each character she portrays. She can play a role as both passionate and restrained, her emotions churning just beneath the surface.
This week I’m looking at three great films (based on historical figures) directed by Von Trotta and starring Sukowa. They’re part of a special series called Goethe Films: Margarethe and Barbara playing on the 3rd, 5th and 12th of October at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. There’s a melodrama about a revolutionary, a family drama about a terrorist and her sister, and an intellectual drama about a journalist-philosopher.
Hannah Arendt (2012)
It’s the 1960s in New York city. Hannah Arendt (Sukowa) is German-born writer and philosopher who is part of the intellectual scene in that city. She studied philosophy under Heidegger – and was his lover — but when the Nazis came to power she was stripped of her credentials as a Jew, while he embraced Nazism. She fled to France and later the US. Now she is offered a strange assignment by The New Yorker magazine – to cover the upcoming trial in Jerusalem of the notorious Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was one of the main architects of the Holocaust and the murderer of millions. He testifies in a glass booth. Eichmann denies everything and paints himself as a gentle bureaucrat.
But Arendt’s description of Eichmann’s behaviour as the Banality of Evil — that of an ordinary-looking man who killed so many – meets with widespread shock and criticism, even among her friends and colleagues. Her writings on totalitarianism, guilt and responsibility reverberate around the world.
Hannah Arendt is a beautiful and magisterial depiction of a major intellectual figure as iconoclast, a hero fighting the tides. It’s also a biopic, given to long pauses of contemplation. And one that somehow seems kinder to Heidegger than to Arendt’s critics in academia.
Rosa Luxemburg (1986)
It’s 1900, the start of a century of change. Revolution is brewing in Russia and Germany is close behind. Rosa Luxemburg (Sukowa) is an educated, Polish-Jewish woman who walks with a limp. She is also a social democratic revolutionary, a firebrand who writes articles and gives passionate speeches. Now she lives in Berlin after being jailed and nearly executed in Warsaw.
She’s in a tempestuous relationshio with her sometime lover and fellow revolutionary Leo Jogisches (Daniel Olbrychski). But when she discovers he is having an affair, she begins a relationship with a friend’s adult son. And, with Karl Liebknecht, she 
founds the Red Flag newspaper and the Spartacus party, a Marxist (but not Leninist) Socialist party.
She calls for a massive strike to resist the war but nationalism is on the rise. Bloody Rosa is arrested and jailed during WWI as a political prisoner. Will her political dreams ever be realized, or will nationalism prevail?
Rosa Luxemburg is a fascinating historical biopic, told in a melodramatic style. There are as many scenes of her shouting to cheering crowds as there are of her gardening in prison or writing letters. A costume drama, this captures nineteenth-century romanticism in its music, poetry and idealism.
Marianne & Juliane (1981) Die bleierne Zeit
It’s the 1970s. Juliane (Jutta Lampe) is a journalist who writes for a feminist magazine. She grew up in a large family with a bible-thumping father, a conservative minister. Her sister Marianne (Sukowa) looked up to her as a teenager. Julianne was the rebel. She smoked, talked back to her teacher, wore pants – not a skirt! – and caused a furor when she danced alone to a Vienna waltz ata high school dance. The two are shattered by the documentaries they see in school on Nazi mass murder, and vow they will never let it happen again. But the two have taken different paths and their roles have changed.
Marianne is now a brash, self-centred woman who 
rejects concepts like marriage, family and money. She doesn’t ask for things; she demands them. She’s a member of the dreaded Red Army Faction — a terrorist group that sets off bombs and hijacks planes — and is on the run from police. She also has a young son, Jan, but can’t take care of him. When she is caught by the police, it’s up to Juliane to visit her in prison to keep her sane and alive. She smuggles in notes hidden in tissues, and passes on her messages. Can Juliane’s marriage and job — and Marrianne’s son — survive the prison sentence and the widespread public hatred of the crimes she committed?
Although this is a fictional drama, it’s based on RAF member Gudrun Ensslin and her journalist sister. This powerful drama is not a historical biopic; it was made just a few years after the events it portrays.
All three films encorporate historical black-and-white film footage and prison scenes, about heroes (and villains like Eichman) encaged and restrained. Together, these three films provide a century-long view of modern Germany through the eyes of three women.
Marianne and Juliane, Hannah Arendt, and Rosa Luxemburg are all playing next week on the big screen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto — $10 per ticket — with Barbara Sukowa introducing Marianne and Juliane. Go to Goethe Toronto for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Hidden Histories. Films reviewed: The Gay the Negro and the Holy Mountain, The Journey, 13 Minutes
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com.
Not all history is neatly recorded on paper; some of it lies hidden, far from public view. This week I’m looking at three films — two historical dramas and a personal-history documentary — that uncover hidden histories. There are two leaders in Northern Ireland who can’t come to terms; a young worker in 1930s Germany who can’t stand Hitler, and a plumber in a European village who can’t come out.
The Gay, the Negro and the Holy Mountain (Der Schwule, der Neger und der heilige Berg)
Dir: Dave D. Leins
Dave is a young man in Holy Mountain (Heilingenberg), a tiny village, who wants to make a documentary. His father, who is black, is a sailor but Dave grew up with his white mother. He faced bullying and racism growing up 
because of his skin colour. Dave wonders, is there anyone else in this town who feels “different”?
Markus is a town leader who runs a successful business that’s been in his family for generations. He’s divorced with two adult daughters. He’s a plumber, a fitter of gas pipes and is head of the annual town carnival. 
Like the rest of the villagers, he dresses up in funny costumes and performs in pantomimes on the town stage. But what some people in the town don’t know he’s also gay, and can only feel truly comfortable when he’s far from home.
This beautifully photographed documentary is a first-time filmmaker’s look at his own heimat. It is a neatly constructed film that uses visual images to frame the story (for example, curtains on a carnival stage open the film, a scene 
replayed in a resort hotel room).
Leins documents Markus’ daily life as he works, plays and interacts with friends, family and the filmmaker himself. And it exposes some of the stranger things that happen even in small towns. But despite the provocative title (der shwule and der neger are both pejorative terms in German) this is actually a low-key, quiet and personal film.
The Journey
Dir: Nick Hamm
The Troubles was the conflict in Norhern Ireland that began in the 1960s between the Catholic Republicans who wanted to join Ireland and the Protestant Unionists who wanted to stay in the UK. It was fueled by shootings, massacres and bombings by paramilitary groups on both sides. Thousands of people, mainly civilians, were killed in the 
violent years that followed in this simmering civil war. But now it’s a new millennium, and both sides agree it’s time to make peace.
The two political leaders, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness (Timothy Spall and Com Meaney) agree to meet 
for talks in neutral territory: Glasgow, Scotland. The problem is they refuse to talk and walk away. Protocol says the two must travel in the same plane to prevent any assassination attempt. So in a last-ditched effort, Tony Blair puts them together, with just the young driver for the long journey to the Edinborough airport.
Paisley is the fire-and-brimstone Calvinist preacher, a christian 
fundamentalist, given to Papist conspiracy theories. He is also the inspiration for rightwing vigilantes. McGuinness is the head of Sinn Féin, the public face of the provisional IRA, known for its bombs and guns. Can such sworn enemies every talk like human beings?
This is a fascinating movie based on a meeting that actually took place. The script, though, is an invention asto what might have happened. Parts of it are hard to swallow, like Paisley saying he was a supporter of Martin Luther King, when in fact he was an ally of white segregationists in the 1960s. And the scenes with Tony Blair, the head of MI5, Gerry Adams, and Paisley’s son all watching the talks through hidden cameras and secretly cheering them on are just ludicrous. Come on. But that’s secondary to the great acting. I think of Timothy Spall as a short roly-poly, but he completely transforms his body, face and voice into the tall, angry Paisley.
The Journey is a tense and exciting chronical of an imagined historical event.
13 Minutes
Dir: Oliver Hirschbiegel
It’s the late 1930s in Nazi Germany. A time bomb explodes in Munich Bierkeller where Hitler and other top Nazis had just given a speech but escaped unharmed. They leave unharmed, 13 minutes ahead of schedule.
Georg Elser (Christian Friedel) is arrested for the bombing and immediately given to the Gestapo and Kripo for interrogation. Who do 
you work for? Who built that bomb? Who gave you the orders? They tie him to a metal cot and inflict gruesome tortures on him, refusing to believe that a simple worker could have done all this on his own.
But as he lies there, passed out, his memories flood back. Elser is a craftsman from Königsbron, a small town in Swabia, who is good with his hands. He fixes clock works, builds furniture and plays the zither. Locally he’s known just as a loud mouthed musician. He’s also in love with Elsa (Katharina Schüttler) a woman married to an abusive husband. He rents a room in her basement.
But times are hard, even in a small town, especially if you refuse to 
join the party. As the year’s pass, things get worse, but no one will do anything. His best friend, a communist, is arrested, a local woman is pilloried for dating a jew, and all the town customs have been co-opted by the government and turned into Nazi propaganda. He also does nothing… until he realizes he must build a bomb.
The Gestapo refuse to believe him. But Elser is the one man who dares to say “Hitler ist schlecht für Deutschland” – Hitler is bad – not just for the rest of Europe – but even for Germany. There will be war, people will die, the bombs are going to fall, the country will be destroyed! he predicted.
13 minutes is a great historical drama about one ordinary man who attempts an extraordinary feat – he decides to fight back. Half of the film is the violent and brutal torture and interrogations, the other half is flashbacks to his personal life. I liked this movie a lot.
The Gay, the Negro and the Holy Mountain is playing at ReelHeART International Film Fest. Go to reelheart.com for info. The Journey and 13 Minutes both open today in Toronto: check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
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