KINO! NYC ’16: B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West Berlin 1979-1989

Apparently, West Berliners really did dig Hasselhoff. They also enjoyed Joy Division, the Bad Seeds, WestBam, Malaria! (exclamation point part of the cult band’s name) and Nena (99 Luftballoons), whom they really, really loved for a brief but shining period in the early 1980s. British expat Mark Reeder was there to hear it all. Reeder takes an archival nostalgia trip in Jörg A. Hoppe, Heiko Lange & Klaus Maeck’s B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West Berlin 1979-1989 (trailer here), which screens during KINO! 2016, the German Film Festival in New York.

We should absolutely acknowledge anyone who spent as much time in record shops as Reeder did as a kindred spirit. Growing up as an unemployable youth in Manchester during the Labour governments of Wilson and Callaghan, Reeder adopted German synthesizer music as his thing. Ironically, he left for West Berlin in 1979, just as the economy was about to rebound under Thatcher. Perversely, West Berlin seemed to exist in a state of permanent depression bordering on surreal, demilitarized squalor. Yet, the locals seemed to like it that way. It kept rents cheap, squats ignored, and the club scene raging into the not so early hours of the morning.

Frankly, it is a little annoying to hear the entitled scensters whine about the FRG’s crackdown on RAF terrorism and the like, while their parents in Munich, Bonn, and Frankfurt footed the bills. At least, Reeder was rather industrious, managing Malaria!, playing in Shark Vegas, dubbing porn, and hosting music programs for British television. He also personally documented the scene quite extensively on Super 8, but to confuse matters, Marius Weber often appears as Reeder in retro-looking recreations.

Eventually, the film finally acknowledges there was a rather conspicuous Wall dividing Berlin. In fact, Reeder deserves credit for frequently smuggling records to East Berlin’s underground Punks. Frankly, he comes off better than the milieu he was swimming in, especially the German Punks who adopted National Socialist iconography, like their American counterparts. Still, the Wild West vibe inspired expats like David Bowie and Nick Cave to do some of their best work there.

Although he is underrepresented in B-Movie, Bowie still emerges as the film’s most significant figure for his historic Brandenburg Gate concert, deliberately produced so his fans in the East could hear songs like “Heroes.” Frankly, the film ought to have a better sense of the big picture, but instead, it is an idiosyncratic, intermittently diverting account of West Berlin’s cross-pollinating Punk, New Wavish, and proto-electronica scenes. Mostly just recommended for fans of the bands Reeder hung out with, B-Movie: Lust & Sound screens tonight (4/8) and Monday (4/11) at the Cinema Village, as part of this year’s KINO! In New York.

KINO! NYC ’16: Me and Kaminski

Sebastien Zöllner is no Boswell, that’s for sure. His prospective subject, Manuel Kaminski, was no Picasso either, but for a while it looked like he might come close. Time has since largely forgotten the contemporary of Matisse and company, but he is ripe for rediscovery. He just needs to die first. Zöllner is determined to have his definitive biography ready for exactly that moment. To do so, he must worm his way into the artist’s confidence. It is a rather ghoulish undertaking, but fortunately Zöllner completely lacks self-awareness. The art world elite will do their best to humble the impossibly self-centered twit in Wolfgang Becker’s Me and Kaminski (trailer here), which screens during KINO! 2016, the German Film Festival in New York.

Zöllner has alienated just about everyone he has ever met, including his long-suffering live-in girlfriend-meal ticket Elke, but somehow he thinks he can charm Kaminski and his protective grown daughter Miriam into allowing him exclusive access. There was a time when Kaminski’s celebrity rivaled that of Warhol. Frankly, it was not because the masses embraced his work, but because they found his progressive blindness so compelling. However, Zöllner believes he has the mother of all scoops to spring on the intelligentsia: Kaminski never went blind. He just has to prove it.

Miriam Kaminski considers Zöllner a potentially useful tool, but she is determined to tightly control his time with her father. Unfortunately, the pseudo-journalist is more tenacious and duplicitous than she bargained for. Much to her concern, Zöllner manages to whisk Kaminski away on an ill-conceived road trip to visit the lost love of his life. Of course, it will be greatly complicated by Zöllner’s clumsiness and gross negligence.

Based on Daniel Kehlmann’s novel, Me and K is cleverly conceived and often quite witty, but it features one of the most annoying and utterly loathsome protagonist you will ever find carrying a film. Everything about Zöllner makes you want to hurt him. In his perversely defiant performance, Daniel Brühl seems to go out of his way to emphasize his every cringe-inducing foible and flaw. Granted, it is rather impressive, but in an exhausting, good will-sapping kind of way.

Jesper Christensen’s work is far more predictable as the gruff but sensitive Kaminski. He is supposed to be an eccentric mystery man, but we pretty much know his story right from the start. However, there are some terrific supporting turns that give the film some real color and seasoning. Amira Casar’s Miriam Kaminski is wonderfully elegant and regally unamused, while the late Jacques Herlin is delightfully sly as Dominik Silva, Kaminski’s down-on-his-luck former patron. However, Geraldine Chaplin really delivers the film’s poignant kicker as Therese, the one that got away.

Throughout the film, Becker uses John Adams’ “The Chairman Dances” as a recurring motif, but this is probably a mistake, considering how closely many cineastes associate the composition with Luca Guadagnino’s infinitely more lush and passionate I Am Love. Becker also displays a distinctive visual sensibility, but he just cannot compete with the sweep and style of Guadagnino’s masterwork. Still, he manages to wrap it all up in a satisfyingly intelligent manner. Recommended despite some reservations (specifically, Brühl’s clammy performance as the unfathomably abrasive Zöllner), Me and Kaminski screens this afternoon (4/8) and the following Thursday (4/14) at the Cinema Village, as part of this year’s KINO! In New York.

KINO! NYC ’16: The Weather Inside

Dorothea Nagel is sort of like a cross between a character from a William Boyd novel and Ab Fab’s Patsy Stone. Technically, she is in a war-torn Middle Eastern country as a contractor for the UNHRC, but she prefers to stay in her hotel suite, drinking and doing copious amounts of cocaine with a local gigolo. Granted, it is quite problematic, but our UN dues have funded worse crimes than the reckless hedonism Nagel pursues in Isabelle Stever’s The Weather Inside (trailer here), which screens as the opening night selection of KINO! 2016, the German Film Festival in New York.

The border is closed and a cease-fire is supposedly imminent. For those who make a living off war, like Nagel and the foreign correspondents she disdains, business is at a standstill. The refugee camps are literally empty, which is terrible news for Nagel. To fulfill her pet project, she needs a teenage girl to award a European scholarship to, but unfortunately there do not seem to be any around. When she finds one, she does not waste her time doing a lot of due diligence. She prefers to imbibe with Alec, an aspiring kept man. However, the party comes to a screeching halt when Nagel’s scholarship student suspiciously disappears in the Paris airport.

Suddenly, Nagel’s new supervisor starts turning up at her suite, obviously unamused by the rock-star wreckage she finds therein. Management also starts demanding payment for the damages, putting a crimp on her finances. The shelling continues as well, not that she notices it anymore.

Nagel’s self-centered, self-indulgent, self-destructive, degenerate, narcissistic behavior would be laugh-out loud hilarious if it were not so likely true-to-life. There is a whole lot of NGO-UN sausage-making in Weather, with precious few sausages to show for all the expense. In all honesty, nobody will be appreciably worse off if Nagel is finally dismissed, which shouldn’t really surprise anyone.

Maria Furtwängler is absolutely an awesome spectacle bottoming out as Nagel. It is amazing how low she can go, but there is nothing shticky or effected about her performance. At times, she is almost a shuffling zombie-like shell of a person. Frankly, after the first thirty minutes, drugs, booze, and gigolos do not look so fun anymore.

Furtwängler is a force of nature in Weather, but Stever’s screenplay also totally nails the dysfunctional dynamics of bureaucratic organizations with unclear lines of supervision and responsibility. Perversely, Nagel would be dashed difficulty to get rid of, if her boss were so inclined, which indeed she is. The film is further enriched by numerous sly supporting turns, including Jim Broadbent as the slightly dodgy British ambassador and Barbara Bouchet playing an exaggeratedly clueless version of herself (hopefully). However, Mehmet Sözer’s Alec is so sleazy and exploitative, it is hard to fathom how any amount of drugs and alcohol could convince Nagel to assume the role of sugar mommy.

When it comes to trashing hotel rooms, Nagel and Alec are up there with Keith Richards. The jaw-dropping results are almost surreal. Although Nagel has plenty of hard-partying, work-slacking forerunners, including Hunter S. Thompson and Jayson Blair, Furtwängler and Stever raise it all to a level of existential purity. Highly recommended, The Weather Inside screens Thursday (4/7) at the Landmark Sunshine and Saturday (4/9) at the Cinema Village, as part of this year’s KINO!

KINO! NYC ’16: The Fassbinder Story

In some respects, you could argue Rainer Werner Fassbinder was ahead of his time. He was helming ambitious limited long-form television projects like World on a Wire and Berlin Alexanderplatz long before everybody and their cousin wanted to work with HBO. However, in other respects, he was very much of his time, especially when it came to conspicuous drug use, self-destructive sex, and kneejerk leftism. He left an impressive legacy of cinema and scandal for his close associates to reflect on in Annekatrin Hendel’s The Fassbinder Story (trailer here), which screens as part of KINO! 2016, the German Film Festival in New York.

Fassbinder was part of a generation of German youths who somehow missed the Wall cutting through the city of Berlin, but thought the Red Army Faction ought to be free to kill and maim people as they pleased. He was also a man of intense appetites that fueled his art, but also took him to some very dark places. He had a dominating personality that convinced many of his early cast members to perform in his films somewhat against their wills. He was also either gay or bisexual, depending on which lover you asked.

That sexual ambiguity and voraciousness is definitely echoed in many of his films, but not all of them. In fact, World on a Wire gets comparatively short shrift, even though it anticipates many of the themes and motifs of the Matrix trilogy way back in 1973. Clearly (and somewhat understandably), Hendel is more concerned with films that have high personal, autobiographical significance for Fassbinder, like Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, starring his then lover El Hedi ben Salem, who would soon come to a tragic end.

Frankly, it is dashed difficult to avoid the scandalous and the salacious when taking stock of Fassbinder, because the boundary between his private life and his art was unusually porous. Hendel scored long, in-depth interviews with nearly all of his surviving collaborators, including thesps Hanna Schygulla, Irm Hermann, Margit Carstensen and fellow directors Volker Schlöndorff and Wolf Gremm. Unfortunately, key figures like Salem, Karl Scheydt, and Kurt Raab are no longer with us. The absence of Fassbinder’s ex-wife and early muse Ingrid Caven is rather conspicuous, but the participation of Juliane Lorenz, his longtime editor and late-in-life partner supplies more than enough awkwardly revealing moments to compensate.

Wisely skipping Fassbinder’s short-pants years, Hendel delivers a well-paced and reasonably comprehensive survey of Fassbinder, the film and theater artist. It tackles all his demons without feeling excessively voyeuristic. It is an effective introduction to the Fassbinder milieu, conveying the tenor of his time, without romanticizing it. Recommended for Fassbinder fans and patrons of German cinema, The Fassbinder Story screens Friday (4/8) and Saturday (4/9) at the Cinema Village, as part of this year’s KINO!