The Museum of Modern Art is currently screening its thirty-first annual showcase of contemporary German cinema. Under the banner "Kino! 2010," the series highlights new German films at their first New York screenings, fresh from the Hof and Berlin film festivals.
Included in the survey of new German feature films is a series of shorts from German film schools. A dozen films were selected for the "Next Generation 2009" screening, representing the best and brightest of young German cinematic talent.
Amoklove, by Julia C. Kaiser from the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, is a fast love story, a rush of feeling without pause. It tells the story of Fabian and Marie, who meet on a subway. They chase each other without reason, they eat and drink their way through Stuttgart. Nothing makes sense and it all happens so quickly-- like love in real life. The shots become shorter and more punctuated as they fall more deeply in love, losing their reason and composure. The audience might lose its breath in the dizzying pace, their hearts beating as if they, too, are in love. See the Amoklove website here.
Another smart and memorable film from the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg is Clean Up by Sebastian Mez. The film is a quiet and forthright documentary showing the cleaning process at the death chamber at an American prison. And though the viewer is not made a witness to the execution, the phone conversation between the warden and the executioner is played as the custodian cleans, bringing the difficult task of cleaning the room into the context of the event.
I Don't Feel Like Dancing, by Evi Goldbrunner and Joachim Dollhopf, takes place somewhere in a war zone. Three soliders of ambiguous nationality stalk a young girl on her way home from an ersatz disco on the base. When they turn their violence and war on her, they are shocked and weakened by what they find.
Keine besonderen Vorkommnisse (No Special Incidents), by Lennart Ruff, is a short film about two German soliders stationed in a mine field in present-day Kosovo. Kosovo, the film explains, was the first German military deployment since WWII-- and troops are still there on patrol. In addition to communication problems and boredom, the soldiers in Ruff's film also struggle constantly with the physical remainders of war. They are unsure if there are any mines left, or if they really have anything to fear or protect.
Lebensader, by Angela Steffen, is undoubtedly a standout in the Next Generation screening, and it was the one film everybody left the theater gushing about. In this animated short, a little girl discovers all sides of the universe in a leaf. The animation is fluid, intelligent, and gorgeous. The story itself, too, is beautiful. Steffen's artwork is inspiring, and it will be exciting to wait and see what she does next.
Rosarot, by Ines Christine Geisser and Kirsten Carina Geisser, is a one-minute animation which so perfectly describes the joys and confusions of love.
Lastly, Sunrise Dacapo by Nina Poppe is an absolute standout. Another documentary short, Poppe silently shows the operations in a nature assembly line. The film shows geraniums in mass production, women planting seedlings by the dozens, machinery picking up pots and placing them on conveyor belts. Men pick off dead leaves and hand the pots back to the machines. Click- a sprinkler switches on. Sunlight is moderated. The boxes are slapped with plastic labels. This is the bounty of nature built by machines.
The Next Generation films provide a diverse and egalitarian view into the world of today's young German filmmakers. Perhaps these same directors will soon be snatching up the awards for Best Foreign Film-- but for now, its enough to be causing discussion and heartache here in New York.
