As we move into a new world emerging from our post-pandemic digital daze, it becomes clear that culture, arising from the grass roots of our existence must lead the way and that war, arising out of old male hierarchies, must give way.
Technology democratizes and now is the time that its artificial intelligence join with authentic emotion to create new expanded cultural boundaries to cut across artificial borders.
Music and Cinema, primal arts with the deepest roots, are about to be conjoined. Cinema’s link to music is developing along with the re-establishment of our commonly rooted world culture.
During the Berlinale this year, I wrote about Nordic Film Music Daysentering the international film market. More will be written as Prudence Kolong’s AfroCannes announced the emergence of Afro Film Music Days to be held during AfroBerlin in February 2025.
AfroCannes, in its second year, took place all day May 16 and 17 at the Grey d’Albion Hotel in Cannes.
Film festivals — Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Venice and Sundance — are taking a new lead in cultivating grassroots growth of [one of] the most popular of the arts, cinema. TIFF’s recent government infusion of $23 million to help bolster the market aspect of the festival, a market that sees $70 million in sales during the festival is a beacon to all. The festivals’ markets follow those leads. A market without a festival, e.g., American Film Market at the same time is moving from the movie capital of the world to Las Vegas, perhaps the convention capital of the world…what is a market without a festival? It’s a trade show. Its classification devolves from culture to a commodity.
However, Cinema, the Seventh Art is not the only lead actor in arts and culture. The seven arts, inspired by The Muses are Music, Sculpture, Painting, Literature, Architecture, Performing, and Film.
The Muses, a group of sister goddesses at the roots of Western Civilization, Greco-Roman religion and mythology, were a group of sisters born at the foot of Mount Olympus. Homer cited nine. The 8th-century-BCE poet Hesiodnamed them and their names are significant: Clio the “Proclaimer”, Euterpe the “Well Pleasing”, Thalia the “Blooming” or “Luxuriant”, Melpomene the “Songstress”, Erato the “Lovely”, Polymnia (Polyhymnia) “She of the Many Hymns”, Urania the “Heavenly”, Terpsichore “Delighting in the Dance” and Calliope “She of the Beautiful Voice”, who was their chief. Their father was Zeus the Master of all the Gods, and their mother was Mnemosyne “Memory”, the very thing that allows us to return to our roots through the arts.
The Muses are often spoken of as unmarried, and they are repeatedly referred to as the mothers of famous sons, such as Orpheus, Rhesus, Eumolpus, and others connected to the arts, led by music and poetry.
Back to Our Roots
Cinema of course did not exist during the Greek times, but moving pictures have existed from the times of the earliest cave paintings. Men, returning to the caves described by Plato, told stories of their heroic hunts, chasing animals which, on the good days when (if) they returned, served as meals to their wives and children, thus staving off starvation.
Walter Benjamin — or was is Simone Weil — said that when we are confused, we should return to our beginnings when all things are possible. Are we confused enough yet? As we return to the roots of our existence, the new ways must clear away the debris of war by telling stories beginning in Africa and Asia of migrations reaching all the way up to the Nordic territories. These are the forces making themselves known today, and they are not new. They are as old as humanity.
Thus music and movies create real new ways of combining cultures. And with women leading the way, we can pave a way toward peace through Creator Economics.
Pay attention to AfroCannes and watch for AfroBerlin under the guidance of the brilliant Prudence Kolong. You will be hearing more about her soon.
The Jewish Film Festival Berlin & Brandenburg (JFFB) took place for the 30th time this June 18–23.
Founded in 1995 by Nicola Galliner, who at the end of 2020 stepped down after 25 years of standing up for the films at her festival with all her impressive personality, the Festival was acquired by FilmFestival Cottbus which had become known as The Place to see films from Eastern Europe when it began in 1991, shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In that context of Eastern Europe and Jewry, the two in the past jointly presented the documentary Angel Wagenstein: Art is a Weaponabout the Jewish-Bulgarian film author and novelist Angel Wagenstein and other films during a partnership of a couple of years. Vishniac, the famed Eastern European photographer, produced by Nancy Spielberg and directed by Laura Bialis is one of several Eastern European/ Jewish subjects.
The largest section called Break or Continuity? ‘Anti-Zionism’ and Anti-Semitism in Socialism and After shows films Poland’s Gdansk Railway Station(2007), and films from USSR (The Commissar, 1967), the DDR (Die Sturmer, 1967) and Israel 74 from 1974, the DDR — Soviet Union 1971 copro Goya about the famous painter living a comfortable life as a court painter simultanously as the Inquisition goes on, the Czech 2020 film HeWho Digs a Pit: Rudolf Slansky about the Soviet show trial against Slansky. In fact,there were four films on the famous Stalin show trials in the 1950s, centering around Rudolf Slansky. Also showing was Pawel Pawlikowski’s powerful Ida of 2013, and some other films from DDR, Poland, Czech Republic or Czechoslovkia.
Both festivals want to show good films and give them access to the market. In addition, they both aim to strengthen talents, to arouse curiosity about world Jewry as well as Eastern Europe, to question common clichés and to promote dialogue. Therefore, almost every film is followed by an exciting film discussion (Q&A).
Clichés abide and are still the topic of discussions including a public debate about Anti-Semitism and panels focusing on right wing violence and terrorism, politics of the images of terror, anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism, filming with and about trauma. Quite a Tzimmes broke out over more than one subject.
Three notable films from France were Cedric Kahn’s The Goldman Case, A Nice Jewish Boy by Noe Debre who says his French distributor asked him to change the French title Le Dernier Juif (The Last Jew) because of its sinister connotations. It is a comedy by the way. S
Someone remarked how easy it seems for the French to include Jewish characters and even to make a comedy about French Jews (except for the post-October 7 anxiety about the title mentioned above), whereas in Germany, no one laughs about the Jews and most films are about Nazis and Jews.
The French-German coproduction directed by Julia von Heinz, Treasure Treasure was about a man wanting to return to Poland where his family had been wiped out.
The feature film competition and documentary competition films were all from USA, France and Israel, with one from Australia (Revenge: Our Dad the Nazi Killer), one from Canada (Less Than Kosher), a short from UK (The Soldier on Smithdown Road).
Only one film in compeititon was from Germany — Salty Water Sudsee in Feature Competition and one German-Israeli coproduction by Assaaff Lapid, The Return from The Other Planet in the Doc Competition.
There was a section called Facing the Fear — Cinematic Reflections on Terror, Trauma and Resistance which addressed forms of terrorist violance in various attacks: Iciar Ballain’s Maixable from Spain about terrorism and the assassination of a Basque politician and One Year, One Night from France and Spain about the Bataclan night club attack in France, Maalbeck a short about the Maalbeek metro bombing in Brussels and a Scandinavian film Recontructing Utoya about the terrorist attack of July 22, 2011 and Utoya July 22 about the same terrorist attac on a holiday camp in Norway, and a Kenyan-German short Watu Wote/ All of Us, about a bus hijacking by Islamist Al-Shabaab terrorists. In the discussion it was noted that several films are now in the works about October 7, including one being produced by Nancy Spielberg who was in town for her documentary Vishniac.
As you see from these topic, the JFBB is a serious affair.
In addition, the first edition of JBFF-Pro explored aspects of the film industry beginning with how post October 7 some mainstream festivals are cutting off alliances with Jewish Film Festivals because their backers are requesting it, and the Jewish references to films are being excised from published film descriptions.
American producer of Vishniac Nancy Spielberg and Marcia Jamel, a producer, jury member and the Director of the Jewish Film Institute in San Francisco noted that since October 7, some Jewish films have been dropped by exhibitors or by festivals because they were too Jewish and they feared trouble.
No one was sure if this was a trend or would soon end. It made for some powerful discussions.
A Market for Jewish films? A panel of international producers, curators and film distributors addressed the question of what expectations exist for films with Jewish themes and what prospects and market opportunities these productions have. The panel also discussed the important role of Jewish film festivals in this context.
Other panelists aside from Jamel and Spielberg included Christian Sommer (Motion Picture Association) and Dana Schlanger (Bucharest Jewish Film Festival).
Another panel discussions of great interest was How to Write Jewish Characters, an international conversation between experienced screenwriters attempting to answer this question against the backdrop of differing national production conditions, various perspectives on the portrayal Jewish characters between stereotyping, authenticity and subjectivity. Participants were Noé Debré (Screenwriter and Director), Dani Levy (Screenwriter, Director, Actor), David Hadda (Screenwriter and Producer) and Natalia Sinelnikova (Screenwriter and Director) In cooperation with the association Deutscher Drehbuchverband e. V.
When Nicole Gallina retired at the end of 2020 she handed over the reins to Doreen Goethe and Andreas Stein, who organize, among other things, the FilmFestival Cottbus, and the program directors Bernd Buder (FilmFestival Cottbus, Cinedays Skopje) and the film scholar Lea Wohl von Haselberg who are responsible for the film selection, together with a board of trustees consisting of the producer Naomi Levari, the filmmaker Amos Geva, and the director Arkadij Khaet.
credit jfbb
The FilmFestival Cottbus (FFC) is one of the leading international festivals of Eastern European film. It will take place from November 5 to 10, 2024.
The two managing directors of the JFBB Doreen Goethe and Andreas Stein.
Double head of program management: Bernd Buder and Lea Wohl von Haselberg
BERND BUDER (*1964 in Berlin) is program director of the JFBB. He studied political science at the FU Berlin. Since then, he has been on the road as a curator, film journalist and lecturer in the international film landscape. Since 2015, he has been program director of the FilmFestival Cottbus. In addition, he worked for the Berlin Filmkunsthaus Babylon, the Turkish Film Week Berlin and the co-production market Connecting Cottbus. He advises the European film festival Cinedays in Skopje and the Berlinale Forum.
LEA WOHL VON HASELBERG (*1984) is a film and media scientist and received her doctorate in Hamburg and Haifa with a thesis on Jewish feature film characters in West German film and television. She researches and teaches at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. The focus of work is on the representation of Jewish topics in Federal Republic discourses, Jewish film history and (audiovisual) cultures of remembrance. She is also co-editor of the Yalta magazine. Positions on the Jewish present.
The Jewish Film Festival Berlin Brandenburg has, as one of its prospective goals, not only the establishment as the largest Jewish audience festival in Europe, but also to become the first point of contact for Jewish filmmakers and worldwide representatives of the film industry in Europe.
JFFB Pro events are all held in English. Participation is free of charge, but requires registration. email Merlin Webers pro [at] jfbb.info to participate.
Cooperation partners are the Berlin artist program of the DAAD, the Motion Pictures Association and the German Screenplay Association.
Since my last blog on this Berlin-based production company, ‘The Girl From Köln’ has progressed from pre-production to post-production. The press is onto it as it will be 50 years in January that Keith Jarrett first played The Köln Concert, released in 1975 to become the best-selling piano recording in history. Requests for news are coming in daily. And so much has happened since then, including One Two’s creating a slate of seven unique film projects.
In Cannes this year One Two celebrated Armand, the Camera d’Or winner of Un Certain Regard and the feature debut of Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, the grandson of Liv Ullman and Ingmar Bergmann. When I congratulated Sol on the film at the Brandenberg Reception in Cannes, he told me to talk with Fred because Armand was a result of a step he decided to take for choosing films to make.
SydneysBuzz: Before we begin to talk about your strategy, tell me about yourself.
Fred Burle
Fred: Oh, my strategy about people to work with…well I was always a big cinephile. I was raised in the small town of Pirapora in Brazil in a big state — Minas Gerais, which alone is bigger than Germany — that borders on Rio and Sao Paulo. It had no cinema. We knew no one in cinema, no one knew how to get into cinema but I always knew I wanted to go to university and study cinema though no one knew how. I went to university in Brasilia in Archival Sciences and I tried to get that to lead to conservation of film. It was my only option. I was working full time and went to school nights. The audio visual department had only daytime courses. I extended my schooling by two years so I could do more in the audio visual department. I was working full time at a notary and negotiated with them to use my holiday time so I could get few hours a week to come in later from my AV course. The AV teachers were also filmmakers and we became friends and then I worked with them to produce their films and they paid — not much as it was for docs for the Brazilian market, so it really was not much. I always wanted to do international coproductions and so before putting down roots in Brazil, I left. I quit, sold everything I had and went to Germany which I felt was one of the best countries to study film, even though German films were not my favorite films as art. But you could study for free there. The first six months I studied German. When I was done, there was only one school where the deadline for applications had not passed. I had eight days to apply to the dffb here in Berlin. I had been a well-read critic in Brazil, my blog got 1,500 readers a day and newpapers also published my critiques. In fact , the first Berlinale I attended was as a journalist. One thing led to the next. I knew it was hard to build a network. I became used to working in the background but was waiting for the moment when I had a good business card. I started at One Two as an assistant and then Sol and his then-partner wanted me permanently so I changed my visa from a student visa, but I needed my diploma to get a work visa and I was not finished with school, but they anticipated my diploma, since I had basically finished classes earlier…Lots of people helped a lot! And with Holy Spider, I then had a really good business card.
S: Sol told me in Cannes to talk to you because the backstory of how you brought in Armand was very interesting in how you choose the people you want to work with. He has often spoken of you so highly that I wanted to speak with you and find out who you are.
Fred: It’s funny, because many people tell me that, but he rarely says it to me directly. The compliments are reciprocal.
S: Speaking of Armand, which I loved and am so glad it won the Camera d’or in Un Certain Regard, it is endemic and worldwide apparently that school personnel has no idea how to deal with school problems today…I have spoken to teachers here in Germany and in U.S. who confirm this. I am interested in education because I was a teacher myself. You see how clueless personnel is in Kore Eda’s Monster, inThe Teachers’ Lounge, Armand…
S: Sol said that when Holy Spider was having its great success in Cannes last year, you said to him that while One Two was riding on its success you were going to go talk to those producers and directors you wanted particularly to work with.
F: Yes, I told Sol that while he was handling the talent and the press conferences and talking about the Holy Spider, I wanted to go to filmmakers I really admire and would like to be future collaborators and so I did, but actually it did not work that way with Armand’s producer Andrea Berentsen Ottmar. We didn’t meet in Cannes. Because she was so busy with Un Certain Regard’s screening of Sick of Myself and Kristoffer Borgli who went on to write and direct A24’s Dream Scenario. It was only after we became good friends that I was brought into Armand. We stayed in touch and would zoom every two months with very long talks about what they were doing. Armand already had coproducers in Netherlands and Sweden and there was no room for another coproducer. Nothing was open, although they still had a gap. But Andrea gave me the script and I would comment and I gave Andrea the TheGirl from Cologne to read. I loved the script and wanted to be a part of it. We couldn’t get German TV on this first film but I found a German distributor for all rights — that is very rare — and it was a top distributor. Pandora is the best company, so we both got on board and that closing the financing, plus they could spend freely with no requirements and it gave me a co-producer credit. We did exchange further on script and editing phases.
S: So your strategy was not the underlying cause of getting Armand, but it was the impetus. What about your other upcoming projects?
F: I am traveling a lot looking for new projects as Sol is spending more time with his new family and his wife, who is also a filmmaker, is working on more projects. While he has a more established network and friends who’d send him projects, I’m building that for myself as well. The results of my travels to labs, conferences, etc. are just beginning to come to fruition. Next year we will have up to seven new projects — many of them also coming from the friendships I’ve made. It splits the weight of carrying the company in a better way for us both now.
Persian Lessons was a minority coproduction for us. For Holy Spider, we were originally the second co-production country, but COVID changed everything and became the the main producers. What I want to say is my vision does not always tell a German story. I’d say we are majority producer for a quarter of our projects. The rest are minority but we try to finance a bigger share, something like 20–30% of the financing. We are involved in the early stages, from script development, packaging…
S: What is your ideal project?
F: What moves me is very unpredictable. I like light topics but that is not my soft spot. I want a message for the world — mostly political but not in a cliche way or in your face. Holy Spider is a good example. It’s relevant and yet is a genre thriller, we took a lot of poetic license with the story it was based upon.
I don’t like repeating stories. I like continuity with our talent but no similaries in the stories.
We are now attached to projects in preproduction from Malta, Yemen, Palestine, Morocco and Brazil.
I don’t go to street protests. I like my art to contribute to the world, to touch people in another way…this is my balance for social action…for me, the best way to make dialogue possible again is through art.
S: So tell me about your upcoming projects.
F: Girl from Cologne, now called Koln 75 is almost finished. We shot in October and November 2023 in Germany and Poland and now it’s in post. It was a challenging shoot but we are very happy with the results. The 50 year anniversary of Keith Jarrett’s Cologne Concert is in January and we are getting press requests daily.
Mala Emde plays Vera Brandes, the girl from Cologne
S: What is the music for it?
F: The soundtrack is eclectic because Vera Brandes, who, in 1975 at the age of 18, staged the famous Köln Concert by jazz musician Keith Jarrett, heard many types of music, jazz was only one kind.
F: Also we finished shooting April in New York on Ira Sach’s new, very special, very dear to me project. It is shot in one location. Ira optioned rights to shoot a very short book by a journalist called Linda Rosenkranz about the NY photographer Peter Hujar who has lots of friends in the art scene of the time and used to photograph people like Mapplethorpe, Sonntag, Ginsberg… She approached him and spent an entire day with him, with celebrities, etc. Ira wrote the script. Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall will star. It’s now in post. It’s very different from Ira’s other works, it’s a portrait film.
We’re also on board of a Moroccan project directed by Maryam Touzani who had two previous films in Cannes, Adam and The Blue Caftan which was shortlisted for the Academy Awards. This is her first Spanish speaking film. She grew up in northern Morocco where they also speak Spanish. Calle Malaga is a great story and it’s set to shoot in November 2024.
We’re minority producer on a film from Yemen to go in October or November. The director is Sara Ishaq who has made docs so far; her doc short Karama Has No Walls was nominated for an Oscar in 2013. Al Mahatta(or The Station) will be her first fiction feature and is a unique story to shoot in Jordan with the same local team that did Holy Spider with us.
Sara Ishaq
We are also making a rom-com at the end of summer, Any Other Nightto be directed by Michiel ten Horn and to shoot in Berlin. It is a Dutch-Canadian-German coproduction in English.
And our first Brazilian co-production which I can’t wait to be able to talk about… I can only tell you off the record on that for now.
S: Thank you for all this! I hope my readers will track down these films and help them find success!
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