SHOWTIMES: 7:00p - WED 11/11
Part of the WENDEKINO Film Festival - with an introduction by Dr. Christine Haase, Germanic & Slavic Studies.
A young, naive and enthusiastic director comes to a provincial town in East Germany to put on Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” at the run-down local theater. Although the lethargic company shows no interest in the play, he remains undaunted. Meanwhile it is fall 1989, and somewhere far away in the capital Berlin a revolution is taking place. The parallels inside and outside of the theater are unmistakable. Film historian Ralf Schenk calls this film: “A tragicomedy, the most beautiful and precise film there is about this turning point in East Germany.”
Andreas Dresen, whose work was presented at Ciné last year during ANDREAS DRESEN: DEUTSCHE FILMTAGE, was born in Gera, East Germany, in 1963. He initially worked as a sound engineer at the Schwerin Theater, then studied directing at the Academy for Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. In 1992, Dresen began work as a screenwriter and director. His debut film, SILENT COUNTRY(1992), took the 1993 Berlin Film Festival by storm. All his films have received prestigious national and international prizes. Dresen’s latest film, CLOUD 9, about a love triangle among elderly people, was an international sensation; it was awarded with the Heart Throb Jury Prize at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and is nominated for the 2009 European Film Academy Award. Dresen, one of Germany’s most admired filmmakers, is currently working with scriptwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase on a tragicomedy about a 50-year-old film star, WHISKY WITH WODKA.
defa film library
