Monday 12 February, 2007

Die Tageszeitung 12.02.2007

Russian film director Andrei Nekrasov writes an open letter to Vladimir Putin, calling for the release of former agent and current Putin-critic Michael Trepashkin. "The number of hypocrites and cynics in our society disguised as pseudo-patriots seems to be threatening national security and compromising the presidential powers. Meanwhile, the conscience of Russia lives in people like Trepashkin. Surprise your critics. Save Trepashkin!" In another article, Klaus Helge-Donath explains Trepashkin's connection to Alexander Litvinenko, who was murdered in November.


Frankfurter Rundschau 12.02.2007

Actor Thomas Lawinky made headlines a year ago when he snatched the notepad from critic Gerhard Stadelmaier's hands (more here). Shortly thereafter he admitted to having acted as an informant for the secret police in communist East Germany. Now the play "Mala Zementenbaum," which Lawinky co-wrote with artistic director Armin Petras and which deals with Lawinky's Stasi past, has premiered at Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theater. Petra Kohse regrets that in it Lawinky plays a Stasi officer, and not himself. "Lawinky has a weak presence on stage, while Gunnar Teuber has a strong one. As a result the balance of the play is skewed from the very start. Lawinky puffs himself up, while Teuber spends the whole time trying to be unobtrusive. Below the stage things are being filmed, while meanwhile a caged mouse is let free, Iringo Reti shows a lot of leg and Robert Kuchenbuch plays a sleep-walking demagogue. Kuchenbuch's 'Man' is – like the actor – a superior type, and playing across from him Lawinky becomes better, and more self-assured. He needs this kind of opposite on stage. Just imagine what could have been achieved if he'd been cast as himself."


Saturday 10 Feburary, 2007

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 10.02.2007

Historian Gerd Koenen has suggested that Anna Politkovskaya posthumously receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. Julia Voss approves: "The prize, the award ceremony in Frankfurt's Paulskirsche, the eulogy given before an international audience of prominent names from politics and culture, all this will give renewed focus to the question of who murdered Politkovskaya. Silence would not pass for an answer this time around. Remembrance of the bloodbath would finally expand beyond purely private demonstrations of solidarity. "Kerstin Holm, the Moscow correspondent adds: "Above all, it would be a signal of solidarity to the idealists she has left behind."


Die Tageszeitung 10.02.2007

"In the past, one literally had to go looking for books in the various countries like gold-diggers," Hans-Jürgen Balmes an editor at the German publishers, Fischer Verlag, tells Christoph Schröder in a conversation about the paradigm shift in the literature market in the USA and Britain. "Nowadays an agent will offer us a book at almost the very moment when the first contract is being signed with a publishers in New York or London. This means that we are deciding on whether or not to bring out a book almost simultaneously with the American editors. Which means our information network has to get more and more complex because it is vitally important for us to know which publishers are publishing the original novels. If a book flops in USA, we have found it to be nigh on impossible to make it a success in Germany. This goes for more popular books but is increasingly becoming the case for literature as well."


Berliner Zeitung, 10.02.2007

Discussing her work in Robert de Niro's new film "The Good Shepherd", premiering at the Berlinale this week, actress Martina Gedeck comes over all philosophical: "I always get obsessed with the dissolution of space and time on set. In a day of filming we'll accomplish one, maybe two minutes of film, and in the evening you have the feeling of only having lived one or two minutes. You are always playing with time, starting again from the beginning, repeating what's in the past. Time dissolves. Added to which, you are working in an environment where the past has been reconstructed right down to the smallest detail, where one new reality exists next to the other."