Die Welt 02.03.2007

In an interview with Gerhard Gnauck, Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda defends Volker Schlöndorff's newest film "Strajk" (Strike), which deals with the Solidarity movement and has just come out in Poland. He himself has never been able to get a sequel to his films "Man of Marble" and "Man of Iron" off the ground, he explains: "I've got five screenplays for a sequel at home, and the sixth one is in the works. All the titles start with 'Man of....' They all deal with the failure of Solidarnosc after 1989, and I don't like any of them. A Polish director can't make a film like that, because Solidarnosc's days of glory are over, and this film would have to show its demise, and be called: 'We want Communism back.' Only a foreign filmmaker could have made 'Strajk'."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 02.03.2007

Maria Graczyk portrays the Solidarnosc heroine Anna Walentynowicz, who inspired Volker Schlöndorff's film "Strajk". Walentynowicz now opposes Schlöndorff's film as vehemently as she once fought the Polish communist regime. Among other things she criticises "the nonchalance with which Schlöndorff treats symbolic events. An example: in the film the heroine saves the hated apparatchik from being lynched in the shipyard. In truth, the strikers would have done all they could to make sure that he of all people suffered no harm. Why? Because he was the enemy, and Solidarnosc was a peaceful movement. A bagatelle? Perhaps. But not for the people who wrote history – and not only that of Poland – back then."

"ark" presents the popular Malian private radio station Radio Kledu: "Aside from its detailed news broadcasts, 'Dragon' is the station's big crowd-pleaser. The political commentator is the real figurehead of Radio Kledu. Every morning at 11 am, he literally lets out all the stops: 'Good morning, all you thieves of the Malian people, good morning, you corrupt politicians,' is just one of the greetings he screams into the microphone. As a friend of tradition, he attacks corrupt politicians and the decline of customs and morals in the streets of Bamako. Last year 'Dragon' caused an international stir. After he'd criticised the president's wife by name for making liberal use of the country's treasury, he was kidnapped by security forces – presumably from the presidential guard – brutally beaten and then dumped in the bushland. The number of fans his programme has could then be measured by all the people who came to visit him in the hospital."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 02.03.2007

Everyone's talking about the weather and the FAZ feuilleton doesn't want to be left out. Editor in chief Frank Schirrmacher explains: "We have offered the scientists space in the feuilleton. They should explain to a sceptical public what part of the debate is pure media hysteria and what part fact. They have accepted the offer. Today they are the masters of these pages. They describe, with a view to children and students, the world we are going to live in. They are trying to be as non-alarmist as possible. What's left is alarming enough."

In an interview, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Resarch (PIK) talks about the political consequences of climate change. It "would make life unbearable, particularly in the countries that are already causing us considerable problems as sources of terrorism. One can understand climate protection as an aspect of geo-politics." The rest is questions and answers, strictly numbered, from "1.1 Do we know enough?" - the ambivalent answer: "Politics should take the in part well corroborated and assessed statements of cliamte experts at least as seriously as finance experts' prognoses on financial developments" - to "3.3 Where should we take our knowledge from?"


Frankfurter Rundschau 02.03.2007

"The pragmatic art entrepreneur winks to us from the 16th century," writes Judith von Sternburg on the exhibition "Cranach in Exile" in Aschaffenburg. "In his workshop, he was known for a paint-by-number technique, in order to get on to the next picture and leave the rest to his students. Rest is a relative term. In addition to an apothecary and a publishing house, he ran a brandy bar. It wasn't long before he was the main property-owner in Wittenberg. In addition to printing contracts for the Protestants, he was happy to work for the better paying Catholics." In the exhibition one finds "saints galore. The velvet quality of their capes, the sausage or twig forms of their fingers are so different, depending on what the painter wanted or achieved. A rarity is Saint Margarethe's Snow White reliquary which depicts her half-decayed corpse in wood combined with bones. (...) In the extremely interesting catalogue, exhibition curator Gerhard Ermischer explains how the artist played the game, making simpler works for his Protestant buyers, fancier ones for the Catholics."