Monday 29 May, 2007

Die Welt 29.05.2007

Peter Beddies talks to an overjoyed Cristian Mungiu, the Romanian director who will take home this year's Palme d'Or. "Six months ago we still had no idea how we were going to finance the film. In Romania, financial backers are not exactly lining up to fund films about unpleasant aspects of the past. And then it all happened very fast. We were able to make the film. And soon after that it was showing at Cannes. And the critics seem to love it." But he also stresses that Romanian film has long been underestimated in the West.


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 29.05.2007

Martin Walder sums up from Cannes, which excelled itself this year: "With films not afraid to broach controversial or politically sensitive subjects, which pushed against the edges of stylistic and temporal formats, challenging the audience while wanting to 'take them along' as well. Films which stirred things up, got under the skin, in the best cases themselves becoming voyages of discovery into perception itself. And the audience was left with traces for which we were happy to sacrifice the Mediterranean beach weather outside."

Claudia Schwartz writes an obituary of painter Jörg Immendorff, who died of ALS on the weekend. "The official role of the artist as a moral authority and pain in the neck never really suited Immendorff. The Düsseldorf art professor wore black leather and gold jewellery, had rocker affectations and was surrounded by drug and prostitution scandals. Immendorff got angry when the German media snidely called him the 'prince of painters,' while abroad he'd long been recognised as one of the most important living artists. Immendorff's work also reflected the theses of his teacher Joseph Beuys on the social power of art. But his jibes aimed more at political action than at social formations." See our articles on Immendorff here and here.


Die Tageszeitung 29.05.2007

"The art world has lost its most eclectic and intelligent protagonist," writes Wolfgang Ulrich on the death of painter Jörg Immendorff. "There is hardly another body of contemporary art in which the bourgeois concept of art is so clearly and beautifully laid bare. And yet at the same time Immendorff's critiques are neither aggressive nor angry - they've got a comic aspect to them. But above all his work is self-critical, and astonishingly honest at that: 'My guiding principle was egoism,' he wrote on one painting. On others, Immendorff quotes Mao and confesses to sharing his view that the artist must be like a 'cog in the works' of the collective (and not an outsider)."

Christian Broecking sketches a portrait of avant-garde composer Louis Andriessen, who in his view has revolutionised the Dutch music scene. "The avant-garde is has taken a firm attitude of resistance - against the terrorism of the entertainment industry. In contrast to Pierre Boulez, Andriessen believes that most of the so-called advanced techniques in modern instrumental music come from free jazz and improvised music. He hears very clearly, he says, when musicians don't identify with the complex new music they're playing. Then they just play the notes, he says, and that is completely soulless."


Saturday 26 May, 2007

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 26.05.2007

In a birds' eye view of contemporary South American literature, Kersten Knipp keeps running into the "crazy fight for survival," as well as the resigned knowledge that this fight is in vain. "'Industrial espionage and toxic waste, religions and cults ranging from the Church of the Crucified Alien to the Comic Vampire. Add to that human organ trafficking, arms smuggling and hired killers, and of course the most honourable of them all: people smuggling, drug dealing and prostitution in a big way.' That's how Northern Mexico looks from the perspective of Gabriel Trujillo Munoz, a narrator with an especially black sense of humour. Latin America, home of a mad, oppressive reality. Is there any escape? Yes, but unfortunately only into the past."


Der Tagesspiegel 26.05.2007

Writer Thomas Brussig ("Heroes Like Us") admits to having being doped himself, and talks about the sinister intrigues in the literary business as a whole. "I don't want to cast aspersions or lay blame. But there are moments when I have to believe that the entire literary scene is doped. No one seems to mind that Grass at almost 80 and Walser at almost 80 are still active. They continue to push out huge tomes, sit around at the top of the bestseller lists, get the most wonderful slatings and no one thinks twice. It seems that no one really wants to ask too many questions. A culture of non-questioning has established itself in which everyone feels comfortable. The readers want wonderful books, the publishers high editions, the agents horrendous deals, the critics stuff to get wound up about and the wives business-class flights. Writers are in a double bind. And the more lax the controls are, the greater the temptation."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 26.05.2007

In the last part of the "Megacities" series, author Chris Abani writes about Los Angeles, a city which is all in the minds of its inhabitants: "A survey was recently carried out in which people were asked to draw the part of the city where they live. The most accurate drawings came from those who had lived there for the shortest period of time, around five years. After ten years, people's drawings of their daily routes and short cuts no longer had anything to do with the distances on the map. After twenty years, their image of the city no longer related to anything outside their own imaginations."