Der Tagesspiegel 12.09.2007

In an interview with Christiane Peitz, director Christian Petzold talks about his film "Yella", leading actress Nina Hoss and German stars: "'Yella' is the portrait of a dreamer who remains in her dream. There are shots which portray her classically, and there are views inside. That's why it has such star quality. A star is always a dreamer who exists for and with him/herself and to look at them is to go off into a dream. There are no stars in television because it's tuned to recognition and viewer figures, and molests the viewer: Stay with me! A star is not a prostitute... I was annoyed for a long time that people asked only two questions of the cinema. One goes: We have a sky without stars, where are the stars? But it's the other way round. We have stars without a sky. German actors are filmed as if they were stars, they make appearances on the red carpet or in Gala magazine, but there are no films surrounding them. How else do you explain the loneliness of Nastassja Kinski?" (Read our review of "Yella" from the last Berlinale)


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12.09.2007

Michael Althen sings the praises of director Christian Petzold and his new film "Yella" which tells the story of "Alice in the wonderland of risk capital". "What connects Petzold via 'Yella' and his other films to Wim Wenders is his eye for settings, for rooms and landscapes which are perhaps more casually staged in his case but in which one recognises the country in a certain way. And they make you ask what other films are actually looking at. In only a few show he says it all about Yella's home town of Wittenberge on the Elbe, with its typical East German contrast of deserted houses with their boarded-up windows and over-renovated buildings. He presents the numbing comfort of the system's hotels, and captures the absurd cosmopolitanness of the Expo exhibition in a single taxi order, 'Rue de Paris on the corner of Sydney Garden.' And he shows how the centre has gone from our experience of the city, and that moments of security can only be found if one makes a nest on the margins. In all these images captured in glass-clear colours by his trusted cameraman Hans Fromm, Petzold holds the mirror up to reality with a precision normally reserved for still photography."


Die Welt 12.09.2007

Thomas Lindemann pays tribute to Austrian jazz keyboarder Josef "Joe" Zawinul, who died in the early hours of yesterday morning. "Zawinul founded his best band together with Wayne Shorter in 1970, Weather Report. They stayed together for 15 terrific years - and when bassist Jaco Pastorius joined them they even became commercially successful. With 'Birdland' written by Zaniwul - one of their best-loved and most beautiful jazz pieces - the combo wrote it's way into jazz history. Zawinul, who as a youngster in Vienna never had enough to eat, was now at the top of the league. He was the sole German native speaker among the gods of jazz. Once, Zawinul liked to say, Miles Davis called him up in the middle of the night because he couldn't make head or tail of the German instruction manual for a Carrera racetrack. Zawinul called him a 'schmuck' and went over."

Kai Luehrs-Kaiser talks with theatre director Peter Stein about his past, and his idea of democracy that grew out of it: "I've done every job, from ventilation technician to head of lighting. Only thing I didn't do was jump from bed to bed, or take drugs. I could always spin a yarn. Not because my foreskin was itching, like Peter Konwitschny. But because I had enough authority. Democracy only works with authority. But at the same time, you've got to be able to take getting voted down. Having your own way is pretty easy, in fact. You just have to let everyone have their say." Asked what he has against women directors, Stein answers: "That's too big a subject. I think it's wrong for historical reasons."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung 12.09.2007

Samuel Herzog writes from Istanbul, where he's suffering from enterospasms and less than thrilled with the 10th Istanbul Biennale: "Of course there is a theme: Curator Hou Hanru has given his Biennale the motto 'Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary: Optimism in the Age of Global War.' That has a nice, committed ring to it. But most of the works here could also represent pretty much any other motto. Perhaps it's a sign of the times that in exhibitions over a certain size you can hardly make out intellectual guidelines: they're like clumps of ground meat, in which everything hangs together or not, as the case may be. The themes to be investigated are replaced by global gestures. And as is the case here, they are often reminiscent of the advertising slogans of large banks or insurance companies."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 12.09.2007

Christian Kortmann introduces a new genre which is circulating in the Internet and which might just revolutionise the way we experience poetry: the lyric clip. "Alongside the representational and associative filming in these poetry clips, ideas of concrete poetry are developed further. As in Prince's 'Sign O' The Times' video where the typography comes alive, the words start dancing. This works best with Charles Bukowski's 'Oh yes!' The merciless lines 'it's too late/and there's nothing worse/than/too late' are fanned out mechanically to groaning electronic sounds against a cold grey background. Thoughts buzz about as if they were made of flickering neon tubes." (Watch a selection of clips here)