Frankfurter Rundschau, 10.11.2005

"People in the suburbs say: Baghdad is here. They see the events on television and think it's great," says French philosopher Andre Glucksmann in an interview with Ruthard Stäblein. "The violence has a global element and a French element to it. I'm sorry, but the French said no to Europe; and used their veto everywhere they could, in world trade talks and agriculture negotiations. The French say no whenever they can. The French government, that is, Chirac. For me these youths who are becoming murderers are imitating the big players, copying the politicians. A nihilist atmosphere is reigning in France today, and not just in the suburbs."
See our feature "The victory of Euro-nihilism" by Andre Glucksmann.


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 10.11.2005

Beat Stauffer describes how hard it is to create a civil society in the Maghreb states. In Tunisia, for instance, human rights groups are not forbidden but rather undermined. The Tunisian state has created many fake groups in order to combat the authentic organisations. "'Of the more than 9,400 NGOs that exist officially in Tunisia, 7 are truly independent,' explains Essia Bel Hassen, spokesperson of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women. All other organisations have been created by the authorities and have no real basis. The independent groups and organisations have a lot of trouble fighting against them. They also have to deal with the infiltration strategy of the former unity party RCD, which remains almost omnipotent. State-paid agents, one learns, try in large numbers to join the independent organisations and to gain a majority in the directorial committees."

Ueli Bernays considers Madonna's new album a total disappointment: "In 'Confessions on a dance floor', Madonna doesn't even live up to her previous standards. How can she? From an aesthetic standpoint, she's an opportunist; what we used to call the art of transfiguration was in fact crafty adaptation. And now that the sun of a new trend is rising, the cold blooded artist would like to shine. But today, the subcultures are conservative, they fall between 'neo' and 'retro'."


Die Zeit, 10.11.2005

Peter Kümmel was left cold by Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and Hans Henny Jahnn's Shakespeare-based "Richard III", the first performances at Hamburg's Schauspielhaus under the new artistic director Friedrich Schirmer. "These days people prop up old plays with analogies. Macbeth = Don Corleone, alias 'the Godfather'. Don Corleone = Joe Smith. In this way the director can demonstrate his power over the material. Analogies can best be wielded by someone who sees through all things, someone over and above the worlds he compares. The director refuses all contemporaniety, by 'short-circuiting' the epochs he treats. The '=' sign that he places between all times and all people, and that can continually be used as a bridge between them, is murder. Murder has always existed, and it will always exist. It is this '=' sign that makes today's theatre so empty, such a tautology."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 10.11.2005

Michael Althen visited the set where Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) is directing a film version of author Patrick Süskind's modern classic "Perfume". Süskind had long been opposed to the filming of his book, which made the best-seller lists for nine years and has sold over fifteen million copies worldwide: "With such sales figures, Patrick Süskind's "Perfume' was of course of great interest to filmmakers. But the author was immune to temptation, and abhorred the limelight. He sent them all packing, from Spielberg to Scorsese. His dream was that one day Stanley Kubrick would come knocking at his door, a director who shared both his reclusiveness and his perfectionism. But when Kubrick died, this dream could no longer be fulfilled, and Süskind finally gave in to the pleading of his friend, producer Bernd Eichinger. The author's rights are said to run in the neighbourhood of some ten million euros."

In a conversation with Joseph Hanimann, the French author Mehdi Belhaj Kacem analyses the symbolic play between Nicolas Sarkozy and the revolutionary youth: "A leftist magazine recently portrayed Nicolas Sarkozy as a kind of Al Pacino, who never loses sight of his goal and is willing to brave fire and brimstone to achieve it. One has the impression that Sarkozy read the article and wanted to prove its point: Sarkozy as hero in a gangster showdown in the suburbs. The youth didn't wait too long with their response. They took on the offer of the minister, who had bowed down to their level of rhetoric and entered into the showdown."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10.11.2005

Jörg Königsdorf was there when the Nürnberg Staatstheater performed Richard Wagners "Ring der Nibelungen" in Beijing: "The continuing, intense concentration of the Beijing audience and the 15 minute long standing ovation, crowned with 'ho-ho-ho calls' that followed the 'Götterdämmerung' show that the gold, avarice and gods obviously struck a nerve with the Chinese. Which shows, on further consideration, that Wagner's visions of social change has no better parallel to life than here. It's only a little mental leap from Wotan to Mao..."