Monday 6 March, 2006

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 06.03.2006

The media page features an interview with poet Robert Gernhardt on the cartoon controversy. What most annoyed Gernhardt was the timidity of the Western media: "For me the worst thing was that I was never shown the cartoons. (...) All the Western papers should have printed them to keep their readers informed about the cause of the conflict. Instead we're being kept in the dark. I personally only saw the caricatures once, when they flashed by one evening on the news." (The cartoons can be seen on the Internet, however, for example here.)


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 06.03.2006

On March 19 the Belarusian president will be (re) elected. Ingo Petz takes the opportunity to present the more likeable side of "Europe's North Korea." "By far the most important intellectuals were Wassil Bykau and the Belarusian writer Vladimir Korotkevich. Bykau was widely called the Belarusian Dostoevsky, because he believed his countrymen really enjoyed their suffering. Unfortunately he is now dead. But there is no cause to worry about the next generation, as the quality of the magazine Arche demonstrates. As the poet Andrei Chadanovich wrote in the periodical: 'the depressed Belarusian poet writes and sings about his unhappiness, then he strikes out with 500 lines in which he annihilates his fellow Belarusians – and finally starts feeling better again.'"

The Egyptian filmmaker Ahmed Khaled has made a small film about furtive caresses in a bus, but it has little or no chance of being shown, reports Sonja Zekri. Even shooting the film was difficult. "Khaled lied to the director of the transport firm, saying he was making a movie about a couple who were going on holiday. 'Oh, he said. I just hope you're not making a film about sex in our buses. I answered: Sex in a bus? Never heard of that...', he said. That was the most provocative thing. Everyone has heard of it. 'The stretch between Giza and the airport was famous'. Friends are now telling him however that they have to find another place for their rendezvous."


Die Welt, 06.03.2006

Arnulf Baring, who himself lived through the bombing of Dresden in 1945, finds the two-part "Dresden" film being shown on German television a "cowardly compromise." Instead of showing the downfall of bourgeois culture and its consequences for Germany, the director was driven by political correctness to make "an English pilot with a German mother the central figure of this film. (...) A world, representative of Germany's middle class, is destroyed, a Baroque city, 'Florence on the Elbe' likewise and this is related to the birth of a German-English child! The entire film slides under the unclear and foozled feelings behind such crooked thoughts."


Der Tagesspiegel, 06.03.2006

Rüdiger Schaüer was not exactly impressed by Thomas Ostermeier's staging of Eugene O'Neill's "Mourning becomes Electra": "It's rare that one sees such an awkward and wooden staging that consistently betrays itself." But the failure does have a good side, proving that the ongoing debate in Germany about anti-classic, experimental theatre (prompted by the so-called Stadelmaier affair, in which an eminent German critic had his notebook snatched by an actor who overstepped his bounds - more here) only tells part of the story. "At the Schaubühne, we're witnessing a well-intended but entirely failed attempt to work with actors and roles, to take texts seriously. Exactly what the notebook-carriers are demanding. Ostermeier uses sex and body fluids in limited doses. He just murdered his O'Neill. That's the worst thing about it." (read an interview with Ostermeier here)


Die Tageszeitung, 06.03.2006

"Tarts of darkness" is what Katrin Kruse saw at John Galliano's Dior ready-to-wear show in Paris: "It began black, very short and very tight, dresses with short jackets, then it moved into off-white and then red and long, before finishing with an abundance of material: latexed linen, lurexed organza, snake leather and strips of fur. 'Ugly clothes for dumb rich women,' said a colleague."


Saturday 4 March, 2006

Berliner Zeitung, 04.03.2006

Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda turned 80 on Saturday. In an interview with Dirk Brauns, he tells about his memories of Warsaw during the Second World War and one of his first encounters with a German after that, which put him in conciliatory mood: "In 1960 I went to the film festival in Mar del Plata in Argentina, where the film 'Die Brücke' was also being shown. Suddenly I saw a German film that I would have shot in exactly the same way! I was so thrilled that I went straight up to Bernhard Wicki and kissed his hand. He was totally taken aback."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 04.03.2006

In an interview, Ang Lee, director of "Brokeback Mountain" compares the different reactions in Taiwan and the USA to his film "The Wedding Banquet" which featured one kiss between men: "I did in fact win the Golden Bear in Berlin. Only after that was the film given a general rating in Taiwan. Of course everyone held their breath when the first gay kiss came. But then I came to the USA and got an even stricter rating, which perplexed me and then I realised: Taiwan is much more open, while the USA is getting more and more conservative. In Taiwan, the Oscars are called the 'Golden Horse Awards', the host is often gay, transvestites always win something or other and then flip out on the stage."