Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 22.09.2006

Literature Nobel Prize laureate V.S. Naipaul talks in an interview with Moritz Behrendt and Daniel Gerlach about irony, travel, the export of democracy and the achievements of the Empire. "We gained much through the Empire. We Indians got things we'd never heard of before. Courts, binding laws, ideas about the value of man. Achievements of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Before that there was not even such a thing as private property in India. Everything more or less belonged to the kings. India is where it is today because of the Empire."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 22.09.2006

A sarcastic Peter Zilahy (more here) has counted 200 well-known street brawlers in front of the Budapest television station, and is keen not to play up the significance of the turmoil. "The only reason the events are news is because it's the first time something like this has happened in Budapest. In Berlin, twice or three times as many police are wounded every May 1. A thousand cars were torched in Paris, here it was only ten." The real event is something else: "The fans of Budapest's two opposing football teams, Fradi and Ujpest, always cause the biggest ruckus when they meet. Now the two have joined forces in the hopes of beating the police. This event (absolutely unheard of in the history of Hungarian football) was described as a revolution by one fan on television. In this way we learned that something has happened which will perhaps change our lives in the future. No one expected that."


Berliner Zeitung, 22.09.2006

Kurt Flasch has taken a closer look at the speech delivered by Pope Benedict XVI at Regensburg (more here, article here), and points to certain weaknesses. "A couple of months ago, a Muslim was condemned to death because he'd converted to Christianity. Only through diplomatic efforts was he set free. But the Muslim authorities who were after his life were obeying the very words of Thomas Aquinas, who teaches that he who leaves the Christian faith deserves death. All of this and much more – including Pope Gregory XIII's Te Deum when he learned of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of the Huguenots – the Pope ignored in his search for harmony. And that makes his portrayal of Islam and Christianity more of a caricature. On the whole, the two are not so dissimilar; they're just in different stages of development. After the Western Church lost its power over the police and the military, it started praising religious freedom, which it had solemnly rejected even in the 19th century."


Die Tageszeitung, 22.09.2006

In an interview with Volker Hummel, Chinese director Jia Zhangke tells how he got his film "Still Life", the winner of the Golden Palm at this year's Cannes Film Festival, past the censors. "Above all they didn't like the fact that the words 'Three Gorges' occur in the title ('Sanxia Haoren' means 'The good People of the Three Gorges' – ed). But when I asked what they had against the film taking place there, they didn't say. So the title remained. They also wanted to change one scene in a factory. Huge portraits of Marx, Lenin and Mao hung on the wall, and they wanted them to be cut because they suspected an ironic undertone. This shows how clueless the people in the censorship authority are about film. That they're just plain old party cadres. When I said I'd found the portraits there and asked if the three men were now frowned upon politically, the scenes were allowed."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22.09.2006

In a long interview with Edo Reents and Hannes Hintermeier, the author Walter Kempowski, author of the major collective diary "Echolot" (more)", talks about how the literature industry has failed to recognise his work, how he betrayed his mother under torture, the eight years he spent in Bautzen penitentiary for political prisoners, and ends with Günter Grass: "When I heard he'd admitted having belonged to the SS (more here), I asked the reporter on the telephone: 'So late? But let him who is without sin cast the first stone.' I pitied him somehow, even if that's completely unnecessary. Grass has a thick skin, he's not the least perturbed by the uproar. And he's not slightly remorseful about everything he's been tooting his horn about in the last sixty years. In the future, people in his position should just keep their mouths shut."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 22.09.2006

In an obituary for cameraman Sven Nykvist, Daniel Kothenschulte quotes from a wonderful homage by Ingmar Bergman to his long-term colleague. "Sometimes I mourn the fact that I no longer make films, and more than anything else I miss working with Sven Nykvist. Perhaps because we were both so obsessed with the problems of light, this tender, dangerous, dreamy, alive, dead, misty, hot, fearful, naked, sudden, spring-like, falling, straight, slanting, sensuous, muted, poisonous, calming, sallow light."


Der Tagesspiegel, 22.09.2006

Andrea Nüsse reflects on the problems of the dialogue between Arab and western intellectuals quoting Egyptian playwright Ali Salem. "The 70-year-old does not believe in this dialogue. But he believes that is the fault of the Arab side. Writers and journalists in Egypt as in other Arab countries saw themselves throughout the 20th century as an 'intellectual brigade' in the fight against imperialism. This tradition of idealisation is still very much alive today, although it is losing its hold on the younger generation. After 50 years of totalitarianism, Salem says by way of mitigation, it is not easy suddenly to think as an individual. Then there are the intellectuals who are envious of the freedom of their colleagues in the west or who have inferiority complexes arising from the backwardness of the Arab-Muslim world. Both impede a dialogue on equal footing."