Construction of the Elbe Philharmonic is underway, with its opening planned for autumn, 2011. Hamburg?s creative artists are not alone in seeing a new landmark for their city in this spectacular concert hall....
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Emotional chaos in the elderly and the best aesthetic for folds and wrinkles. Birgit Glombitza talks to Andreas Dresen about geriatric love and sex, and his new film "Wolke 9".
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Billed as the inspirational story of one of the greatest legends of all times, "The Red Baron" is flying, driving and healing Germany at dizzy cinematic heights. There are just not enough superlatives to do this film justice. By Ekkehard Knörer.
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Only one truly original auteur filmmaker made it into this year's Berlinale Competition. With "Night and Day" Korean director Hong Sangsoo proved himself to be one of the great free-thinking talents of contemporary cinema. This aside, emaciated wishy-washy realism prevailed. By Ekkehard Knörer
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With the Berlin film festival well underway we pick out some of the highlights. Jose Padilha's "Tropa de Elite" might have all the components of an Egoshooter film but it's far off. Hongkong star Johnnie To's "Sparrow" is a bringer of unadulterated joy. Isabel Coixet's "Elegy" stars a couple of aging Roth rabbits. And P.T. Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" should be enjoyed on an empty stomach.
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A frighteningly intense Daniel Day Lewis, musical accompaniment from Martin Scorsese, Madonna and Patti Smith, home-made filmic fumblings from a music video genius, a mere smidgen of German material and plenty of Far Eastern promise. After the Berlinale Film Festival hit rock bottom last year, it seems a sharp upwards turn is on the cards for 2008.
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Romania might have only 35 cinemas but it is having a profound effect on the world of film. Christian Mungiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days" won the Palme d'Or at Cannes earlier this year and the European Film Prize in Berlin on Saturday. By Jan Schulz-Ojala
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A theme running through this year's Netherlands Film Festival is that of men running after deliverance, preferably in the form of young women. There's plenty of tongue in cheek but no changing the facts: the new man, like the old, needs a muse. By Jann Ruyters
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German-Turkish director Fatih Akin's "The Edge of Heaven" won the best screen play award at Cannes. Now showing in German cinemas, it is a light, bright film about death, an optimistic requiem full of little utopias. By Katja Nicodemus
Director Romuald Karmakar has made a film which reveals the Islamist mindset. Based on the lessons delivered by Imam Mohammed Fazazi, whose mosque in Hamburg was visited by the 9/11 pilots, it stretches for over two hours and provides almost nothing for the eye. Precisely this, says Eckhard Fuhr, makes it so effective.
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"Yella", the new film by director Christian Petzold, hits the screens in Germany today. He talks to Christiane Peitz about working with actress Nina Hoss, abandoning Hitchcock, and his personal bugbear, the amphibian film.
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A hotel room in Munich, June 1976. Andre Müller looks back on a memorable talk with film and stage director Ingmar Bergman about human destructiveness, the Lord above or lack thereof, and making the world a microscopically better place.
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No other obituary of Ingmar Bergman or Michelangelo Antonioni makes it as clear how necessary they were - and how bitterly we will miss them - as The New York Times'. By Arno Widmann
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder died 25 years ago. His ex-wife, the actress and chanteuse Ingrid Caven, is outraged at the way the Fassbinder legacy is being misrepresented. She talks to Katja Nicodemus about the cult of genius, lies and the Utopian days of great cinema.
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Why did no one think of it before? A film festival showing only the best films around. Cannes director Thierry Fremaux has done just that - much to the approval of Daniel Kothenschulte, who singles out the new films by Fatih Akin and Quentin Tarantino as his favourites.
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"Strike" – Volker Schlöndorff's most recent film, on the heroes of Poland's Solidarity movement, is a Gdansk symphony. And Fritz Göttler speculates that it could only have been made by a German.
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