Berlin?s Radialsystem V is the prototype for a new generation of concert houses ...
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It's finally happened. The film version of Patrick Süskind's mega-hit "Perfume" has hit the screens. Director Tom Tykwer talks with Dietmar Kammerer about his passion for the project, his proximity to the central figure - a serial killer in pursuit of love - and covering whole neighbourhoods with a layer of filth.
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The covert avant-garde of world cinema has taken the Venice Film Festival by storm. This year's Mostra featured four cinematographic homages to Mozart commissioned by Peter Sellars, director of Vienna's New Crowned Hope festival. By Katja Nicodemus
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Paris is the cinephile's Garden of Eden, yet its arthouse screens are under threat. Having pursued their own form of artistic expression for over 80 years, the Parisian cinemas d'art et d'essai must now use all the ingenuity they can muster to keep bums on seats. By Marc Zitzmann
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Katja Nicodemus raves about Claude Chabrol's new film with his favorite actress, Isabelle Huppert. As an investigative judge in "Comedy of Power," Huppert is a modern femme fatale, mowing down corruption and male condescension with weapons of wit and writ.
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There is more brutality on any street corner in China than in a splatter porn film, yet Chinese films are still subject to censorship. One example is director Lou Ye, whose film "Summer Palace" has him threatened with a professional ban. But if you ask around, you get the impression no one is really incensed about censorship because it can do very little to curtail the truth. By Susanne Messmer
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Jasmila Zbanic's debut feature film "Grbavica" about life in post-war Bosnia won the Golden Bear at this year's Berlinale. Here, the young director talks with Jan Schulz-Ojala about the war's ugly aftermath, the boycott of her film and the redemptive possiblities of art.
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In his film debut, Benjamin Heisenberg develops a credible drama in which the fear of terrorism is part of a broader sense of social disorientation. "Sleeper" tells a story of personal betrayal in a world that is as rational as it is paranoid. By Sven von Reden
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Former GDR dissident and poet Wolf Biermann is pleasantly disappointed that a young aristocratic Wessi like Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck can breathe such convincing life into the Stasi phantoms of his past. The film "The Life of Others" might just be the start of Germany's properly in-depth confrontation with its second dictatorship. Winner of the 2007 Oscar for Best Foreign Film
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Spike Lee's most recent film "Inside Man" is a thriller set in a post 9/11 New York. In an interview with the intrepid Katja Nicodemus, Lee talks about American cluelessness, his waning rage and the beloved dachshund of his youth, "Schnitzel".
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Detlev Buck's latest film "Tough Enough" is set in Berlin's notoriously hard-edged Neukölln district. In an interview with Daniela Sannwald, the director talks about urban ghettos, language barriers and the mafia.
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Since it hit the German screens in February, Serdar Akar's Turkish secret agent film "Valley of the Wolves" has been widely touted as an anti-Western hate film. But for all the talk of a "clash of civilisations", isn't it much like any Western thriller - with the roles reversed? By Alexandra Stäheli.
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This year's Berlin Film Festival proved that director Dieter Kosslick is honouring his committment to be political, proportional and popular. Ekkerhard Knörer only regrets that aesthetic criteria got left by the wayside.
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Jafar Panahi's "Offside" blows the whistle on female football fans in Iran. In Claude Chabrol's "Comedy of Power", a muck-raking Isabelle Huppert comes up against the fattest cats of all. And Amir Muhammad's "The Last Communist" portrays over 80 people before finding just that.
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A terribly simple tragedy: Valeska Griesebach's film with non-actors, "Longing". A nymphomaniac cop meets his match in Pang Ho-cheung's well-manicured "Isabella". And Mani Haghighi's "Men at Work" asks how many middle-aged Iranian men it takes to budge a rock.
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Rafi Pitt's "Zemestan" starts in bleakness and ends in despair. John Hillcoat brings Nick Cave's sweaty outback epic "The Propostition" seamlessly to the big screen. Matthew Barney has a whale of a time with Björk in "Drawing Restraint 9". Michael Winterbottom's "Road to Guantanamo" is 95 minutes of collateral damage.
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