BR radio journalist Moritz Holfelder continues the journey through time into the next decades and transforms our cinemas into radio play theaters: With his feature KUROSAWA ’86, he portrays the late years of New German Cinema and makes a KINO KASSETTEN TRAUM come true exclusively for the film festival. Cinema to listen to!
Radio Play | ca. 90 min | Interview excerpts in the original language
„Would you like to meet Herbert Achternbusch, Sigourney Weaver and Robert de Niro? Perhaps Ray Harryhausen, the American special effects pioneer who brought legendary monsters and creatures to life using stop-motion technology, will also be there. The radical filmmaker Werner Herzog definitely wanted to drop by, as did Doris Dörrie at the age of 31 at the start of her great career. The once acclaimed small-time actor and passionate swashbuckler Alfred Edel, the Finn Aki Kaurismäki, the US comedy legend Mel Brooks, Marjane Satrapi, Heike Makatsch and Wim Wenders are also in demand. All together with you in one movie theater!
How is that supposed to work? I went through the box under my desk. There are about 200 audio cassettes there, which I filled from the mid-1980s onwards with interviews with the people mentioned above, among others, in my work as a film critic for Bayerischer Rundfunk. Now I am presenting excerpts from a few encounters in Würzburg. Some of the interviews were never broadcast, so these are world premieres.”
Moritz Holfelde (translated by FiWo)
KUROSAWA ’86 – Ein Familientreffen des deutschen Films
Radio Play | Feature ca. 55 min | Followed by an audience discussion
On March 18, 1986, a Tuesday, the Japanese master director Akira Kurosawa and 15 German filmmakers met in a Munich restaurant. Kurosawa had come to market his new work “Ran” in Germany. The theatrical release was imminent. Bernd Eichinger, the German distributor, spontaneously came up with the idea of organizing a gala dinner with the famous guest from Japan. He called all the directors who were living or staying in Munich at the time. Werner Herzog, Hans Jürgen Syberberg, Reinhard Hauff, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Uli Edel, Bernhard Sinkel, Christel Buschmann, Josef Rödl, Catharina Zwerenz, Edgar Reitz, Hermann Weigel, Robert van Ackeren and Dieter Dorn came.
Moritz Holfelder visited them and asked them about their memories of the evening for his radio feature “Kurosawa 86”. He also tracked down the photographer who took the group photo. You can see Akira Kurosawa with dark sunglasses and a slightly slipped tie standing like a samurai in the middle of society. Stoic and with both hands on his glass. The rest are grouped around the tall director from Japan.
“Kurosawa 86” reports on this evening from very different perspectives. Each person tells their version of the meeting. The result is a multi-layered morality tale from the final phase of New German Cinema. Performed as an audio play in the cinema, it develops its very own magic.
[People in the photo:From left to right (back row): Werner Herzog, Catharina Zwerenz, Robert van Ackeren, Akira Kurosawa, Serge Silberman (producer), Bernhard Sinkel, Margarethe von Trotta, Edgar Reitz, Uli Edel, Eberhard Hauff; front: Hans Jürgen Syberberg, Dieter Dorn, Volker Schlöndorff, Bernd Eichinger].