SPECIAL PROGRAMMES 2018

New films from the archive ‘I love being a farmer and I always will’ by Antje Schiffers. She offers the farmers to paint their farms. ’My aunt had such a picture. I was told it was painted after the war, when only farmers had enough to eat, and so were interesting business partners for painters.’ As an equivalent for the painting, she asks the farmers to film and comment on their farms and their work.

AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE SCHIFFMÜHLE 2018 15 min
ULRICH AND JENNIFER VÖSSING, NEURANFT 2018 17 min

More films by the choice of the audience, with an international schnapps bar

Antje has conducted this kind of exchange since 2000, mostly in collaboration with Thomas Sprenger. Her archive comprises more than 30 films, shot in England and Wales, the Netherlands and Switzerland, Romania, Macedonia and Austria, Spain, South Africa, Hungary and Germany. Her latest film has been produced in collaboration with Jens Petermann, Skadi Petermann und Florian Krafft from Dannenberg and is going to premiere at the Filmfest Eberswalde.

For about one week, she usually stands in the middle of the farmyard with her easel like a 19th-century plein-air painter. The farmers capture the things they always do on film, impersonating no one but themselves. When Henk Waterink had forgotten to film his cows on their way back to the stable in the afternoon, he had to drive them back to the pasture and back in again. The Antonesi family, making hay and serving refreshments on the grass, wore traditional costumes when they started shooting, the kind you can see on Romanian folklore TV. Ria Redder asked her cameramen to be more creative and include the laundry, the swallows and the clogs on her doorstep. Josef Kreitmayer left everybody in the dark about whether he was a bachelor until the end of the film. A Welsh production was based on music, mostly men’s choirs. A Hungarian film gives a comprehensive account of the hardnesses faced by water melon growers. In Basque country, the Isusi brothers drive their sheep along a busy road, visibly amused about how everybody has to wait to let the animals pass.

Antje has conducted this kind of exchange since 2000, mostly in collaboration with Thomas Sprenger. Her archive comprises more than 30 films, shot in England and Wales, the Netherlands and Switzerland, Romania, Macedonia and Austria, Spain, South Africa, Hungary and Germany. Her latest film has been produced in collaboration with Jens Petermann, Skadi Petermann und Florian Krafft from Dannenberg and is going to premiere at the Filmfest Eberswalde.

For about one week, she usually stands in the middle of the farmyard with her easel like a 19th-century plein-air painter. The farmers capture the things they always do on film, impersonating no one but themselves. When Henk Waterink had forgotten to film his cows on their way back to the stable in the afternoon, he had to drive them back to the pasture and back in again. The Antonesi family, making hay and serving refreshments on the grass, wore traditional costumes when they started shooting, the kind you can see on Romanian folklore TV. Ria Redder asked her cameramen to be more creative and include the laundry, the swallows and the clogs on her doorstep. Josef Kreitmayer left everybody in the dark about whether he was a bachelor until the end of the film. A Welsh production was based on music, mostly men’s choirs. A Hungarian film gives a comprehensive account of the hardnesses faced by water melon growers. In Basque country, the Isusi brothers drive their sheep along a busy road, visibly amused about how everybody has to wait to let the animals pass.

ANTJE SCHIFFERS

Antje Schiffers, born 1967 in Heiligendorf
Antje was a flower painter in Mexico, a mural artist in Italy, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, a corporate artist for a tyre manufacturer, the Siemens Company and the BASF, ambassador and correspondent in Eastern Europe and has developed her own form of barter with both farmers and business consultants. Since 2003, she has been working with Kathrin Böhm (UK) and Wapke Feenstra (NL) under the name of Myvillages artists’ initiative. She has had exhibitions at the Secession, Vienna, the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, the TENT, Rotterdam, the Frieze and Tate Britain, London; the CAAC, Sevilla, the MUSAC, León, the Museum Ludwig, Budapest, the Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, the Skirball Museum, Los Angeles, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. Since 2000, Antje, often accompanied by Thomas Sprenger, has been pursuing her project I love being a farmer and I always will.

UNITED STATES / 1952 / UNDEFINED / 85 MIN
OT GERMAN / UT –

We view a dull landscape with crude shades of black, white and grey. Tristesse. Three men are approaching an unimportant hole named Hadleyville, in the middle of nowhere. It is 10 o’clock a.m. Jack Colby and Pierce and Ben Miller are riding through Hadleyville. Everybody knows them. But above all, everybody knows the man who is not riding into town: Frank Miller, who the other three are waiting for. Frank Miller is to arrive in Hadleyville by train at 12 o’clock sharp. He is a sentenced murderer who has been pardoned for obscure reasons. Frank Miller was arrested some years ago by Will Kane, the marshal of the town. And it is Will Kane that Frank Miller is coming for. Everyone in the town is aware of it when the three rogues show up. And everyone knows that Miller wants to take revenge on him.

Fred Zinnemann
Director: Fred Zinnemann, Producer: Stanley Kramer/United Artists,
Script: Carl Foreman, DoP: Floyd Crosby,
Editor: Elmo Williams, Harry W. Gerstad, Sound: -, Music: Dimitri Tiomkin

FRED ZINNEMANN

Fred Zinnemann was born on April 29th 1907 in Rzeszów (at that time part of the Austrian empire) and died on March 14th 1997 in London. He was an Austrian-US-American film director. 1927 he began a training as a cameraman at the École Technique de Photographie et de Cinématographie in Paris. Working in Berlin since 1928, he was an assistant cameraman in a silent movie with Marlene Dietrich. Zinnemann left Germany in October 1929 and went to Hollywood. After some successful work in the forties he began to make feature films. In 1951 he made his probably best-known film, the Western classic ‘High Noon’. The film received four Oscars, and Zinnemann was awarded the title ‘best director of the year’ by the New York film critics.

In the spring of 2013, Patrick and Gwen struck out as a couple from Freiburg towards the east, and three and a half years and 97.000 kilometres later they returned home from the west as a threesome. Without flying, and with a very small budget, they explored the world, always driven by curiosity and with a lot of spontaneity. Their travels always focussed on direct contact with people and nature. Gwen and Patrick hitchhiked through countries like Tadshikistan, Georgia, Iran, Pakistan, China and Mongolia. From Japan, a freighter took them to Mexico. After the birth of their son Bruno they travelled through Central America in a small old Volkswagen bus. When in the spring of 2016 they found themselves on European soil again, after a sea voyage from Costa Rica to Spain, they finished their round-the-world trip by walking 1200 kilometres right to the front door of their home in Freiburg.

Patrick Allgaier, Gwendolin Weisser
Director: Patrick Allgaier, Gwendolin Weisser, Producer: Weit. Produktion 2017,
Script: Patrick Allgaier, Gwendolin Weisser, DoP: Patrick Allgaier, Gwendolin Weisser,
Editor: Patrick Allgaier, Gwendolin Weisser, Sound: Patrick Allgaier, Gwendolin Weisser, Music: Isaac Friesen, Falk Schönfelder

Gwendolin Weisser was born 1992 near Freiburg in the Black Forest. During her years at the Freie Waldorfschule Freiburg St. Georgen she spent a lot of time making plans for travelling after her school-leaving examination (Abitur). During her vacations she always travelled through Europe, mostly as a hitchhiker. She also was active in a youth film group, where she met cameraman Patrick. After her Abitur in 2012 she worked in various jobs to make money for a round-the-world trip. In March 2013 she and Patrick struck out. Since May 2015 Gwen and Patrick have been the parents of Bruno, who was born in Mexico. Patrick Allgaier was born 1983 in the Markgräflerland near Freiburg. He passed his Abitur in 2001 at the Faust Gymnasium in Staufen. During his first travels he developed a passion for filming and worked as a freelance cameraman for TV Südbaden and later for various production firms and TV stations (SWR/ARD). In March 2013 he packed his bags for the round-the-world trip with his girl-friend Gwen, not without his camera, of course.