'€˜Fenster zum Sommer'€™: One morning, Juliane wakes up to find that she has been mysteriously thrown back into her past '€” to the time before she met her new love. Courtesy of German Cinema Festival

The curtains are going up on Friday for the third German Cinema Festival, the Goethe Institute'€™s annual celebration of German filmmaking, with more than a week of screenings slated for nine cities across the archipelago.

Fourteen carefully curated movies will be screened in public auditoriums and movie theaters in Jakarta as well as in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan; Banda Aceh, Aceh; Bandung, West Java; Denpasar, Bali; Makassar, South Sulawesi; Palu, Central Sulawesi; Surabaya, East Java; and Yogyakarta.

The festival will open with a limited screening of Fenster zum Sommer (Summer Window) in Jakarta on Friday and close with screenings in Makassar and Jakarta on Aug. 31.

For the first time, the festival will include Banda Aceh, where movie theaters have been closed since the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.

'€œWe try to reach out to areas beyond our usual coverage,'€ Katrin Sohns, regional head of the cultural department of the Goethe Institute in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, told The Jakarta Post earlier this week. '€œImportant criteria in choosing the cities to cover are whether there are growing film communities and good partner to cooperate with. Banda Aceh has a very interesting film community.'€

Sohns said that although the institute has always wanted to cover more cities, it would like to focus on its current slate. '€œWe want to have a continuous presence with the festival. We'€™d like to see the festival growing in each city,'€ she said.

This year'€™s program includes internationally acclaimed and award-winning German film productions, covering topics ranging from love, future realities, reggae, the elderly, filmmaking art, loneliness and families.

Among the film titles to be screened are the romantic and suspenseful Fenster zum Sommer; Zwei Leben (Two Lives), a drama set in 1990 exploring the children of World War II-era German soldiers and Norwegian women; the senior-citizen airplane-hijack comedy Fly Away!; the delightful gay bildungsroman I Feel Like Disco; the wonderfully strange and compelling domestic drama The Strange Little Cat; and the award-winning tragicomedy Love Steaks.

'€˜I Feel Like Disco'€™: Director Axel Ranisch presents the story of a young man coming out as he dresses in a 1970s wardrobe and boogies. Courtesy of German Cinema Festival

Also to be screened are Kohlhaas Oder Die Verhältnismässigkeit Der Mittel (Kohlhaas or the Proportionality of Means), a film about making a Bavarian historical epic that goes awry; Sein Letztes Renne (Back on Track), about an elderly man who plans to win the Berlin Marathon; Juliane Fezer'€™s psychological thriller Meeres Stille (Silent Sea); the subdued, surprising and well-acted Home for the Weekend; and Westen (West), from top director Christian Schwochow, which tells the story of an East German seeking refuge in West Germany in the 1970s.

Sohns said that the festival sought to inspire Indonesian audiences and evoke interest in German culture by presenting a cross-section of German cinema.

Film selections include a considerable amount of art house movies. '€œFilm culture is very big and lively in Germany. '€˜Art house'€™ is a quite big and popular genre there.

'€œWith these art house movie selections, we want to offer a good counterbalance for the Indonesian audience, who might be more familiar with American blockbuster movies and Asian films,'€ Sohns said.

On hand for the festival will be Nöel Dernesch, the director of Journey to Jah, and actresses Nina Hoss and Fritzi Haberlandt from Fenster zum Sommer.

Berlin-based Dernesch is a critically acclaimed and award-winning director who has directed a number short movies, documentary films, music videos and international productions.

Journey to Jah, his first feature documentary, co-directed with Moritz Springer, follows two European reggae musicians, Gentleman (Tilmann Otto) and Alborosie (Alberto DʻAscola) for seven years in their quest for authenticity in Jamaica.

'€˜Journey to Jah'€™: Gentleman and Amborosie travel to Jamaica in search of raggae music. Courtesy of German Cinema Festival

'€˜Kaddish for a Friend'€™: Director Leo Khasin'€™s debut feature tells the tale of an elderly Jewish war veteran who befriends a Palestinian teenager in Berlin. Farbfilm Verleih

According to the directors'€™ statement, the film addresses contradictions between rebellion, music and spirituality that embody reggae. '€œA system of values from the Old Testament and the problems of a third-world country collide with the liberal world views of the likes of Gentleman and Alborosie.

'€œIt is the struggle with the deeper questions in life that gives us food for thought and the motivation to consider what is seemingly immutable. Rastafari is much more than a belief; it is a party, a spiritual path and dogmatic pitfall, a holiday flirtation and excuse for discriminatory, racist excesses, it is politics and commerce,'€ the statement said.

Haberlandt, the star of comedy Peas at 5:30, will be joined in Indonesia by her Fenster co-star, the ever-luminous Hoss, one of Germany'€™s most acclaimed actresses and the winner of a Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2007 for her performance in Yella.

Speaking to SBS in Australia, Fenster zum Sommer director Hendrik Handloegten said that he wrote the film specifically for Hoss and Haberlandt, basing it on an obscure 1967 novel by Hannelore Valencak that he found in a used bookstore in Berlin.

'€œSomething magically drew me to this book. I read the synopsis and it was absolutely appealing. I think once in a while everyone asks himself the question of what you would do if you could relive part of your life,'€ Handloegten said, as reported by SBS.

Screenings and events are free and open for public, with tickets available an hour before screening time. Admission is limited to adults, unless otherwise specified.

German Film Festival screening schedule

Jakarta
Aug. 22 to 31 at Epicentrum XXI and GoetheHaus

Bandung
Aug. 23 to 25 at Ciwalk XXI

Surabaya '€“ Aug. 23 to 24 at Sutos XXI

Yogyakarta
Aug. 24 to 26 at Empire XXI

Banda Aceh
Aug. 24 at Episentrum Ulee Kareng

Palu
Aug. 26 to 28 at RRI Palu

Balikpapan
Aug. 27 to 28 at Ewalk XXI

Denpasar
Aug. 28 to 30 at Bentara Budaya Bali

Makassar
Aug. 30 to 31 atPanakukkang XXI

 

For more information, visit goethe.de/germancinema.