VENICE: Back when he was 22 and she was 16, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz brought their movie “Jamon, Jamon” to the Venice International Film Festival. Now, a quarter of a century and two children later, they were back with another project, “Loving Pablo,” their first film together as a real-life couple. “It is interesting that we are back with a movie together exactly 25 years later and it feels like time has flown, there are so many things happened in between but it also feels like it was yesterday. Very strange,” said Cruz, who married Bardem in 2010. “Loving…
Author: James Ulmer/Tanja Meding
Germany may have lost its bid for best foreign language film at the Oscars this year (though The White Ribbon did conquer that category at the Golden Globes), but on their home turf, German films seem to be winning all kinds of attention. At the recently wrapped Berlin International Film Festival, for example, German entries were front and center once again, nabbing no less than 7 of the festival’s 26 competition slots thanks largely to the programming moxie of Dieter Kosslick, the Barnum & Bailey-inspired film promoter and artistic director of the festival for the past nine years. “It has…
After a busy week at last February’s Berlin International Film Festival, CWB’s James Ulmer and Tanja Meding met up with U.S. indie producer Rachel Klein, whose visit to Berlin turned out to be her own personal “world premiere.” We were eager to hear what brought her to the festival and retrieve some first-hand insights from this spunky New Yorker. At the end of 2008, Klein relocated from New York to Los Angeles, where she is currently producing television’s “UFC Primetime” and serving as production manager for “Steven Seagal: Lawman.” . One of Klein’s most high-profile projects is co-chairing, along with…
BERLIN — One of Europe’s foremost producers of feature films and television, Regina Ziegler has become renowned over the past three decades for her work with leading directors Rainer Fassbinder, Andrzej Wajda, Nic Roeg, Ken Russell, Krzysztof Zanussi and Bob Rafelson, among many, and for her tenacity, taste and talent in putting Europe’s top-tier actors and crews onto the same team. With her current historical epic Henri IV, based on the novel by Heinrich Mann, the indefatigable Zielger continues a tradition of bringing to the big screen quality stories supported by top-flight production values. Set against the backdrop of 16th-century…
Back in 1994, producer Stefan Arndt together with filmmakers Wolfgang Becker, Dani Levy and Tom Tykwer founded X- Filme Creative Pool in Berlin. Their mission: to produce sophisticated art house films for the general audience. Modeling their company after United Artists, they brought together producers and filmmakers under one creative roof, much like UA did in 1919 when Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith created one of the first true film studios. That role model seemed to work for X Filme, for today the company’s portfolio includes some of of the most successful movies of recent German…
Back in 1999 at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, an American woman who programmed film festivals in Norway, Martha Otte, met a man who distributed films in Germany, Hermann Greuel. In a cinematic twist of fate, the two fell in love (meeting up at festivals around the world), Hermann moved to Norway, married each other, and started two independent film festivals in the small town of Tromso, far up north in the Arctic Circle. It was, and remains after a decade, a true marriage of movies and amour. And the twists don’t stop there. Since 2003, Hermann has produced and…
For 30 years, the peripatetic Ron Henderson has been a driving force behind the Denver Film Society and its International Film Festival. This year, the veteran film curator and executive is stepping aside from his long-running role as Denver’s artistic director to become its senior programming consultant, passing his baton to long-time program director Brit Withey. Britta Erickson serves as director of festivals. During Henderson’s reign, the Denver Film Society has grown steadily, now running a seven-screen independent Moviehouse on the Campus of the Denver University. The Society organizes a number of specialized film festivals throughout the year and also…