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'X-Filme': the film manufactory

Zahir Raihan Film Society screens six German films produced by the 'X-Filme Creative Pool' at the Goethe Institut
13 October 2003, 18:00 PM
LIFESTYLE
By Sabbir Chowdhury
13 October 2003, 18:00 PM
The German production Company X-Filme Creative Pool GmBH was founded in 1994 in Berlin by film producer Stefan Arndt and filmmakers Tom Tykwer, Wolfgang Becker and Dani Levy. The aim was to revive the past glory of German cinema. The German cinema, meanwhile, lost all its glory of the 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s. Those were the years of the New German Cinema. The world renowned filmmakers Alexander Kluge, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlondorff, Reinhard Hauff, and the like were no longer making films in the 1990s which, would create an impact on the film critics as well as film enthusiasts.

The X-Filme productions 'specialise in taking Germany seriously as a topic, and thereby making German films competitive once again' in the world film scenario. The filmmakers Tom Tykwer, Wolfgang Becker, along with their colleagues at X-Filme proved that they are capable of doing it. The X-Filme production company has produced some of the very best films of the recent years. The films not only brought back the glory and awards for the German cinema but also got critical acclaims as well as box office success. Tykwer's Run Lola Run broke the German box office records of all time. Wolfgang Becker's latest film Goodbye, Lenin! is also a box office hit. Tom Tykwer's objective was 'an ambitious film that also has public appeal, that is of artistic and commercial value'. Tykwer managed to do it with Run Lola Run. The rest is history.

The production company 'X-Filme' founded its own distribution network 'X-Verleih' in 2000, to make it possible to supervise films continually, from concept to distribution. Producer Stefan Arndt compares the production at 'X-Filme' with 'a manufactory' which, unlike industrial production, makes the most varied of individual items. The 'X-Filme' has been accepted internationally as a production company and its filmmakers on which one can rely. That is why Tom Tykwer was chosen by the Miramax company for directing the film Heaven, based on the last screenplay by the late Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski and his collaborator Krzysztof Piesiewicz. The film, co-produced by 'X-Filme', retained the style of Tom Tykwer and kept the originality of Kieslowski at the same time.

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Zahir Raihan Film Society will screen six critically acclaimed films produced by The 'X-Filme' at the auditorium of Goethe Institut Inter Nationes Dhaka on 14th and 15th October. On 14th October, three films will be screened: Life Is All You Get by Wolfgang Becker, Wintersleepers and Run Lola Run by Tom Tykwer (at 3:30pm, 5:30pm and 7:45pm). Three more films will be screened on 15th October: Gigantic by Sebastian Schipper, The Princess and the Warrior and Heaven by Tom Tykwer (at 3:30pm, 5:15pm and 7:

30pm).

Courtesy: Deutschland

Sabbir Chowdhury, a film activist, teaches in the department of English at Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka.