by Vera von Kreutzbruck
– Germany -

They were East Germany’s dream couple in the eighties. But shortly after the fall of the Wall, which divided East and West Germany from 1961 until 1989, a scandal would taint the image of actors Jenny Gröllman and Ulrich Mühe.

When East Germany’s state security service’s surveillance files were declassified in 1991, Mühe discovered that his ex-wife had been spying on him and reporting to a secret police officer about his activities during the regime in communist East Germany. Gröllman vehemently denied this accusation until her death from cancer in 2006. That same year, in an ironic twist of fate, Mühe played a secret service agent who monitors a dissident playwright in the Oscar-winning film The Lives of Others. One year later, in the summer of 2007, he also died of the same disease.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

One of life’s sweet pleasures is to travel. Thanks to the increasing number of low-cost flights, traveling abroad is no longer a luxury reserved for the privileged few. At the same time, however, there is an alarming increase in the demand of personal data from tourists and no clear transatlantic legal framework on personal data exchange. Though third parties such as airlines and airport operators have the right to read this data, we don’t know what happens with it afterwards.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

Unlike many actors in the film industry, Parker Posey’s aspiration is not to be an A-list Hollywood star. Her career path has circumvented mainstream filmmaking, which – in her own words – does not produce singular voices or tell human stories.

In her quest for authentic storytelling, she has opted for riskier projects. Barely forty, Posey already has 53 movie credits to her name. Some of her most memorable and celebrated roles have required taut emotional performances, portraying mostly eccentric and conflicted women. She is well known for her turns in Party Girl, where she played a hard partying 20-something in New York City, Best in Show as a hilariously high-strung dog owner and the controversial art film, House of Yes which deals with incest. Her sporadic appearances in blockbuster movies can be counted on one hand with small parts in Scream 3, Superman Returns and You’ve got Mail.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

When I told British director and choreographer Sally Potter, 59, that I am from Argentina, she broke into song - “Don’t cry for me Argentina.” She has many fond memories from the time she spent in Buenos Aires in 1997 shooting her film The Tango Lesson with tango dancer Pablo Verón and herself as the protagonists. And her passion for tango has grown fervently ever since. “Next week I’m flying to London to dance with Verón,” she tells me before starting our interview at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

Tilda Swinton is one of the most talented and captivating artists in current international cinema. She’s also in high demand. Tilda recently finished shooting a Jim Jarmusch film in Spain with Jim Murray and Gael García Bernal. She is also planning a collaboration with Marilyn Manson who wants to direct a film on the life of writer Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, and is working on the creation of a foundation dedicated to the introduction of cinema to children, which already has support from the World Cinema Foundation. In August of last year, she successfully organized a small film festival called “Ballerina Ballroom – Cinema of Dreams,” which took place in Nairn, Scotland. And at the end of this year, she will play a mother who does not identify with her maternal role in a film directed by Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

Even before Elite Squad was released commercially in October 2007, the hugely popular film about police violence and corruption in Rio de Janeiro was already a major success in Brazil. Eleven million Brazilians saw the film on pirated copies and almost 3 million spectators were drawn to the theatres. It will be released this month in the United States.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

Barack Obama cast a spell on Germany. Even weeks before his visit to Berlin on July 24th, he dominated the headlines and was the talk of the capital city. Then, after much anticipation, the 47-year-old US senator delivered an idyllic speech, conquering the hearts of most Germans.

• Berliners flocked to the Brandenburg gate to hear Barack Obama's only European speech. Photograph by Vera von Kreutzbruck. •

“He is an incredibly fascinating person,” journalist Peter Intelman, 47, told me at the rally. “I just spoke with a young woman and she said: when he says ‘yes, we can,’ I believe him. He radiates credibility and this is what is so fascinating about him. But I don’t know if he will be able to fulfill his promises.”

Another Obama enthusiast, Fanny, a 22-year-old French law student told me: “Most of the European countries are Democrats so we have more affinities with Obama than with McCain. Besides, I think he can change things. I’m sure that it will be better with him than how it was with Bush.”

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

Andrzej Wajda was 13 years old when World War II broke out. Together with his mother he lived most of his life in the vain hope that his father might have survived the war: his father’s name had never appeared on any official list of Polish soldiers killed in combat. The truth, discovered years later, was that Captain Wajda had been shot cold-bloodedly by the Soviet secret police in a prison in the western Soviet Union. Andrzej and around 22,000 other people had waited for their loved ones in vain.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
- Germany -

This year’s 58th International Film Festival in Berlin is offering a heterogeneous mix of topics and genres with many documentaries, a lot of pathos, a few lost souls, war and violence, politics as usual, and last but not least, some comedy.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
Germany

• Hamburg boasts pint-sized anti-Nazi graffiti.
Photograph by Photocapy. •

The Nazis offered incentives to German women to procreate and introduced the “Lebensborn” program (fount of life in German) to create a master race of blond, blue-eyed children. Mothers with three or more children under 10 years old received “honorary cards” allowing them to jump shopping queues and get discounts on their rent. Cheap state loans were offered for parents, and there was the “Mother’s Cross” medal: bronze for four children, silver for six and gold for eight.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
Germany/Argentina

• Sept 12 - Austria: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner meets with Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer. •

Vera von Kreutzbruck
Germany

• Emigrants preparing to depart from Hamburg. Photograph courtesy of Bildarchiv Denkmalschutzamt Hamburg •

The vast majority of them embarked from BallinStadt, a development conceived as a unique full-service departure point for emigrants. Encompassing 30 buildings, BallinStadt was so big that it was almost a small self-contained city itself, tucked within the bigger port of Hamburg. This innovative idea, perfectly suited to the times, originated with Alfred Ballin, general manager of the German shipping company HAPAG (Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft). What is left of BallinStadt is now located in the Veddel neighborhood of the Hamburg suburbs.

by Vera von Kreutzbruck
Germany

By Vera von Kreutzbruck
Germany

Ever since the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated in Berlin two years ago, it has become a major tourist attraction. The vast monument consists of a sprawling field of 2,700 stone slabs near the Brandenburg Gate and is dedicated to the millions of victims as a whole. Together, the slabs symbolize a collective loss. But it’s not the only memorial in the capital city. A daring German sculptor has implemented an original project to remember individual victims.

Photo courtesy of the artist - www.stolpersteine.com

The idea is both simple and original. These discrete yet provocative memorials are small brass plaques containing the personal details of victims of the Holocaust, embedded into the sidewalk in front of their former homes. About six million Jews were murdered in Germany and Europe, as well as political dissidents, homosexuals, gypsies and people with disabilities.