German Film Festival
The 12th annual Audi Festival of German Films will screen 9-13 May at Cinema Paradiso.
For ‘More Than Honey’, director Marcus Imhoof flew around the world four times to collect amazing footage of honey bee colonies in California, Switzerland, China and Australia. He compares his grandfather’s bee keeping practices with modern day ones which actually have the potential to make the honey bee extinct. Scary stuff, especially if you like honey.
‘Breathing’, directed by Karl Markovics, is an engrossing film of a 19 year-old in a detention centre who is trying to get his life back on track after committing a serious crime five years earlier. Discovered on the street, by the director of ‘The Counterfeiters’, Thomas Schubert, conveys the inner turmoil of the troubled teenager who finds peace working at the local morgue on day release.
‘Forgotten’, directed by Alex Achmidt, is a thriller about two girls who reunite after 25 years apart and decide to revisit an island holiday house their families once shared. Shocks and scares abound as the horrific story that has lain dormant for 25 years, unfolds.
Directed by Georg Maas, ‘Two Lives’ is compelling viewing, based on things that actually happened during the cold war between East and West Germany. Katrine Evensen was raised in an orphanage in East Germany but is reunited with her Norwegian mother (her father was part of the German occupying army) after a brave escape. Twenty years later, classified documents are opened, buried stories come to light and Katrine is asked to give testimony against the Norwegian state on behalf of the children taken away from their mothers during the war.
Click here for more information and screening times.
Iron Man 3 (M)
Directed by Shane Black
Robert Downey Jr is now 48 years old and his alter ego Tony Stark, otherwise known as Iron Man, is getting on as well. He has lost his obnoxious edge, though not his outrageousness, and has settled down with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) who runs Stark Enterprises. Working on perfecting Iron Man suits is his major obsession but when the latest terrorist decimates his Malibu house, he ends up fighting for his life and the lives of those he cares about. There are no Norse gods or aliens in this film and, while Stark is plagued with anxiety attacks, Iron Man is even without his cladding a lot of the time. So does the man make the suit or the suit make the man? The baddies – The Mandolin (Ben Kingsley) and Aldrich Killen (Guy Pearce) – don’t survive the whole-scale destruction that results, and I’m not sure Iron Man will be going into battle again either.
Drift (M)
Directed by Ben Nott and Morgan O’Neill
Sam Worthington and his mates have recreated Margaret River of the 1970s – even though they had to use Nannup for the old buildings and sleepy streets. The star of the film is the Margaret River surf and the breathtaking scenery of Yallingup, Augusta and Bunker Bay where the actors do all their own surfing. Worthington is surf photographer JB who arrives in the town with travelling companion Lani (Lesley-Ann Brandt). They become friends with the Kelly brothers – Andy (Myles Pollard) and Jimmy (Xavier Samuel). Apart from surfing, the brothers find time for a bit of romance and for making boards and wetsuits with the help of their mother Kay (Robyn Malcolm). Finances are a problem, and battles with the bank manager and the local bikie gang loom large as a major surf competition comes to town. In the spectacular opening scene, Jimmy saves Andy from drowning … but the roles too become reversed at the end.
Haute Cuisine (M)
Directed by Christian Vincent
In the early 1970s, Danièle Delpeuch organised foie gras and truffle weekends at her farm in France before going to the US to cook and teach. The only woman who has ever cooked at the Élysée Palace for France’s president, she spent a year as a cook in Antarctica before planning her truffle farm in New Zealand. Using her story, this film juxtaposes the bleak, windswept plains of Antarctica with the opulent excess of France’s presidential palace where Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot) works as personal cook for Francois Mitterrand. She is responsible for creating all his meals and, despite jealous resentment from the other kitchen staff, the authenticity of her cooking soon seduces the president. It also seduces the audience, and the scientists in Antarctica even though the position asked for cafeteria-like food to be prepared. Celebrating an adventurous life and wonderful food, it is strongly advised that this film not be seen on an empty stomach.
Promised Land (m)
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Steve Butler (Matt Damon) and Sue Thomasen (Frances McDormand) work for a natural gas company and they travel around rural America to convince people to sign over their land for the gas to be extracted. The dedicated Butler and the world-worn Thomasen work well together, as they divide and conquer each small town in the name of progress. Butler knows that the cash from the mining will help these struggling communities to survive but high school science teacher Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook) has a lot of questions about fraching – the method of extracting the natural gas. When he is joined by environmental activist Dustin Noble (John Krasinki), the townspeople become concerned the money being offered by the gas company may not be the saving grace they’d like it to be. Unfortunately the competition between Butler and Noble for love interest Alice (Rosemary DeWitt) seems to have more punch than all the environmental and political agendas.
