The Christmas Story (2016)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | the Christmas story |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2016 |
| length | 57 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Klaus Marshal |
| script | Judith Gardner |
| production | Fred Steinbach |
| music | Susanne Ortner |
| camera | Lukas Steinbach |
| cut | Sarah Birnbaum |
| occupation | |
|
Puppeteers:
Speakers:
| |
The Christmas story is a Christmas film from the Augsburger Puppenkiste from 2016 . The film consists of recordings from the Augsburger Puppenkiste theater in Augsburg . The screenplay by Judith Gardner is based on the Christmas story of the New Testament . Directed by Klaus Marschall. Jürgen Marschall designed the dolls and Florian Moch designed the costumes. The stage design was created by Hans Kautzmann. The Christmas story celebrated its premiere on November 20, 2016 at the Five Lakes Film Festival in Starnberg and was shown in cinemas in Germany and Austria on the four Sundays in Advent.
action
The film tells the Christmas story in five acts based on the Gospels according to Luke and Matthew . The narrator is the donkey Noel, who accompanies Mary and Joseph on their journey. He introduces the characters and comments on the plot.
Act 1: The Three Kings watch the sky and discover an unusual star. At the same time Joseph built a house in Nazareth for himself and his fiancée Maria. The Archangel Gabriel visits Mary and announces that she is expecting a child. Mary speaks to her mother, who is concerned about how Joseph will receive this news, but the Archangel Gabriel appears to Joseph in a dream and dispels his doubts.
Act 2: Mary and Joseph have married and are just about to move into their new house when Roman legionaries drive them away and bring the order from Emperor Augustus to travel to their place of birth for the census.
3rd act: Mary and Joseph are on their way through the desert and get caught in a sandstorm, but they do not lose hope.
4th act: As Mary is about to give birth, Joseph looks for accommodation, but in vain. The donkey Noel is also increasingly desperate. An ox advises him that a nearby stable is empty.
5th act: The Archangel Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus to the shepherds. In the stable, Joseph and Mary stand at the manger and first receive the shepherds, then the three kings. At the end the animals sing the Christmas carol Silent Night, Holy Night , and the angel speaks a blessing.
Themes and style
When staging the theater, it was important to make the Middle East perceptible as the location of the action, instead of having the Christmas story play in the snowy European winter like many nativity plays. The characters speak in different dialects and accents - for example, two of the wise men from the Orient speak with an Austrian or Eastern European accent and the Archangel Gabriel with a Yiddish accent. This shows that the characters come from different parts of the world, but still understand and help each other.
An additional topic of the film is the understanding of the religions. As the animals talk about the different names for their respective gods, the ox notices with a grateful look at his feed: “Whatever we call him, he has thought of the feed. Very kind of him. ”The film is deliberately free to deal with the historical context: a Muslim dromedary appears (although Islam did not yet exist at the time), and the shepherds later turn out to be the evangelists Luke and Matthew ( although neither could have been contemporary witnesses of the birth of Jesus).
The plot receives humorous elements through the repeated crash landings of the Archangel Gabriel and the fact that the animals are amazed at the strange behavior of the people: They comment on the bureaucracy, parents speaking in baby language and the superfluity of the valuable gifts to the baby Jesus. The language also contributes to the relaxed narrative tone: the figures refer to the stable as a “dump” and call the archangel Gabriel “wing man”. Individual jokes are more aimed at an adult audience, for example when Maria and Joseph think about who the child looks like: “But the eyes are yours. What about the nose? Probably from God the Father. "
The theatrical atmosphere is expressed in which - as is usual with film adaptations of the Augsburger Puppenkiste - the stage and the strings of the marionettes can be seen. During the renovation breaks, recordings show the children in the audience.
production
The play on which the film is based had its premiere in 2014. 23 new marionettes were carved and dressed for the play. The following year, the puppet theater decided to venture back into a cinema production for the first time since the 1997 film The Story of Monty Spinnerratz . Several theater performances were filmed and edited for this purpose. The theater tried to get funding from the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern , which rejected the application because it was not a real film, but a filmed play. Instead, some Catholic dioceses , including the Archdiocese of Cologne , granted funding . The film was made with a budget of only € 250,000.
reception
The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) awarded the film the rating “particularly valuable” and called it “a wonderful mixture of nostalgic motifs and many modern elements that loosen up the story and make it interesting for children. ... As you know from the Augsburger Puppenkiste, the play of the characters is excellent, the selected speakers also do their job excellently and give each marionette its very own character. ”The jury's justification stated:“ The classic story was translated and plot in a language and form that the youngest viewers can understand. The focus was intelligently modified so that surprising content accents were set in the 'dusty material'. ”The jury recommends the film for children aged three and over. The Catholic Cathedral Radio called the film "an amusing and subtle version of the Christmas story".
music
The film music, composed by the Klezmer musician Susanne Ortner , is based on classic Christmas carols and klezmer and jazz elements. Guy Klucevsek , John Marcinizyn and Paul Thompson contributed to the recording . It was released on CD in 2016, together with a collection of international Christmas carols, sung by the Augsburger Domsingknaben under the direction of Gabriele Steck.
DVD and radio play
The Christmas story was released on DVD in 2017 , along with a short making-of .
A radio play version by Judith Gardner with Martina Gedeck as the narrator was released to accompany the film .
Web links
- The Christmas story in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Christmas story at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Certificate of Release for The Christmas Story . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF).
- ↑ Maren Martell: Many miracles and a world premiere. In: Augsburger Allgemeine . November 14, 2016, accessed December 3, 2019 .
- ↑ Lars von der Gönna: Augsburger Puppenkiste brings Christmas story to the cinema. In: Berliner Morgenpost . November 26, 2016, accessed December 3, 2019 .
- ↑ Stefan Mayr: Augsburger Puppenkiste brings the Christmas story to the cinema. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 28, 2016, accessed December 3, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c Bernd Buchner: crash landing in Bethlehem. In: Domradio . November 25, 2016, accessed December 3, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Haakon Nogge: Augsburger Puppenkiste brings Christmas story to the cinema. In: Hessische / Niedersächsische Allgemeine . November 24, 2016, accessed December 3, 2019 .
- ↑ The Christmas story on the pages of the German Film and Media Rating , accessed on December 3, 2019.