Cologne Westend cycle

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The Cologne Westend cycle is a film cycle staged by the directors and authors Markus Mischkowski and Kai Maria Steinkühler since 1996 around the film characters Mike and Alfred, who are located in the Westend district of Cologne.

The film series has so far consisted of 8 episodes: the short films Westend (1996/97), Was tun (1998), Volga (2003), Waldmeister (2007), Wellenreiter (2010) and Competitors (2014) as well as the feature films Westend (2001) and White Knights (2015).

action

Mike and Alfred, two unemployed, lethargic friends from Cologne's West End, are repeatedly encouraged to do dubious neoliberal work by their old buddy Rasto, a windy business man and soldier of fortune in the market.

background

The films of the Cologne Westend cycle are characterized by the following aspects in terms of aesthetics, content and production technology:

  • The image design: The films are shot in high-contrast black and white, predominantly with long, fixed camera settings, slow pans and image sections that emphasize the depth of the cinematic space. Long shots taken at wide angles and a deep horizon characterize the style of the films.
  • the geographical reference to Cologne and the surrounding area: the filming location and cinematic location of the films is predominantly Cologne's Westend.
  • the attitude towards dramaturgy and character management: The films of the Westend cycle are "anti-psychological cinema" in that they do not deal with the characters' past, internal conflicts, family ties, milieu or class-specific obligations. Rather, through abstraction and reduction, the protagonists should be given a cinematic poetry and presence, as well as universal validity beyond the socially dramatic and naturalistic cinema.
  • the meaning of language and the characters' extraordinary use of language: language is not primarily used to convey information for the viewer or to advance the plot, but rather made comedically usable as a language game. Failure to speak, spontaneous speaking, but especially wrong, prefabricated speaking in language sleeves taken up from discourses from the areas of neoliberal economics and marketing characterize the films. For the characters, it is not their own past or memories that form the identity-creating moment, but rather the presence of language as the prevailing discourse to which they are more or less exposed. The critical moment of the films lies in the implicit invitation to the viewer to become aware of the ideology and absurdity of neoliberal language.
  • the establishment of the work: The film production does not take place according to the usual branch premises of the film organization and division of labor. The filmmakers act as producers and auteur filmmakers, the film stories and dramaturgies often emerge during the specific setting up of the work before and during production, when selecting the motifs, actors, costumes, cars, etc. and develop during the shooting as part of a well-rehearsed , trusted and experienced teamwork. In most positions and trades, the same filmmakers have been working together for many years to produce the Westend cycle. Actor friends who are friends play the same character in different films or appear in different roles in the films over many years.
  • Cinema references: Cinematic role models of the Westend cycle include Aki Kaurismäki , Jim Jarmusch , Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton .

With the exception of Westend (1996/97), the mascot of the Cologne group, "Haralt, the sheep", appears in all of the films in the Cologne Westend cycle, a stuffed sheep that was created by the Cologne film critic and curator Hans-Dieter Delkus (" The man with the sheep ”) is carried through the picture in a large number of Cologne group films. Likewise, number 813, alluding to François Truffaut's favorite book 813 - The Double Life of Arsène Lupine and the Cologne Film Club 813, appears in one scene in most of the films in the Westend cycle.

reception

The individual films in Cologne's Westend cycle were shown at numerous international film festivals. The feature film Westend (2001) had its world premiere on October 24, 2001 at the 35th Hof International Film Festival and its international festival premiere on January 27, 2002 at the 31st International Film Festival Rotterdam.

It was released in German cinemas in October 2003 and appeared, together with Westend (1997) and Wolga (2003), on DVD in March 2006 at Edition Filmmuseum Munich. The short films Waldmeister (2007) and Wellenreiter (2010) are lent and distributed by the Hamburg Short Film Agency. The short film Waldmeister was released in 2007 on the compilation DVD "Do what you want - 11 short films on the change in work" (distribution: Matthias-Film and Kurzfilmagentur Hamburg). The feature film White Knights (2015) will have its world premiere on October 22, 2015 at the 49th Hof International Film Festival.

In November 2011 the American film scholar Marco Abel organized a retrospective of the films in the cinema "The Ross" in Lincoln / Nebraska (USA). Abel assigns the films to the "German Film Underground" due to their low-budget production conditions, the directors' dedicated author concept and the reception conditions.

The German film critic Hans Schifferle wrote in 2012 about the films in the Cologne Westend cycle:

“Like most of the films by the Cologne group, the films by Mischkowski and Steinkühler in particular succeed in rediscovering cinema traditions ranging from slapstick to spaghetti westerns to Kaurismäki in everyday German life. (...) All of these films, which begin with »W« and are shot in glorious black and white, are about the two unemployed buddies Mike and Alfred, played by the two filmmakers themselves as beautiful losers in a grandiose outfit between tastelessness and daring chic for always waiting for Godot. The two, who are in the footsteps of the great comedian duos and western buddies, seem to fight forever against the windmills of capitalism in this great, absurdly comical and deadly sad film cycle. But these melancholy, abstractly beautiful Westend films are never just satire, they are rather tragicomic film poems about the human condition in the desolate times of hollow communication, overrated transparency and total availability. But they give hope that the old myths and values ​​of friendship, love, craft and daring will survive in the wasteland on the outskirts of Cologne. "

The American film scholar Marco Abel wrote in 2011 about the films in the Cologne Westend cycle:

“The WESTEND series as a whole engages the topic of unemployment and the attending boredom experienced by characters who do not know what to do with their time; yet, rather than making a dismal social drama, the directors opt for more poetic and joyful means to confront viewers with the mechanisms by which post-industrial capitalist culture has turned communication into a myth that today forbids people even to question its own imperative to communicate - express yourself! - and the belief that you can achieve everything with proper communication skills. "

The Internet portal "Köln im Film" describes the films in the Westend cycle as follows:

“The Westend films are characterized by concise camera perspectives and image details. Long fixed shots, slow pans, image sections that put the room in the limelight: wide-angle shot long shots, deep horizon, bottom view and a 'two-thirds sky', as cameraman KaPe Schmidt calls it. The camera perspective of the films gives the two lazy losers greatness. Image details and long shots make the space on the outskirts between wasteland, industry and social housing appear wide. It is no coincidence that some shots are reminiscent of typical American landscape shots with a large horizontal. "

The individual films

  • 1997: Westend, 17 min. (Episode 1)
  • 1998: What to do, 17 min. (Episode 2)
  • 2001: Westend, 89 min. (Episode 3)
  • 2003: Volga, 14 min. (Episode 4)
  • 2007: Woodruff, 9 min. (Episode 5)
  • 2010: Surf rider, 10 min. (Episode 6)
  • 2014: competitor, 25 min. (Episode 7)
  • 2015: White Knights, 81 min. (Episode 8)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Marco Abel, 2010: "Rather than making a dismal social drama, the directors opt for more poetic and joyful means to confront viewers with the mechanisms by which post-industrial capitalist culture has turned communication into a myth that today forbids people even to question its own imperative to communicate - express yourself! "; Hans Schifferle, 2012: “But these melancholic, abstractly beautiful Westend films are never just satire, they are rather tragicomic film poems about the human condition in the desolate times of hollow communication, overrated transparency and total availability.”; also: Stefan Benz, 2014.
  2. ↑ Cf. Justin Senkbile, 2011: "The grainy, black and white aesthetic echoes early Jim Jarmusch and (on the lower end of the spectrum) Kevin Smith. And the deliberate, no-frills structure of the movies harkens back to the days of short one-reel comedies of the silent era. Jacques Tati seems to be an influence as well, both in the use of sound-effects in 2003's “Wolga” and also in the general pervading sense of a dysfunctional modernity. "; Ground Zero, 2011: "Called the" Westend "cycle, the films have a deadpan, offbeat sense of humor, leading to comparisons with the movies of Buster Keaton, Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki while reflecting life under German neoliberalism."; also: Hans Schifferle, 2012; Stefan Benz, 2014.
  3. ^ Westend in the archive of the Hof International Film Festival.
  4. ↑ https://www.iffr.com/en/search/?q=westend
  5. ^ Westend, Edition Filmmuseum
  6. ↑ Kurzfilmverleih.com: Woodruff ( Memento from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Kurzfilmverleih.com: Wellenreiter ( Memento from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Kurzfilmverleih.com: do what you want (role) ( Memento from September 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Marco Abel: Underground Film Germany in the Age of Control Societies: The Cologne Group, In: Quarterly Review of Film and Video 27: 2, pp. 89-107. Routledge, London 2010.
  10. ↑ Hans Schifferle: Cine-Desperados vom Rhein - The Cologne group and their lived cinema. Munich Film Museum. Program 22/2012. Pp. 66–67.
  11. ↑ Marco Abel: Markus Mischkowski and Kai Maria Steinkühler's “Westend” series: Independent German filmmaking in the age of neoliberalism. Flyer for the retrospective “The 'Westend' Films” in Lincoln / Nebraska, Oct. 28 - Nov. 2, 2011. Ed. UNL / Cinema 'The Ross' 2011.
  12. ↑ www.koeln-im-film.de
  13. ↑ http://www.koeln-im-film.de/277.html