Wesleyan is celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in April, so come and join us this Wednesday, April 26 at 6pm in Fisk 413 for the last screening of our “Asian German FilmSeries” and pizza!
We’ll be showing some episodes of the 2022 TV series Doppelhaushälfte (Semi-Detached), with Iranian and Vietnamese diasporic characters in the main cast.
The Kröger-Sawadi family from hip Berlin has just settled down in a suburban duplex home, right next door to the Knuppes. Their idyllic house in the countryside may not be what they imagined… Come see how the neighbors get along in this fresh and subversive take on the German “culture-clash comedy”!
These contemporary German productions represent diasporic characters of Central, West, South, Southeast, and East Asian descent in a variety of genres and intersecting themes including stereotypes, gender, generation, mixed race identity, class, disability, and more.
Trailers
(1) Get Up (Steh auf!), a 2019 short drama, directed by Seung-Hyun Chong. Taeshik, a German-born 26-year-old of Korean descent is torn between his Korean upbringing and his life in Germany. (2) Fruits & Vegetables (Obst und Gemüse), a 2017 short comedy-drama by Vietnamese director Duc Ngo Ngoc. At first glance, the Vietnamese greengrocer and his employee, who is as attached to the Berlin soccer team FC Union as he is to alcohol, have little in common. At second glance…
Tschick (Goodbye Berlin), a 2016 coming of age film, directed by Fatih Akin, based on Wolfgang Herrndorf’s bestselling novel Tschick. The film depicts two teenage outsiders from Berlin who steal a car and go on an eccentric roadtrip through Germany that will probably change their lives.
My Blind Date with Life (Mein Blind Date mit dem Leben), a 2017 biopic, directed by Marc Rothemund, based on the autobiographical book by Saliya Kahawatte. An ambitious young man struggles to achieve his dream of becoming an employee in a Munich luxury hotel despite being strongly visually impaired.
Semi-Detached (Doppelhaushälfte), a 2022 German TV comedy series. A family moves from hip Berlin to a semi-detached house in the idyllic countryside and gets to know their very different neighbors…
Image: Joel Basman and Marie Leuenberger in Caged Birds
Oliver Rihs, Caged Birds (Switzerland/Germany, 2020, 119 min.) Barbara “Babs” Hug is a young radical lawyer fighting Switzerland’s antiquated prison system in the 1980s. She is tracked down by Walter Stürm, a Foucault-reading convict who has just managed to escape from prison – again. With the police closing in, Babs finds Walter temporary refuge with a militant organization, and takes him on as a client in hopes of using the Jailbreak King’s publicity to advance her cause. But the less Walter yields to her reasoning, the more Babs falls for his uncompromising idea of freedom. Based on a true story. Free streaming in the U.S. as part of our monthly German Movie Nights.Register to attend.
Familiar with Sissi, the Bavarian princess who later became Empress Elisabeth of Austria? You might have been familiar with the classical figure, cast by Romy Schneider. However, the sweet royal fairy tale is neither the true nor the whole story…Come to Boger 112around7 pm, October 13th and enjoy a German Musical. The screening is hosted by German Haus!
Elisabeth is a German-language musical commissioned by the Vereinigte Bühnen Wien (VBW), with book/lyrics by Michael Kunze and music by Sylvester Levay. It portrays the legendary life and death of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.
This is a German musical, but English subtitle will be provided. So don’t worry whether your German is proficient enough. There will be an intermission between Act I and Act II. Refreshments will be served. The audience is welcomed and encouraged to bring friends who might also be interested.
Please contact Binxin Wang if you have any questions.
Wesleyan’s Israeli Filmfestival starts this semester with The Cakemaker, a story about German/Israeli/Jewishrelations. The film will be shown on Thursday, February 1 at 8PM at the Goldsmith Family Cinema.
We are also very fortunate to have the director of the film, Ofir Raul-Glazer, an Israeli living in Berlin, introduce the film and conduct a Q/A session with the audience after the screening.
Please join us this Thursday, November 17 at 8:00PM for the fabulous documentary German&Jews at the Powell Family Cinema. For more information about this documentary visit the website German&Jews.
Join us this Friday, February 12 at 8:00PM in USDAN 108 for Germany’s newest TV series Deutschland ’83 (English subtitles).
In a divided Germany in 1983, naive 24-year-old East German soldier Martin Rauch is pulled from his benign post as a border guard and given a new assignment: undercover spy for the Stasi foreign service in West Germany. Hiding in plain sight as Moritz Stamm in the West German army, Rauch must gather NATO military secrets. As he veers between father figures, love interests, and East and West Germany, nothing is quite what it seems and everyone he encounters is harboring secrets, both political and personal. The coming-of-age story — created by American journalist and author Anna Winger and her German husband, Jörg Winger — is the first German-language drama to be aired on a major U.S. network.
