jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Eleven days, five hundred movies, Madonna, Marty, and the Rolling Stones. Never mind Cloverfield: freshly arrived in Berlin for the 58th International Film Festival, Jürgen figures out that the real monster is the cuddly red bear that serves as its logo.

Read my Berlinale Journal on About.com.

(photo: soupflowers)

It’s no secret that Marcy is a great connoisseuse of pools the world over — from the gigantic Moses-built Astoria public pool to the Kaiser-Friedrich-Therme, the Nerobergbad, and Stadtbad Mitte, this summer we dunked our tails in chlorinated waters from the Hell’s Gate to the Spree. So when we stumbled past this ancient-looking city pool all lit up event-like the other night, we just had to just stick our heads in.

Lo and behold, the pool wasn’t filled, wasn’t even operable, but on two balconies, an orchestra was performing works by John Cage (”Atlas Eclipticalis,” “Songbooks”) and Bernd Thewes (”Seufzer-Halde”), with a guy down in the pit doing choreographed movements along to the music. If you had to come up with a parody of a Prenzlauer Berg art happening, this would do — but the sounds, light, and motion did transform the dilapidated building into an eerie, subterranean dreamscape, a pagan temple perhaps, devoted to the Gods of Chlorine.

The Stadtbad Oderberger Strasse has had a bumpy history; the Trockenschwimmer Festival went on for the rest of the weekend with performance art, readings, and more music.

Here are a few minutes of footage from the event:

Yeah, we snickered more than a few immature snickers at the name of this town in northeastern France. Bitche, pronounced just like you think, is dominated by a massive citadel that withstood an entire year of siege during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Today, you can take an audio-visual tour through the underground fortifications. As you pass through the bakery, the well, the officer’s quarters and so on, bits and pieces of a movie about the siege are projected on screens slyly installed below the vaulted ceiling.

It’s a peculiar way to see a movie, akin to sitting inside the real Helm’s Deep watching a version of The Two Towers where Gandalf and Éomer never show up. But despite the presence of Virginie Ledoyen as the scheming wife of Napoleon III, the film never takes on a life of its own beyond the cheesy illustration of historical events and some vague points about the futility of war in general. We didn’t feel the need to pick up the full-length DVD in the gift shop. Let me tell you though: there’s a patisserie downtown that serves some truly bitchin’ chocolate cake.

La Forteresse Assiegee. Gerard Mordillat, 2006. **

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“The greatest festival in the world!” an old friend of mine enthused, without apparent irony. And who knows? Maybe he’s not entirely wrong: the Weinfest Wiesbaden, an annual gathering of Rheingau wineries on the Marktplatz, is known as “the world’s longest wine bar,” with over a thousand different kinds of wine and an average consumption of 250,000 bottles in ten days, primarily Riesling. If you go only every few years, it’s definitely a good time — although not without its risks.

• More photos on Flickr
• Previously on muckworld: Wiesbaden and the Kaiser-Friedrich-Therme

Ah, lists! Like all fans, film aficionados are collectors, and every now and then, all collectors enjoy sifting through their stash to trot out their favorite baubles, arranged one way or another, to show them off to the world. Look! I’ve got three of the ultra-rare green kind, and oh, how that marbled one catches the sunlight just so! Toying with the objects of our affection in this way makes us feel happy and safe. In the world of movies, that’s what we call a list.

The movies we’ve seen (and can remember) are our stash and currency, and the best and shiniest of them will have to bear the scrutiny of any passers-by. As members of NYFCO, Marcy and I do this once a year, and recently, I’ve been asked, along with a number of bloggers and critics, to help put together a list of best films made in a language other than English before 2002. The list of nominations is out now at Edward Copeland’s site, and it’s a good one. You can go vote on your favorites, and a final tally will be published soon.

For the goal-oriented, that should be the end of the story, but I always find that democracy and criticism make an uneasy fit, and to me, the final result is somewhat beside the point. Instead, you might be happier taking a look at the individual ballots (or adding your own) here, at Jim Emerson’s site, at the House Next Door, or on your own damn blog. The fun is in the arranging of the marbles, the weighing of their comparative beauty, the debates over which ones have been overlooked or could be traded in for shinier ones. (It’s also a terrific way to fatten up your Netflix queue.) For the avid collector, the list is never an end in itself — it’s just a way to spend a little bit more time with some of our favorite things.

So here’s the snapshot of movies I considered worthy of inclusion according to this particular set of parameters on this particular day–culled from a much longer list of close contenders while LH 182, after three hours delay, finally began its initial descent on Berlin-Tegel, a fact I mention only because it may help explain the heavy Teutonic emphasis: I literally found myself in the Himmel über Berlin. Feel free to add your 25 favorites in the comments, and don’t forget to vote at Edward Copeland’s site. In alphabetical order:

8 1/2 Federico Fellini, 1963
Aguirre, The Wrath of God Werner Herzog, 1972
Akira Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988
Au Hasard Balthazar Robert Bresson, 1966
Band of Outsiders Jean-Luc Godard, 1964
Black Orpheus Marcel Camus, 1959
City of God Fernando Meirelles, 2002
Day for Night Francois Truffaut, 1973
M Fritz Lang, 1931
Nights of Cabiria Federico Fellini, 1957
Run Lola Run Tom Tykwer, 1998
Seven Samurai Akira Kurosawa, 1954
Solaris Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972
Spirited Away Hayao Miyazaki, 2001
Stolen Kisses Francois Truffaut, 1968
The Lovers on the Bridge Leos Carax, 1991
The Man Without a Past Aki Kaurismaki, 2002
The Rules of the Game Jean Renoir, 1939
The Seventh Seal Ingmar Bergman, 1957
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Jacques Demy, 1964
The Wages of Fear Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953
Wings of Desire Wim Wenders, 1987
Y Tu Mama Tambien Alfonso Cuaron, 2001
Yojimbo Akira Kurosawa, 1961
Zur Sache, Schätzchen May Spils, 1968

A few pictures from the city I used to call home, the town where Priscilla met Elvis. More Wiesbaden facts:

• The thermal springs of Wiesbaden were first mentioned in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia in 121.
• By 1800, there were 2,239 inhabitants and twenty-three bath houses. Among visitors to the springs were Goethe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Wagner, and Johannes Brahms. In 1900, there were 86,100 inhabitants and 126,000 visitors. In those years there were more millionaires living in Wiesbaden than in any other city in Germany.
• The Wiesbaden synagogue was destroyed during Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938.
• Wiesbaden is home to the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation.
• Volker Schlöndorff and John McEnroe were born in Wiesbaden.
• Sting, Lionel Richie, and Luciano Pavarotti have performed on the Bowling Green in front of the Kurhaus.
• Wiesbaden’s coat of arms features three times as many fleurs-de-lys as New Orleans.
• More photos from previous trips.

In Sarreguemines, France, Ludivine Sagnier and Claude Chabrol hold their own among the blockbusters. (Here’s the trailer.)

Whenever the name of your travel destination includes the letters “B”, “A”, and “D” — be it Baden Baden, Marienbad, or Bad Karma — you should dispense with all welcome ceremonies, postpone unpacking, and head straight from customs to the nearest spa.

That, at least, is our tradition when we arrive in Wiesbaden. There is nothing to counteract jetlag like submerging yourself in the steaming hot sulfur waters of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Therme, a 1913 Wilhelminian spa decked out in Jugendstil tiles. You can drift from the cold pool to the Finnish sauna to the Irish-Roman steam bath, and nobody’s wearing towels like in the photo above. It’s one of our favorite places in the world, and the best way I know of to make yourself feel human again after the indignities of economy class travel.

Kaiser-Friedrich-Therme Wiesbaden: English / Deutsch / Wikipedia