The InvinciblesA decade ago, Dominik Graf was Frg’s (Federal Republic of Germany) best kept secret: The nation’s one grandmaster of cinema whom the rest of the world had never heard of, or not taken proper interest in his work whenever there was a chance to. There certainly have been chances: his heist thriller Die Katze (The Cat,1988) was big enough back home for even distant observers to notice. His eccentric comedy Spieler (The Gamblers, 1990) screened in Venice’s competition, with seemingly nobody giving a shit, not even the locals—the film looked like some bizarre alien creature in those early post-Wall days when good spirits and humor were the order of the day, not subversive laughter about life’s inherent weirdness. When a dozen plus years on his melodrama Der Felsen (A Map of the Heart, 2002) got selected for the Berlinale competition, the film provoked something akin to...
- 5/22/2019
- MUBI
Dominik Graf has finally properly landed in America, and it's about damn time. The German director, known almost exclusively for a prodigious—and unexportable—output of work for television, has been directing since the 1970s, but only Beloved Sisters, one of this year's Berlinale competitors, has managed to secure proper theatrical distribution in the United States. I don’t know if the time is ripe or, more likely, if this is a mere fluke. Graf’s omnivorous ingestion of German social, political, cultural, and material histories and transformation of their tensions into deeply intelligent, supremely revealing genre dramas ipso facto must eventually create something international distributors think non-Germans might want to see. Then again, previous films by the director seemingly ripe or obvious for English-language audiences, including the Die Hard-like action-siege film Die Katze (1988, which was actually pathetically limitedly shown with an alternate soundtrack in the Us), the zany post-Berlin...
- 9/29/2014
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
One of the highlights of this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, it's already apparent, is a retrospective of the work of Dominik Graf, a genre specialist mostly unknown outside his natve Germany, who has worked in both film and TV, specialising mainly in crime dramas. The program also includes other German crime TV shows selected by Graf to contextualise his work (including Sam Fuller's Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street and uber-rare work by Czech emigre Zbynek Brynych, best known otherwise for The Fifth Horseman is Fear).
Graf's work includes pieces from the seventies to the present day. By working in TV he has been able to work regularly, something denied most feature directors, and seems to thrive on the tight schedules and budgets. Nightwatch, a 1993 episode of the long-running series "Der Fahnder", comes on like Fleischer's The Narrow Margin, with a cop guarding a gangster's moll who doesn't...
Graf's work includes pieces from the seventies to the present day. By working in TV he has been able to work regularly, something denied most feature directors, and seems to thrive on the tight schedules and budgets. Nightwatch, a 1993 episode of the long-running series "Der Fahnder", comes on like Fleischer's The Narrow Margin, with a cop guarding a gangster's moll who doesn't...
- 6/25/2014
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Below you will find our total coverage of the 2012 International Film Festival Rotterdam by Daniel Kasman.
Above: Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part.
Trembling Disturbed
On Sergei Loznitsa's Letter, Peter Schreiner's Fata Morgana, Pedro Costa's Sweet Exorcist, and Filipa César's Cacheu
Two as One as Many
On Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters (1967) and Long Farewells (1971), Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part, and David Gatten's By Pain and Rhyme and Arabesques of Foraging.
Of Cinema, Pixels and Chinese Warfare
On Mary Helena Clark's Orpheus (Outtakes), Makino Takashi's 2012, and Johnnie To's Drug War
Graf Attack!: or The Possibility Space (The Cinema of Dominik Graf)
On Dominik Graf, including Die Katze (1988), Spieler (1990), Der Fahnder: Nachtwache (1990/1993], Die Sieger (1994), Denk ich an Deutschland - Das Wispern im Berg der Dinge (1997), München - Geheimnisse einer Stadt (2002), Der Felsen (2002), Die Freunde der Freunde (2002), Hotte im Paradies...
Above: Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part.
Trembling Disturbed
On Sergei Loznitsa's Letter, Peter Schreiner's Fata Morgana, Pedro Costa's Sweet Exorcist, and Filipa César's Cacheu
Two as One as Many
On Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters (1967) and Long Farewells (1971), Jean-Claude Brisseau's La fille de nulle part, and David Gatten's By Pain and Rhyme and Arabesques of Foraging.
Of Cinema, Pixels and Chinese Warfare
On Mary Helena Clark's Orpheus (Outtakes), Makino Takashi's 2012, and Johnnie To's Drug War
Graf Attack!: or The Possibility Space (The Cinema of Dominik Graf)
On Dominik Graf, including Die Katze (1988), Spieler (1990), Der Fahnder: Nachtwache (1990/1993], Die Sieger (1994), Denk ich an Deutschland - Das Wispern im Berg der Dinge (1997), München - Geheimnisse einer Stadt (2002), Der Felsen (2002), Die Freunde der Freunde (2002), Hotte im Paradies...
- 2/7/2013
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Rotterdam this year has offered one certifiable giant discovery in international cinema: German filmmaker Dominik Graf, revealed in a simultaneously introductory and interventionist retrospective programmed by Christoph Huber and Olaf Möller. An incredibly prolific filmmaker beginning in the late 1970s, Graf has interwoven his cinema into the fabric of the German television industry, producing a body of work ranging from television episodes, made-for-tv films, essay movies, documentaries, and a handful of films intended for the cinema.
Yet despite Graf's prodigious output of nearly sixty works, its primarily creation for national television has meant that it has been essentially unavailable to English-speaking audiences prior to Rotterdam's 17 film retrospective. The first film of his I saw was Komm mir nicht nach (Don't Follow Me Around) in the middle of the Dreileben trilogy in 2010, notably another for-television project, but one which had festival and theatrical ambitions beyond German living rooms, perhaps due...
Yet despite Graf's prodigious output of nearly sixty works, its primarily creation for national television has meant that it has been essentially unavailable to English-speaking audiences prior to Rotterdam's 17 film retrospective. The first film of his I saw was Komm mir nicht nach (Don't Follow Me Around) in the middle of the Dreileben trilogy in 2010, notably another for-television project, but one which had festival and theatrical ambitions beyond German living rooms, perhaps due...
- 2/6/2013
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
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