Love finds a tabloid journalist in an unexpected place in this romantic comedy from Germany. Ludo (Til Schweiger) is a reporter who has enjoyed a successful career documenting the peccadilloes of the rich and famous with the help of his photographer sidekick Moritz (Matthias Schweighoefer). But a run-in with boxerWladimir Klitschko and his fiancée Yvonne Catterfeld at a party turns into a food fight and Ludo is charged with disturbing the peace. Ludo is ordered to perform three hundred hours of community service at a children’s day care center, which is especially bad news since Ludo doesn’t care for kids. Ludo finds himself working side by side with the center’s director, Anna Gotzlowski (Nora Tschirner), who had an unfortunate run in with Ludo when they were children and doesn’t like him any more now than she did then. Anna goes out of her way to make things difficult for Ludo, but in time he begins to get the hang of his new assignment, starts bonding with his young charges, and even enjoys a brief fling with a sexy single mom (Brigitte Zeh). But as Ludo’s soft side begins to surface, Anna finds herself increasingly attracted to him, and the antagonists discover they’re falling in love.Keinohrhasen was written and directed by leading man Til Schweiger, and was a major box office hit in Germany.

There are six principal characters in “The Edge of Heaven”: two mothers, two daughters, a father and a son, all arranged in more or less symmetrical pairs. In the course of this extraordinary film by the German writer-director Fatih Akin (which won the best screenplay award in Cannes last year) children are lost, lost parents are never found, and generational and geographical distances grow wider. Yet at the same time, as the lives of the characters cross and entwine, there is a sense of human connections becoming stronger and thicker, of a fragile moral order coalescing beneath the randomness and cruelty of modern life. And even as the movie bristles with violence — accidental and systematic, sexual and political — its tone is curiously gentle. — A. O. Scott, The New York Times

The story deals with the sensationalism of tabloid news and the political climate of panic over Red Army Faction terrorism in the 1970s Federal Republic of Germany.

Katharina Blum (Angela Winkler) is a bit of a mystery. In every respect a model citizen, a divorced young woman, living modestly, working as a housekeeper, she is quiet and doesn’t even consort with men, to such an extent that she is known to her friends as “the nun”. Attending a friend’s party one evening however during Carnival she encounters a known anarchist, Ludwig Götten (Jürgen Prochnow), who is being followed by the secret police, and to the surprise of everyone, leaves early, takes him home and spends the night with him. When the police raid her apartment the next morning however, there is no sign of Götten. Taken in for interrogation, the police do not believe Katharina’s story…

In Hamburg, Ibrahim „Ibo“ Secmez, of Turkish descent, wants to direct the first German kung-fu movie. For now, he makes commercials for his uncle’s kebab restaurant. Titzie, an aspiring actress and Ibo’s German girlfriend, finds she’s pregnant. Ibo is uncertain about fatherhood – compounded by his father’s disowning him for getting a German girl pregnant – so Titzie sends him packing. He makes attempts at getting it right, but as the birth approaches, he’s still not ready. In the background are three thugs in search of good tripe soup and a Capulet-Montegue feud between the kebab joint and a Greek taverna across the street. Can Ibo be the glove upon that hand?

…with Norah Tschirner (Keinohrhasen)

http://www.kebabconnection.de/start.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0Eyvh4SUG0

Die Sehnsucht der Verkonika Voss

Munich, 1955: A sports journalist meets Veronika Voss, an UFA actress who supposedly had an affair with Goebbels. Now declining, Voss is kept by her „kind“ doctor, Dr. Kart, supplying her house, food, clean clothes and her favourite: morphine. Voss, trying to come back towards the cinema, cannot perform an absurdly simple scene, but it attracts the attention of the journalist, who suspects that something’s very wrong regarding her doctor.

A wonderful opportunity to enjoy the advantages of studying abroad during your summer break.

June 1 until July 23, 2010

Experience Germany, Dortmund and the Ruhr Area

The upcoming summer program will focus on German culture in local, European and global contexts. As Germany’s largest polycentric, metropolitan region, the Ruhr Area will be the European Capital of Culture 2010, whose events and cultural activities will be incorporated in the program. You can select from a variety of courses, e.g. „Hip Hop on the Ruhr,“ „Representations of Dortmund: Constructions of Urban Space,“ „The Ruhr – Convergence of Industry, High Tech and Culture,“ „The Identity and Representation of Representation of Teenagers in Germany and America.“ In these classes, American and other international students will join Germans to explore together and from different perspectives the new developments on German and European culture. German language classes for all proficiency levels will complement the course offering.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: 15. February

Click here for more information: http://www.summerprogram.tu-dortmund.de

Watch: http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/939950/Ruhr.2010

http://wwww.cometogermany.com/

http://www.young-germany.de/

http://www.land-of-ideas.org/

http://www.deutschland.de/

http://www.goethe.de/ges/enindex.htm

http://www.goethe.de/kue/enindex.htm

The German House invites you to join us for our first Movie Night this semester.

On wednesday, February 3rd at 8 pm we will be showing the movie „Goodbye Lenin“.

About the movie: In 1989, Christiane Kerner has lost her husband and is completely devoted to the Socialist East German state. A heart attack leaves her in a coma, and when she awakens eight months later, the Berlin Wall has fallen and it’s a whole new world. To protect her from shock, her son Alex hatches a plan to keep her in the dark. It’s easy … all he has to do is turn back the hands of time.

Get ready for a new term of German language and culture at UVA.

New MOVIE NIGHT SCHEDULE will be out soon! Here are the dates: 3. + 17. Feb; 3. + 24. March; 7. + 21. April at 8pm. Mark the dates in your calendar. We are looking forward to seeing you there.

For those of you who are interested in practicing German on a regular basis – Check out our weekly CONVERSATION CLASS on monday nights from 6:30 to 7:30 at the German House. Course Number:  3290-001 (13029). It’s still some time left to register.

2010