Benjamin Heisenberg, a young director in the New German Cinema movement, will be here this Wednesday to introduce his newest film, The Robber (Der Räuber). After a successful run through the festival circuit, this film is finally making its rounds to the Twin Cities, and will be screening one time only here at the Walker Cinema.
Heisenberg is a part of a new group being referred to as the New German Cinema (not to be confused with the late 1960’s New German Cinema).
In 1998 this group of young film students at the Munich Film Academy, later film directors Christoph Hochhäusler and Benjamin Heisenberg among them, founded the film magazine Revolver. They were motivated in part by their passion for thinking about making movies and in part by a frustration about the open disregard for theory, film history, and reflection at their film school. Hochhäusler and Heisenberg have since moved to Berlin and left a mark with their first films. Heisenberg’s Sleeper (2005) presents the highly topical subject of a suspected terrorist “sleeper”– but transforms it into a study about the pervasiveness of suspicion; a suspicion that quite literally infects not only the Arab protagonist Farid’s (Mehddi Nebbou) friends and colleagues, but also the camera’s and the spectator’s gaze.
See the full article by Ekkehard KnörerHeisenberg’s new film will follow the same attention to detail and technique, but focus instead on a real life criminal. Based on the true story of Johann Kastenberger aka Pump-gun Ronnie, Heisenberg’s new film chronicles the discipline and addiction of a competetive marathon runner/bank robber. Perpetually compared to Tom Twyker’s Run Lola Run (1998), The Robber (Der Räuber) portrays an addictive, incredible figure who mus keep on running. A discussion of the film with the director, Rembert Hueser (University of Minnesota) and Winfried Pauleit (University of Bremen, Germany) follows the screening.
Subtitled Trailer:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIupR5Zplw8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
German Trailer:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLeOeh_dtQ8[/youtube]
Get Walker Reader in your inbox. Sign up to receive first word about our original videos, commissioned essays, curatorial perspectives, and artist interviews.