Laurens Straub |
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It was probably in 1967. The three
of us drove in an old, clattering VW bug (a former police car) to
Hof, looked for a room for three and watched films, some of which
we had worked on ourselves, some by people who were three to five
years our senior. I’d already worked as a prop manager, director’s
assistant, screenwriter and actor and was probably 23 years old.
It was all about seeing films by people who were just like ourselves,
who had the same goals as we did. Today, that may sound like herd
instinct, but back then we considered it highly individualistic.
| We spent the night
with an unforgettably pretty girl in one bed, just like Léaud
in a Truffaut film. Maybe that was what it was all about. But
something happened. We returned home with a new sense of power,
with the feeling that we would conquer the world. There was
an all-pervasive sense of something new happening. ‘What’s
coming now belongs to us and no one else.’ That’s
what we thought back then. |
Tuschi at the Hof IFF 2004 |
Last year, Cyril [Tuschi] arrived with his
camper to present his film SOMMERHUNDESÖHNE (SLIGHT CHANGES IN
TEMPERATURE AND MIND). All his team members hitched a ride to Hof.
They, too, thought the world was their oyster, at least for three
or four days. Unity of place and film utopia. Dreamlike. Congenial.
Brotherliness. Film gamily. Big words that sound like springing from
a get-together marketing programme. However, the idea that film is
the most important thing in the world has maintained its validity
in Hof. The most important thing is that our films exist. That still
holds true here.
As regards a film-historically correct description, times change and
change again. Constants and variables, so to say. Constant is the
attitude toward film, variable the quality of the editions.
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Laurens Straub and Albert Maysels |
1967
was the time of the autodidacts, although Wenders’ SAME PLAYER
SHOOTS AGAIN was a filmschool film, just like the legendary BLUE VELVET.
Today it’s the students that are excited about coming to Hof.
That is the structural change. I, for one, certainly don’t think
that the enthusiasm for film has dwindled. As far as numbers go, more
people want to make films today than they did forty years ago.
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Regarding
the importance of Hof for the German film scene, there isn’t
any particular aesthetic or school to speak of. It’s an independent
spirit that reigns here, and the retrospectives are the supreme discipline
of the independents. The films are entertaining and original. They
are pleasantly unadjusted. There are years in which this spirit is
a little difficult to find among the debutants. But Heinz will never
make a compromising programme, that’s for sure. And that is
exactly the spirit that exerts so much influence. In courageous and
controversial times it seems to blossom more than in times of affluence.
For that reason alone, one need not worry about the future of the
wonderfully brilliant Hof Film Festival, an institution in and of
itself.
Laurens Straub
(The author is a producer and lecturer at various academies.)
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Unity
of place and film utopia 