At the age of eighteen, Irina Tschistjakowa can already look back at a ten-year international career of concerts. Irina was the youngest of the four protagonists in the documentary film Russia’s Wonder Children, which celebrated its original premiere at the Berlinale 2000. Ten years later, the young geniuses of yesteryear are now competitors in the tough field of music. They now experience the tragedy that befalls many child prodigies: while they were still children, they could amaze the public through the contrast between their delicate appearance and precocious ability—but now, it is all about the sublimely perfect performance and the top prizes at competitions, as well as simple luck. They all want to attain the pinnacle of the Mount Olympus of piano playing, but the air there is very thin. And there is only enough room for a handful of talented virtuosos.
Like Irina, Nikita Mndoyants, 19, Dmitri Krutogolovy, 20, and Elena Kolesnitschenko, 26, have remained faithful to their music. They have spent tens of thousands of hours practicing the piano. Has all the hard work been worth it? Did the childhood that they barely experienced leave any psychological scars? The innocent simplicity of the early years is long gone by now, and the concert appearances have become rarer. And it’s not just the size of their bodies that has changed: the world of classical music has also changed since then. Performing artists are now expected to act like pop musicians and be as attractive as a Hollywood star. How can all that be combined under one hat alongside physical and spatial precision when performing on stage? The thresholds for psychical and psychological pain are commonplace in the everyday work life of a professional concert pianist, and they have to overcome time and again. And it is incredibly difficult to add something new, individual, refreshing to the world’s collected concepts of piano playing.
The documentary THE COMPETITORS narrates a universal story about success and failure within the thoroughly commercialised world of classical music. Up close and personal with the four protagonists, and utilising moving flashbacks from the film Russia’s Wonder Children, the documentary presents a compassionate look at growing up under the constraints of an almost inhumane competition. Within her film, which she has been working on for a number of years in Russia, Western Europe and Mexico, Irene Langemann dramatically and poetically interweaves the highs and lows in the lives of her protagonists.

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“The Competitors – Russia’s Wonder Children 2″ premieres in Moscow.  The festival ARTDOCFEST screens the film at December 5th, 3 pm at cinema «Khudoshestvenny – Художественный» am Arbat. Irene langemann and the editor of the film Kawe Vakil will attend the screening. The Goethe Institut Moscow supports the presence of Irene Langemann.

This is the link for the Festival website: ArtDocFest

The film is produced by Wolfgang Bergmann and will be completed in the summer of 2011. In the fall of 2011, it will be cinematically released by Kölner W-Filmverleih. The film is being made in cooperation with WDR and ARTE (Sabine Rollberg and Jutta Krug) and has received support from MEDIA Development, the NRW Film Foundation, DFFF and the Hamburg Film Fund.

A film by Katja Schupp and Harmut Seifert, 90/60 min., HD

Every time when the annual removal of bulky refuse is ahead, dozens of old Mercedes sprinters with Polish number plates cue in the streets of the villages around Mainz, Germany. Drivers skim through the piles of garbage to find whatever can be used or sold again way back home. Piotr Liszcz and Jan Byczek from Southeastern Poland are two of them.
This documentary accompanies selected items – e.g. a children’s tricycle, a sofa – from the street of a German village via Piotr Liszcz’s Mercedes sprinter to his second hand shop in Poland and to the final new owner in Poland. Through the secret thread built up by these objects, the documentary tells the stories of the people met on the way and thereby shows a facet of a modern Europe between the poor and the rich, where prejudice are still common.

Authors and directors are Katja Schupp and Hartmut Seifert, Co-author is Alicja Schatton. The camerawork and editing has been done by Hartmut Seifert, an awarded cinematographer.

Co-production between VIDIFILM, Alicja Schatton, Poland and Lichtfilm GmbH, Wolfgang Bergmann, Germany.

The film has been funded by the Robert-Bosch Stiftung and commissioned by ZDF/ARTE, Martin Pieper. Copyright 2010

From left: Irene Langemann, Wolfgang Bergmann (producer), Dmitri Krutogolovy, Nikita Mndoyants, Irina Tschistjakowa,  Elena Kolesnitschenko

After long hand clapping the 4 played with 8 hands a variation of a music piece of Robert Schumann “Happy Fellow-conutryman coming back from Work”.

The film started in 7 cinemas in Germany and is still running. More on the German only website

copyright Ullstein/dpa

A documentary by Kai Christiansen, 89/45 minutes, HD, stereo
Comm. editors: Christian von Behr, RBB, Uwe Bergmann, RBB, Alexander von Sallwitz, NDR
Funded by Filmstiftung NRW (development) Filmförderung Hamburg/ SHH (Production)

The documentary film “Starfighter – A High-Tech Death” tells the story of the procurement of the most modern combat aircraft of the time and the mysterious crash and death of over 100 pilots.
In the 60s, the West German Air Force had over 900 Starfighter supersonic fighter-bomber aircrafts of the model 104G in service ? to the initial jubilation of the pilots, for the speed and acceleration of the new fighter jets were exceptional. But the new technology proved tricky: one-third of the machines crashed, and every second crash proved fatal for the pilot.
copyright Ullstein/dpa
Kai Christiansen’s film is the first film to deal with the Starfighter scandal, and it does so from a variety of perspectives: the viewpoint of those affected is presented, as is the desire of the politicians for both a new German aviation industry and the access to the atom bomb. Particular attention is given to the widows of the fallen pilots and their desperate struggle for the clarification of the causes behind the accidents and the hope for an end to the series of crashes. The film, however, also lets the pilots speak who enthusiastically continued to get into their machines everyday despite the numerous deaths.
The documentary “Starfighter ? A High-Tech Death” is 88 minutes of highly interesting German post-war history. It is a film about the largest and most expensive armament project in the history of the Federal Republic. The documentary offers insight behind a tangle of military secrets, political intrigue, corruption and deliberate misinformation. It is revealed how the catastrophe came to be and why the series of crashes could continue for almost 30 years.
The film also tells little stories of the purchase of the first car and the first camera as well as of the young army’s recruitment of professional soldiers. On the other side, the film presents the new army’s attempts to position itself with the Warsaw Pact on the one side and the NATO allies on the other ? and the price that was paid for this ambition.
It is a film about the difficult relationship between the German Federal Republic and its army, about the parallel worlds of the German Armed Forces and the civil society.

“Starfighter ? A High-Tech Death” is also a film full of anger, sadness and outrage at a military leadership that demands heavy losses even in times of peace and a political policy in which nobody takes responsibility. It is a film about the difficult new beginning of the Air Force in the shadow of World War II, about the close friendship with the United States, and about the thrill of supersonic flight.

Ms. Lantzberg-Hippel sued Lockheed to force the Bundeswehr to open the files.

Peter Vogler has been attracted by flying the  Starfighter

Hubert Merkel also has been Starfighter pilot and is a consulter for the aircraft industry now. copyright Ullstein/dpa

Starfighter – F 104 – in formation flight. copyright Ullstein/dpa

Leftovers of a  Starfighter                                     copyright Ullstein/dpa

The 131st crashed Starfighter in Germany

The author and director of the documentary, Kai Christiansen

Horseback riding has become one of the most popular sports in Europe and attracts millions of people. German horses dominate the international tournaments. At the Olympic Games in Hong Kong, 40% of the horses originally came from Germany and half of the show jumping horses from Holstein. This film looks into how Germany was able to become such a horse “superpower” and whether this position remains unchallenged. In doing so, the film also pursues some curious historical paradoxes. When the National Socialists overran and occupied Poland, for example, German equine specialists took over the nation’s state studs. Noble, half-breed horses for the military had traditionally been bred there using English and Arabian thoroughbreds, and the Germans learned from this.

One of them, Clemens Freiherr von Nagel, bought the Anglo-Arabian Ramzes from a Polish officer in 1948. The grey stallion revolutionised horse breeding in Germany and is one of the reasons behind the current dominant position of German high-performance horses. Since then, German breeders have crossbred more and/or less thoroughbred breeds into the existing warmblood lines. They combined the good qualities of different types and created a new type of German riding horse. The centuries-old preferred characteristics of a coach or plough horse have been crossbred with those of thoroughbred breeds to bring in speed, agility, alertness and intelligence, as well as courage and better reflexes. Today, breeders and equestrians from around the world come to Germany to try out horses and bid at auctions — and pay between fifty-thousand and one million euros. Some people fear that the best horse are being sold abroad; the 2009 World Equestrian Festival CHIO in Aachen, for example, revealed that the dominance of Germany is not only threatened but that other nations have caught up.

Harm Thormählen is one of the leading breeders of the Holsteiners

Noble Breed visits breeders and equestrians, veterinarians and the scientists, to unravel the secrets of successful breeding. The film looks back into history and also travels to the original sources of the noble breeds — Uzbekistan, for example. In addition to Germany, both Poland and Hungary play an important role in the film, for both these countries have been successfully crossbreeding thoroughbred lines for centuries.

Prof.  Hartwig Schmidt, a former academic physician, is the most innovative and riscing breeders in Holstein.

The film relates to the outstanding role of the German breeder Clemens Freiherr von Nagel, here together with his famed Anglo-Arab Ramzes

This time Wolfgang Bergmann (producer, author and director) produces a film linked to the love of his youth: horse riding. In the 50th it was common to use heavy warmblood horses. Today Germany is the most successful nation in breeding high performance “noble” horses. The film tries to disclose this secret and reveals astonishing stories: Equestrians and breeders from National Socialist times built the background for those „revolutionary“ changes. Even „foreign and noble“ horses from Poland and Hungary, from Central Asia, Arabia and Great Britain were to leverage for the German rise in Horse Breeding.

If you want to join the preview of the film, organized by WDR/ARTE, come to the beautiful city Warendorf, the capital of German sport horses.

Monday the 19th of October at 19.30 to Scala & Studio Filmtheatre, Klosterstraße 5, 8231 Warendorf.
After the film  a discussion will take place with the horse breeders and riders. Some characters of the film will be present. So far Gabriele Pochhammer, Inge Theodorescu and Margo van den Hoogen.

A film by Irene Langemann, 2009, HD, 89 min.
Comm. editors: Gudrun Hanke-El Ghomri, SWR, Jutta Krug, WDR, Frauke Sandig, DW
Since the end of World War II, American armed forces have been stationed in Ramstein in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The fascination for the “American way of life” has not only cast a spell over many Germans there, but it has also left visible traces in the area. On the Ramstein Air Base, the largest US air base found on foreign soil, one even has the impression of being in “Little America”.

The military installation is structured on the principal of self-sufficiency. Although the drama of the Iraqi War has lead to a general disenchantment with the superpower, the people of the area cannot imagine a life without Americans. The cooperation and coexistence of the two nations remains very intensive here, particularly when it comes to German-American marriages. Although a clash of cultures is found in each individual relationship, the German wives and husbands quickly and unconditionally adopt the patriotic attitude of their American partners — even when it comes to the USA’s adventure in Iraq. This is all the more amazing since the service members are regularly deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, the German spouses also become fatally and closely involved with the events of the war. Their lives are full of worry and anxiety about their loved ones, who could possibly return home from the conflict area injured or even dead.

The film presents highly personnel German-American family stories from “Little America”, Germany, against the backdrop of the Iraqi War. Again and again, the private sphere merges with the world of international events. Through the perceptive narrative flow and the close observation of the people involved, the question whether or not personnel happiness is possible in the shadow of a war is continually brought up for discussion.

James Ewing is flight engineer in the Iraq                                                 ©Lichtfilm

The Ewing family enjoys the weeks beeing together in Ramstein      ©Lichtfilm

Blessed soldiers from Iraq brought to the Ramstein hospital.                    ©Lichtfilm

Schläfer family after an avancement ceremony                                       ©Lichtfilm

Cast and crew afther the premiere of the film at the International Munich Film Festival at the July 3rd 2009.