Retrospective

Filmfest Bremen presents a retrospective of selected works by the award-winning actress. How can a small selection possibly do justice to such a monumental body of work? With over 150 films to her credit, even the term “cross-section” seems hardly adequate. Accordingly, the choices must be made with great care.

 

Should it be the 1966 screwball comedy “Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment” (Protest), featuring a gorilla attack and Trotskyist undertones? Or her portrayal of Elizabeth I in Roland Emmerich’s controversial 2011 film “Anonymous”? The choices are virtually endless. She has also been involved in political documentaries—as a producer and interviewer in the controversial “The Palestinian” (1977), and with her directorial debut “Sea Sorrow” (2017).
Vanessa Redgrave’s international breakthrough in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” (1966) is, of course, an essential inclusion. In this film, often described as a portrait of the Beat Generation centered around a photographed murder, Redgrave plays a mysterious stranger. It is difficult to separate Vanessa Redgrave’s life from her work. She became famous not only for her outstanding performances in extraordinary and successful films—such as the triple Oscar-winning “Howards End,” where she shone alongside Helena Bonham-Carter, Emma Thompson, and Anthony Hopkins—but also for how she has always used the stage for her political convictions.

 

She received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her moving title role as a resistance fighter during the Nazi era in “Julia.” Having been feuded with and threatened because of her role in “The Palestinian,” Vanessa Redgrave used the award ceremony to make a political statement, sparking a major scandal.

Blow Up

 

 

Thursday 16th of  April – 14:00, Schauburg

 

 

This film will kick off both the ‘Retrospective’ and the festival’s overall film program. We begin with an introduction to the cult classic ‘Blow-Up’:

 

“Fashion photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) casually takes a somewhat voyeuristic shot of a man and a young woman in each other’s arms on a park bench.

 

The young woman (Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave) follows Thomas home and makes love to him in exchange for the photograph. But Thomas keeps the negative, and when he enlarges it, what had seemed a carnal moment appears to be murder. Thomas returns to the park, and discovers that the man in the photograph is dead. Yet when Thomas enlarges the photo again, he notices a shadow in the bushes that could be barrel of the gun. Is the woman with whom Thomas made love a murderer? Reality seems to change with each Blow-Up.”

Howards End

 

 

Friday 17th of April – 13:00,

Gondel

 

 

Margaret Schlegel mourns the recently deceased Ruth Wilcox, with whom she had a brief but warm friendship. The conservative Wilcox family, however, conceals Ruth’s last wish to bequeath the beloved country house Howard’s End to Margaret.

 

Years later, Margaret Schlegel and Ruth’s widower Henry find each other as a couple and marry. However, the difference between the free-thinking, culture-loving Schlegel family and the traditional Victorian members of the Wilcox family remains.

Sea Sorrow

 

 

Saturday 18th of April – 13:30, Schauburg

 

 

“Sea Sorrow” marks Vanessa Redgrave’s debut as a film director and is a very personal, dynamic meditation on the current global refugee crisis through the eyes and voices of campaigners and children mixing past and present, documentary and drama in its reflection on the importance of human rights.

Julia

 

 

Sunday  19th of  April – 11:30, Schauburg

 

 

A successful American writer remembers her friend who was murdered by the Nazis. ‘Julia’ is a drama about the turbulent life of the Jewish, left-wing writer Lillian Hellman (1905–1984, ‘The Children’s Hour’, ‘The Little Foxes’), based on her autobiography ‘Pentimento’. Fred Zinnemann’s late masterpiece was awarded three Oscars in 1977 for Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.

Sonntag 19. April – 17:00,

Schauburg

 

 

Sherlock Holmes’ heavy use of cocaine gives him delusional fantasies and makes him recognize a supervillain in the former tutor of the Holmes family, Professor James Moriarty, whom he wants to arrest at all costs. Dr. Watson and Mycroft Holmes lure the plagued man into the practice of psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud during the alleged hunt for the criminal in Vienna, who, the two friends hope, can free the master detective from his addiction and delusions. During psychoanalysis, Freud tells Holmes about a patient and a case that may be waiting for him.

Retro Sneak

The secret cult movie

 

Sunday  19th of April – 21:30, Cinema

 

 

 

Just as the festival opened with the retrospective film “Blow-Up,” Filmfest Bremen now concludes with an 18+ rated movie in the retrospective category.

 

Nuns, blood, and religion – the perfect combination to wrap up a Sunday evening just before heading back to the reality of Mondays. Free admission is granted to the “usual suspects”: holders of festival passes or accreditations, everyone who already have a ticket for the previous film “WEIRD EXPERIENCES,” as well as anyone who can provide proof of suffering through church tax.