Asia
In some Asian countries, the recent economic crisis led to a decrease in production (unfortunately, there is no Taiwanese film in the programme this year, and Korea is represented by just one). In other countries, however, the film-making impetus is still going strong (Japan) or political changes have introduced new impulses and posed new questions, as is the case with the films from Hong Kong and China. Indian cinema, meanwhile, remains as diverse as ever.

Japan
Japanese independent cinema reflects the countrys current political and social situation and filters it through a traditionally strong sense of form. Such as in A, a documentary by Mori Tatsuya which dissects the Aum sect and its assault on the Tokyo subway. The film is a passionate and virtuoso example of cinéma vérité. Ningen Gokaku by Kiyoshi Kurosawa puts an outsider at the films centre. He awakens after a long coma and cannot find his place in society. Adrenaline Drive by Shinobu Yaguchi is a fast-paced comedy about moneygrubbing which mercilessly pokes fun at social stereotypes. As in the directors past films, the drive and energy of his heroine (a nurse) sets the films distinct tempo. These two works also can be seen in the context of Japanese cinema: the video Dog Food by Seiichi Tanabe, a sarcastic chronicle of an immigrants everyday life before moving to Vietnam, and 2H, a portrait of a Chinese general utilising dramatic, documentary and experimental elements. The film was directed by Li Ying, a Chinese residing in Tokyo.

Hong Kong, China and Korea
A film from Korea will be screened in the midnight programme of the Forum: Choyonghan Kajok (The Quiet Family). Telling the story of a family which is confronted with a whole string of murders after they open a mountain hut, this grotesque horror film can also be interpreted as a political metaphor.
Although Hong Kongs film industry doesnt look too healthy, even after Hong Kongs transition into Chinese administration interesting films of all genres and subjects are being made. The starting point of Evans Chans Bei Zheng (A Journey to Beijing) is a march from Hong Kong to Beijing from which he develops a multi-faceted portrait of the opinions and reactions of Hong Kongs inhabitants after the unification with the Motherland. It makes an intelligent and well-structured essay with political and historical dimensions. Fruit Chan, one of Hong Kongs most talented new directors, in the fictional film Qu Nian Yan Hua Te Bie Duo (The Longest Summer) tells the story of some former Hong Kong policemen who have to look for a new job after the transition. Behind the rather melancholy everyday life of these soon-to-be retirees (they live in a fishing village in the New Territories), the headspinning changes in a metropolis seeking reorientation become evident.
Well worth a look are the traditional Forum midnight films from Hong Kong: this year The Hitman and Expect the Unexpected. They are perfectly executed genre films showing everyday life and reflecting the current zeitgeist in Hong Kong. Slow Fade by Daniel Chan pursues more experimental methods of dramatic structure and cinematography.
Rebellion and resistance against the ruthless commerciality in the new China are dominant themes in the independent production Meili Xin Shijie from Beijing, directed by Shi Run Jiu. A man wins a new apartment in Shanghai in a contest. When he wants to move in, he painfully discovers that the house hasnt even been built yet and that he is the victim of devious speculators. The film is brimful of lively and satiric observations of everyday life.

India
The film-producing country of India comes under special focus this year, and we will introduce three films from the southern Indian state Kerala, whose films, especially those in the official language Malayalam, have always been well received. Bhoothakannadi by AK Lohithadas is the story of a watchmaker who sees the world through a magnifying glass, thus coming into conflict with his surroundings. Janmadinam by Suma Josson depicts a mother-and-daughter relationship. Kaliyattam transplants Shakespeares Othello into a southern Indian setting. Dil Se, (From the Heart) directed by Mani Ratnam and shown in our midnight programme demonstrates the vitality and imagination of the popular Bollywood movies from Bombay, while still being highly topical.

Iran
Iranian cinema has come to the fore in recent years with a multitude of sensitive depictions of everyday life. This year, the Forum programme is graced by two Iranian films of a different, more symbolic nature. Six years after completion Dariush Mehrjuis Banu has finally been released by its country of origin. Imagine a ghostly, claustrophobic film with echoes of Buñuels Viridiana telling the story of a depressive woman who opens her house of plenty to the needy neighbourhood without realising what she is getting herself into. Ajanse Shishei (The Glass Agency), by Ebrahim Hatamikia, the story of a gravely ill man who cant find adequate health care in Iran, soon transcends social realism and mutates into a disturbing hostage drama with political allusions.

Latin America
The Latin American subcontinent is another programme focus of this years Forum. Fernando Birris El Siglo del Viento will have its world premiere in the video section. It is a rich, cinematic adaptation of Eduardo Galeanos iconoclastic vision of a century of upheaval and change in Latin America. Also in the video programme, which is screened at the Arsenal cinema, is a double feature consisting of Gonzalo Arijons Por Esos Ojos, a committed documentary about the forced adoption of the children of those who disappeared under the Argentinian military dictatorship, and The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez by Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan about a young man whose Puerto Rican mother has been incarcerated in the US for years as a terrorist.
Silvia Prieto by Martin Rejtman is Argentinian cinema as subtle brain-teaser: a balance between comedy, parody and profundity. The films heroine is obsessed with seeking out women who share her name. Equally experimental is La Vida es Silbar by Fernando Pérez (Cuba/Spain). The film lies somewhere between the opulence of high production values and melodrama on the one hand and intellectual symbolism and political profundity on the other.

Africa
This year, the Forum made considerable efforts regarding Africa. One of the festivals most beautiful films is Abderrahmane Sissakos La Vie sur Terre from Mali. He depicts a young mans homecoming to the village he grew up in. In Chef! (shown in our video programme), Jean-Marie Teno from Cameroon dissects the masculinity cult in his country and sharply criticises its political and social structures. Djibril Diop Mambety from Senegal, one of Africas most famous directors, unfortunately died last summer; we are posthumously screening his last film La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil, a portrait of a young girl who hawks newspapers.

Morocco
The highlighted country in this years Forum is Morocco. Morocco has the most active and diverse film production of the Maghreb countries. Interestingly, popular genre archetypes are used to deal with current social problems. Mektoub by Nabil Ayouch is a depiction of the gulf between rich and poor in the guise of a modern thriller. The traditionally filmed fairy tale Keid Ensa by Farida Benlyazid, the countrys only female director, discusses the role of women in Maghreb society, as does the successful melodrama Femmes… et Femmes by Chraibi Saâd.
Daoud Aoulad Syads Adieu Forain is a melancholy road movie from the forgotten South, and the intelligent comedy Les Casablancais by Abdelkader Lagtaa describes in three linked episodes city dwellers fear of fundamentalist activities and unpredictable authorities.

Israel
Two lively, personal and self-critical films come from Israel: Amos Gitais Yom Yom tells the story of a mother and her son set in Haifa, at the heart of stormy Israeli-Arab relations. The entire family is affected when a house some family members want to keep is to be sold. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Israel, Avi Mograbi reflects upon his countrys history and the sense and nonsense of anniversaries and birthdays in Yom Huledet, Sameach, Mar Mograbi (Happy Birthday, Mr Mograbi). The film moves freely between chronicle, diary, fiction and analysis; the cinematography and montage sequences reflect thoughts and associations.

Eastern Europe
Here and there, Eastern European cinema is booming. In Russia, films produced under extreme difficulty continue to cause a stir. In Okraina by Piotr Luzik, village farmers unite to thwart land speculation. They sniff out the culprit in a Moscow office and confront him with his deeds. The black and white film is distinguished by its bitter humour and apocalyptic finale. Sergei Sneshkins Zwety Kalenduly, by contrast, is a Chekhovian depiction of the life and slow death of a formerly privileged family set in a dacha.
In Hungary and Poland the Forum also came across interesting films. Hungarian elder statesman Miklós Jancsó has made a surreal, bizarre allegory about the present with Nekem Lámpást Adott Kezembe Az úr Pesten, distinguished by its gallows humour a cemetery is the films starting point and recurring motif. Poland contributes the film Poniedzialek by Witold Adamek, about two young unemployed men who become merciless debt collectors. The film uses the realist tradition of Polish cinema as the key to a disillusioned description of the current situation. The Kazakh film 1997 (Sapisi Rustema s Kartinkami) by Ardak Amirkulov is also highly topical and captures the mood of young people in contemporary Almaty in a style reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch.

Western Europe
A key event at this years Forum is certainly the premiere of Aki Kaurismäkis new film Juha. Kaurismäki styled his film, an adaptation of an often-filmed classic of Finnish literature, as a silent movie with title cards. The film is a melodrama, a love triangle with tragic results. It uses the silent film visual language of Griffith and Murnau with highly nuanced modes of expression which are extinct in contemporary cinema. At the Delphi and the Akademie der Künste, the film will be accompanied by live music performed by the Anssi Tikanmäki Filmorchester.
Two other films shown in the Forum come from Finland: the ethnographic documentary Uhri Elokuva Metsasta (Sacrifice A Film about a Forest) shot in Northern Siberia by Markku Lehmuskallio and the midnight film The Real McCoy, the story of a Finnish rock musician.
From Sweden comes Stefan Jarls homage to recently deceased Swedish director Bo Widerberg, Liv till Varje Pris. Jarl was a close friend of Widerbergs, and his portrait marks a similarly personal, uncompromising approach to film-making. The Forum will screen Widerbergs seldom-shown film Joe Hill from 1971 at the Akademie der Künste. Also showing there is a classic by the recently deceased Iranian director Sohrab Shahid Saless, Yek Ettefaghe Sadeh with this film, his first, Saless was a guest of the 4th International Forum in 1971. An exhibition on Shahid Saless will be on view at the Akademie.
The Forum has always been a haven for avant-garde documentaries. This year, an especially poetic film of great sensitivity and keen observation will be shown: Vers la Mer by Belgian Annik Leroy, who shot the film along the Danube River. Other examples are two Austrian documentaries: The Port of Last Resort Zuflucht in Shanghai by Joan Grossman and Paul Rosdy which contains new footage of the Jewish emigration to Shanghai in the years 1938-41, and Nikolaus Geyrhalters Pripyat, showing recent observations and portraits of inhabitants of the Chernobyl area.

France
French cinema, as a nexus of European film culture, has always been an integral part of the Forum. Jean-Claude Biettes Trois Ponts sur la Rivière is an intellectual conundrum with amusing allusions and references, cunningly (mis-)leading actors Mathieu Amalric and Jeanne Balibar (as well as the audience) from Paris to Portugal. In the tradition of past Forum films such as Oublie-moi or En Avoir (ou Pas) and obviously schooled by cinéma vérité and the nouvelle vague, Marie Vermillards feature debut Lila Lili follows the pregnancy of an unusual and fascinating woman who lives in a home for girls. The documentary Nos Traces Silencieuses by Sophie Bredier and Myriam Aziza depicts the search for her origins of a Korean woman adopted by French parents. The past is symbolised by a small scar she picked up in childhood. She persistently traces the memories of the skin, submerges herself in reminiscence and plays detective with those around her.

Italy
The Forum found an especially healthy film climate in Italy a multitude of auteur films, documentaries and comedies, which for many Italian film-makers are a key to the perception of reality. Two Italian films in our midnight slot are comedies, both directed by women: In Principio Erano le Mutande by Anna Negri (two girls try to survive in Genoa with temp work and MacJobs) and Rose e Pistole by Carla Apuzzo (lovers on the run in Naples; a skillful collage of film noir elements in a Mediterranean setting). Both films are temperamental, imaginative and excellently acted.
LOspite by Alessandro Colizzi is a psychological study of an extended family whose self-deception is revealed when a stranger intrudes. The film is reminiscent of Pasolini and Visconti, although the director actually cites Fassbinder as an influence.

Germany
The International Forum of New Cinema 1999 is consciously placing an accent on six world premieres of German documentaries and fictional films. The selected works show that beyond comedies and mass-market fare, German film continues to offer experimental, socially conscious and personal films. With an impressive formal stringency and closure occasionally reminiscent of Robert Bresson, Berlin-based director Thomas Arslan in his third feature Dealer portrays a young Turkish man whose attempts to break out of the drug scene in Berlin-Schineberg and find personal happiness are doomed. Berlin is also at the center of the experimental film killer.berlin.doc by Bettina Ellerkamp and Jörg Heitmann. Young inhabitants of the future capital participate in a mysterious game of murder to confront their disgust at the mundanity of their lives. Director Didi Danquart has adapted for the screen Viehjud Levi by playwright Thomas Strittmatters (who died young). The film is an allegory about emerging National Socialism in a Black Forest village, out of which the formerly well-respected cattle dealer Levi is driven by ignorance, opportunism and cowardice. The impressive cast includes Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Noethen and Eva Mattes.
This years new documentary selection is just as diverse as its fictional counterpart. Volker Koepp travelled to Galicia, to the city of Czernowitz now in the Ukraine, for his latest film, Herr Zwilling und Frau Zuckermann. The city was a centre of Jewish life before the Holocaust. The film traces the remains of Jewish culture and contemplates its future while portraying people who have defied persecution and retained their admirable autonomy. Viola Stephan called Damenwahl Szenen aus dem Abendland a portrait of her friends who, predominately successful, independent and beautiful, pursue their careers, sacrifice themselves for their children, cultivate personal luxury and fight ennui. The film reflects, in the directors words, the ambiguous results of 30 years of liberation (sexual, social etc.), self-realisation, responsibility and employment. 37 years is the duration of the long-term observation of the Kinder von Golzow which Barbara and Winfried Junge continued after the state studio DEFAs demise. Brigitte und Marcel Golzower Lebenswege is the saddest and perhaps most moving part of the chronicle, because Brigitte, the jolly fat girl with the pigtails died in 1984, aged 29, of a weak heart. The film documents her son Marcels coming of age brought up under Socialism, he was sworn in as an army recruit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1991.

USA and Canada
The so-called docu-soap as a new television genre has been widely discussed during the past few months. How much this seemingly new form owes to the American documentary tradition, especially direct cinema, is evident in An American Love Story by Jennifer Fox. The documentary is not only unusual because of its length (nine hours) but also because of its manner of depicting the life of a family of four in the New York borough of Queens. For one year, the director and her sound engineer Jennifer Fleming shared the familys life and became aware of the pressures of transgressing racial boundaries even today. Black musician Bill and white clerical worker Karen met in 1967. Ever since, they have been confronted with subtle and overt hostility, and their relationship is constantly put to the test by the ignorance of strangers and relatives, while their daughters are outsiders in both black and white social structures. In nine episodes, the work, with its defiantly televisual title, is continuously offering new insights into a complex reality, and the one year, during which the camera visited Karen, Bill, Cicily and Chaney, is a microcosm of three decades of American social history.
Thug Life in D.C. by Marc Levin and Daphne Pinkerson is another testimony to covert apartheid in America: in Washington, where every other African American between 18 and 35 is tried and convicted, the prisons are overflowing with people of the same colour: armed robbers and killers who are still minors and repeat offenders; young men who will spend the better part of their lives behind bars.
Bennett Millers The Cruise is an homage to the New York City borough of Manhattan. The central figure of this documentary is New Yorks most eccentric city guide Timothy Speed Levitch. The camera accompanies him on his bus tours, through narrow streets and on rooftops, encountering an erudite, witty, non-conformist and highly sensitive person, but also a fragile and tragic existence without a home and always on the verge of losing the irreplacable job which is his only sustenance.
From Florida an experimental feature made its way to the Forum, Julian L Goldbergers directorial debut Trans. In associatively assembled images, the film conveys the thoughts of a 15-year-old who flees from a juvenile correctional facility in the Southwest to the Sunshine State. He experiences his flight as bigger than life, disorientated and alienated from his environment.
Finally, Canadian director Jim Sheddens portrait of renowned experimental film-maker Stan Brakhage, who had a lasting influence on avant-garde cinema all over the world and made many contemporary film experiments possible, will be screened. Brakhage combines excerpts of his work with historical material and recent interviews, which Jim Shedden processed according to the masters example. Ulrich Gregor/Christoph Terhechte