Things are currently happening in the Franconian metropolis of Hof that at first glance have nothing to do with each other, but are nevertheless directly related. As if there were: a young man who shoots funny videos for fidgety youngsters. An old man showing images of once-struggling filmmakers. A women’s collective honoring a dead film provocateur. A mayor who sells cinema tickets. Or a German TV comedian with a sense for genealogy and rock ‘n’ roll history.
The latter also dissolves this strange network of relationships: On Tuesday, October 25th, the 56th Hof Film Festival will open with the mockumentary “Olaf Jagger”. In it, the television comedian Olaf Schubert believes that he is Mick Jagger’s biological son: just Olaf Jagger. He meets rock stars, moderators and Stasi documents administrators, he travels to England, to a French castle and to the “Rolling Stones” museum in Bautzen. It’s funny, mostly because of the pseudo-documentary, quasi-authentic veneer.
Reason to celebrate: The third season of the TV series “Servus Baby” premieres in Hof.
(Photo: Hofer Filmtage)
Authenticity is overrated anyway, especially at film festivals. The audience in Hof also wants to see well-produced stories, dive into foreign worlds, dream with open eyes and follow dream dancers. This works with “Olaf Jagger” as well as with the rest of the film program, a total of 125 short, documentary and feature films from 28 countries are shown over six days. There is a lot to discover, also from previously unknown film nations such as the Falkland Islands, Cyprus, Palestine or Cuba.
In addition, many new German films will be shown, and stars such as Nastassja Kinski, Ulrich Matthes, Anna Maria Mühe and Annette Frier have announced their coming. Exciting documentaries such as “Eight Siblings” celebrate their premiere, as does the third season of the television series “Servus Baby”. You can also look forward to new Hollywood productions such as “The Menu” (with Ralph Fiennes in the leading role) or the potential Oscar nominee “Empire of Light”. The new film by Briton Sam Mendes celebrates the magic of cinema, the crackling of celluloid – and is therefore just right in Hof. Because even if films are shown digitally in the Central Kino or the Scala, there are still analogue projections at the film days, from court classics such as “Sin Nombre” or “Night of the Living Dead”.
Sam Mendes’ new film, Empire of Light, is already being talked about as a potential Oscar nominee (pictured: Micheal Ward and Olivia Colman).
(Photo: Hofer Filmtage/Disney)
“It’s a lot of work,” says Thorsten Schaumann at a late breakfast in Munich a few days before the start of the festival. Films on celluloid rolls are difficult to come by these days, the infrastructure for them is lacking and almost all cinemas are digitized. “In the Regina cinema in Hof there is still a projector and also an employee who can operate this projector,” says Schaumann.
He has been the artistic director of the Filmtage since 2017; he took over after the festival founder and decades-long boss Heinz Badewitz passed away in 2016. Under his management, Hof had a kind of unique selling point, almost all German filmmakers were there at some point, the film days became the “autumn show of German cinema”, the “Home of Films” with a family get-together atmosphere and technical discussions at the bratwurst stand. Schaumann continued this tradition, but at the same time he changed a lot, establishing new series, events and discussion formats. Because even a festival has to move with the times, open up and appeal to new audiences.
Always open to new ideas: Thorsten Schaumann has been the artistic director of the Hofer Filmtage since 2017.
(Photo: Chris Hirschhäuser/Hofer Filmtage)
Probably the most obvious change has to do with the pandemic: the Hof Film Festival has been taking place in hybrid form since 2020. In addition to the screenings in the Hofer cinemas, there is also the possibility of accessing a large part of the films via the film days’ on-demand platform – even until November 6th. There are actually two festivals that he and his team would organize, says Schaumann, one on site and one on the Internet. This was initially due to the Corona requirements, when it was not known whether the festival could even take place in its usual form. However, the online offer was accepted and is to be continued. Or as the artistic director says with a laugh: “We’ve been practicing for two years now.”
He sees himself as the midwife for all the films and wants to give them the best possible start. To do that, you have to expand the infrastructure, he says, make it visible. This works with the daily Late Night Talk Show, which takes place in the Bürgergesellschaft Hof – and at the same time on the Internet. But that should also appeal to the fidgety young people: The film days have recently been on Tiktok, a film student from the HFF Munich is shooting short videos on site. It remains to be seen whether he can draw attention to the age group that rarely goes to the cinema and prefers to stare at cell phones.
In Hof there are a lot of things that are connected to each other: These include not only streaming offers or Tiktok videos, but also the homage to the recently deceased film provocateur Roland Reber and his women’s collective, the traditional football game or the exhibition “Fassbinder/Schygulla/Ballhaus” in the Freedom Hall courtyard. Photos by Michael Friedel are shown there, who accompanied the film family around Rainer Werner Fassbinder with his camera in the 1970s. “Hof stays stupid, no films help there,” the director, who died 40 years ago, once grumbled, but he didn’t quite get past the film days either. Hof’s mayor, on the other hand, definitely wants to come by: Eva Döhla has been part of the Filmtage team since 1987 and still occasionally sells cinema tickets, as Schaumann reports. And that too is a unique selling proposition, of course.
56th Hof International Film Festival, Tuesday, October 25th to Sunday, October 30th, streaming until November 6th, information and tickets: www.hofer-filmtage.com