What would you do with a hundred dollars? You probably wouldn’t make a short indie film in German. And that’s exactly why you’re not featured in 99 Euro Films (euro is the European word for dollar), a collection of shorts being shown as part of Visions Cinema’s week-long New Films from Germany series.
The films eschew the more typical art-house aesthetic and avoid becoming pretentious-a common pitfall of low-level directors out to prove something. Most of the films here seem to have been made with a sense of irony and humor in mind-providing brief, slice-of-life narratives that work well within the low-budget contraints allowed the directors.
Since all 12 films combined clock in at under 75 minutes, the average running time of seven or eight minutes prevents any one from becoming too long or tedious—a good thing considering some of the films are pretty much worthless.
Some of the more interesting and substantive entrants include A Man Fights His Way Through and Balkan Rhapsody—Hildegard And Dorit’s Educational Trip In Eastern Europe. The first concerns a man who allows participants to hit him for a minute for several dollars, before he is beaten up by a group of Americans who don’t realize that it’s just a game. Balkan Rhapsody involves two elderly women on vacation who unwittingly stumble upon and exacerbate an ugly scene between a pimp, a prostitute, her unhappy customer and a hotel manager when they try to help the situation.
Other films in the line-up were genuinely funny and refreshing for their refusal to take themselves or their intended message too seriously. In So Cheap! August 2001, a hired assassin becomes friends with his intended target. The bulk of the film shows the two of them goofing off in that fun-loving manner that only Germans possess, before being killed by the woman who ordered the assassination in the first place. Run, Leila, Run, is a send-up of Run, Lola, Run (where the protagonist has to rush to raise money to save her boyfriend) starring a 10-year old girl running to the store to turn in a lottery ticket. A Short Film About Jumping is humor in the vein of Monty Python in which a man jumping alone in a field has his pastime converted into a spectator sport.
The end credits of the film shows just how the 99 euros were used. One director spent only a single euro on the production and the rest on Red Bull, another listed pizza for the cast as the only cost, and Lorely S.’s only expense was the Speedos worn by the dashing male leads.
Although Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” is the greatest German work to include the number 99 in its title, 99 Euro Films provides eclectic and mostly entertaining art-house cinema. The film will be screened again today and Friday, when the festival’s closing ceremony will be held. The Friday festivities will include a kick-the-keg screening in which $10 gets you all the German beer you can drink. In an age when every new action film sets a record for being the most expensive film ever made, it is refreshing to see what people can do with a video camera, $100, the German language and a dream.
