Edukators II

July 28th, 2005
The Edukators

Hey, teacher!
Melora Koepke
The Edukators: Jan, Jule and Peter kidnap for love and money Edukators director Hans Weingartner won't leave the kids aloneThe kids will really like Hans Weingartner's second feature - it's been pegged as a Trainspotting with politics, entertainment for the anti-WTO set, shot on handheld DV with a 250,000 euro bank loan. It's a Brechtian parable shot like reality TV with a distinctly Indymedia feel to it (there's a lot of polemical debate written into the dialogue).
Jan, Jule and Peter are a love triangle of German activist-hipsters with a secret hobby: They invade the homes of the rich when their occupants are absent, and rearrange all the furniture as a sort of home-invasion-cum-culture-jam. Jule leads a life of indentured servitude as a waitress to pay an insurance debt to a rich businessman, and when she finds out about her compadres' nighttime adventures, a kidnapping plan is hatched.
The Edukators may be an antidote to the high-frequency crapfest that has been the last month or so in the cineplex. Rampant international distribution deals are afoot after a showing at Cannes. To wit, when I get Hans Weingartner on the phone in Germany, he sounds like the walking dead - after an avowed "300 or so interviews" on The Edukators, he's half asleep and wondering just what there is left to say.
Hour You did the whole thing on a shoestring, and produced it yourself - that in itself must be exhausting.
Hans Weingartner [sounding so sleepy he's actually slurring his words] I didn't want a lot of money, it reduces the pressure and you have more freedom. Also, less commercial pressure
'I produced it myself so that I would not have to worry about it. Now, I could pay the loan back right away if I wanted to.
Hour Is it a risk or a benefit to make a movie that is so politically allegorical? That isn't really the fashion right now in moviemaking... in the Western world anyway.
Weingartner As soon as you make a political film, people become critical of the political message, because everybody has a political opinion. The risk is that nobody is going to want to see the film, not the most political time in the world. But there is romance in this film too, and [fun]... it is just political romance, and fun.
Hour People do not generally like to be lectured to...
Weingartner You have to go very deep, and find emotions that touch everybody. Jule has a debt to this upper manager, and she had to give up her life to pay this debt, and I think everyone in the audience, left or right, can understand what she is going through. It's unfair and not justified, it's a good way to explain what the First World is doing to the Third World. This way you can dispense political messages, but be careful not to fall into political programs.
Hour: You yourself were a squatter and an activist when you were younger. Is The Edukators another form of activism?
Weingartner [It is concerned with the issues] that personally occupy me. It sounds pathetic, I know, I'm sorry, but it's not, these are human feelings. We are social beings, we are not competitive beings... that is what capitalism tries to tell us, but it is bullshit. It is stuff from the '70s but if you repeat it today, everybody starts to yawn. [Yawns, then chuckles.]
Hour So this is a film for a particular time and place?
Weingartner The Edukators is only my second film, and it has been shown in Cannes, and around the world... I would never have dreamt that it could have gotten so far. There must be something in the air... five years ago, nobody would have given a shit about this film. Now, people are tired of the machine, they are tired of running around a spinning wheel in a circus where the mouse is running. The stress has reached a level that makes us unhappy, and all the yoga in the world cannot help.

Edukators

Dir: Hans Weingartner, Germany, 2004, 126 min, German with subtitlesCast: Daniel Brühl, Julia Jentsch, Stipe Erceg, Burghart KlaußnerNot, as the name would suggest, a west coast rap crew currently on tour with Outkast and Ludacris, The Edukators is a German film about three would-be political agitators and a stunt that goes wrong.Jan (Brühl) and Peter (Erceg) are two disaffected youths who spend their days campaigning against sweatshops and social injustice. But at night they enjoy nothing more than to stake out and break into the homes of ostentatiously wealthy urbanites, rearranging their furniture, and leaving enigmatic notes telling their victims, 'Your days of plenty are numbered,' signing themselves 'The Edukators'.Before long they are joined by Peter's girlfriend Jule (Jentsch), a waitress crippled by debt following an uninsured car accident. But when Jule goads Jan into entering the house of her creditor, their pranks quickly spiral out of control, leading to an assault, a kidnap, and maybe worse.Director Hans Weingartner's film starts out looking rather like Fight Club-lite. The Project Mayhem-esque japes are clever and entertaining, and it is these that give most of the entertainment value in the first half hour. However, Jan and Peter's characters are for the most part sketched in lightly, and much of the dialogue is simply anti-globalisation rhetoric that sounds like 'Rage Against The Machine' lyrics written out longhand. It is only following the kidnap of the wealthy and reptilian businessman Hardenberg (Klaußner) that the stakes are raised and the tension truly develops.Unfortunately the story then resorts to a rather predictable love triangle that would be more at home on Hollyoaks. Where the film succeeds in its latter sections is in the character of Hardenburg himself - far more sophisticated and intriguing than his captors - and it is the interplay between the older man and the three younger players that sustains the audience's attention until the final scene.The videography at least is outstanding. The use of handheld Panasonic digital video cameras is loudly trumpeted in the closing credits, and while this gives the photography a fluid and improvised, Dogme-like feel, it is never at the cost of sumptuous imagery. Shot entirely in available light, the night-time scenes are cast in orange and blue hues reminiscent of last year's Collateral, while the daylight scenes are vivid and crisp and as clear as the mountain air they were recorded in.Ultimately the picture falls rather between several stools. Too ponderous to be a thriller, too small scale to be a political piece, too cold to be a love story. The ingredients for any of these are here, and were its 126 minutes compressed to 90 The Edukators might have had the focus to become an compelling story with a brain and a heart. Instead it feels like a talented cast and crew tentatively groping their way towards an interesting picture. An education for all involved, perhaps.

Jimmy Razor

ideologia, eu quero uma pra viver

REIS DO ATRASO
Elio Gaspari
Folha de São Paulo, 04/02/2007

As operadoras de telefonia fixa estão nos tribunais para impedir a expansão da oferta de serviços de conexão sem fio para a internet. É o Wi-Fi. Os doutores da Telemar, da Telefônica e da Brasil Telecom merecem o prêmio George Selde. Ele era um lobista americano e agrupou os fabricantes de "carruagens sem cavalos" para tirar do mercado um veículo vendido por US$ 825, metade do preço dos similares. Os magnatas do cartel da Associação de Fabricantes de Automóveis sustentavam que Henry Ford não tinha licença para fazer carros.