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Bettina Blümner • Director

Between fact & fiction

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- The Berlin-based filmmaker Bettina Blümner talks about her latest work, her influences and how she ended up directing features

Bettina Blümner • Director

 “I think it’s really exciting to blend the genres of documentary and feature film,” Bettina Blümner tells me during our conversation about her work as a director up until now. “It matches my view of life. It’s important to me that people can’t sense the staging, that everything creates a natural impression, yet still exhibits my interpretation of the story. I’m not dogmatic, and so that’s why I like to use music in my films. I also attempt to avoid overdoing the dramatic aspects. It’s important for me to show the humor in drama and to underline the dramatic moments in a comedy.”

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Blümner became well-known immediately with her first film, Pool of Princesses. It was a documentary film, while the next work, Broken Glass Park [+see also:
trailer
interview: Bettina Blümner
film profile
]
was a feature. In her latest film, Parcours d’amour, she has returned to the documentary. “Nonetheless, the films do have something in common – they are all about creating portraits of a generation and they deal with growing up. My leading character in Broken Glass Park remains true to herself. She follows the path which her heart dictates to her. She is extremely self-confident, she knows that she wants to get out of there, but she doesn’t know exactly where she wants to go yet.” This description could also be applied to the three friends she followed and observed for years in Pool of Princesses. “It’s about growing up, turning into an adult. It was great fun to recount tales about discovering the world. You know from when you were a teenager yourself: you always think everything is so much better in other families.”

Bettina Blümner doesn’t think the difference between documentary film and feature film is entirely distinguishable. “Film is film”. But, naturally, she is conscious of the difference between the promise of reality in the documentary and other, imagined realities. She says that Pool of Princesses was a documentary film which she shot in a similar way to a feature film, concentrating her observations in a dramatic way.

When asked how she came to the directing profession, Blümner mentions her schooldays, during which she saw many decisive works – Kieslowski’s Three colors trilogy made a particular impression on her at the time. And she also speaks of her father: “I learned from him to see things with a special photographic perspective,” and so she began photographing and making films. “I love to tell stories; the spoken word has become very important to me. Great dialogues are a rare commodity, but they are the charm in a lot of films.” The directors whose work she likes include Richard Linklater. “I really liked Boyhood, and as a whole I admire his approach very much: I like feature films that include documentary elements, and the other way around, documentary films with a fictional touch.” Blümner enjoys experimenting. “Each film is a new challenge and I love challenges. I do like to work in seasoned constellations, but I also appreciate new and exciting constellations. I like it when I am approached with new and interesting ideas and material.”

Blümner’s films all reflect an optimism – full of humor and unusually adult for German films – that is combined with a practical wisdom in day-to-day life, although that doesn’t mean there is not a touch of madness or a “special perspective” here and there. Like in Parcours d’amour, for example: “I came across the subject of the dance cafés during my research for a feature film – and I have always wanted to make a film in Paris. So one thing led to another.”

Parcours d’amour had its world premiere in Montreal and screened in Zurich and was shown in Hof at the end of October. She has several projects that she has already been working on for quite a while and others that she is currently developing. And when she really believes in a project, she pursues it with great passion, both in real life as well as the fictional one.

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