Franz Hitzler – Bilder / Paintings 1970-2006

(ISBN-10: 3925782532, ISBN-13: 978-3925782565)

This 48-page hard-cover catalog was published in conjunction with the solo exhibition of Franz Hitzler at Die Galerie, Frankfurt, from 29 June to 2 September 2006. This catalog, edited and compiled by Elke Mohr and featuring texts by the artist Hans M. Bachmayer (18 Sept. 1920 – 11 Jan. 2013), Thomas Hölscher, and Katharina Ponnier, was possibly the first project I ever worked on for Die Galerie.

Hartmut Jahn: Babylon Circus

 

(ISBN-10: 3936711909 / ISBN-13: 978-3936711905) Hardcover, 144 pages and with a DVD; texts by Jan Berg, Thomas Macho, Kersten Glandien, Rudolf Frieling, Niclas Glück, Dieter Daniels, Peter Wensierski, and Hartmut Jahn. Published by Cornerhouse Publications & Verlag für moderne Künst, Manchester/Nüremberg.

This publication from 2005 took a then-comprehensive look at the works and films of the German author, film-school professor, film director, and film producer Hartmut Jahn (born 1955 in Hanover). I was one of two translators to work on the project, both of whom are listed in the book's imprint.

Back to Gaya (Germany, 2004)

AKA Bo, Zino & the Snurks. Directed by Lenard Fritz Krawinkel & Holger Tappe. 

This fully computer-animated film, the first such film to be made in Germany, was actually a project of my trusted colleague Finbarr Morrin, but for a variety of reasons he pulled me in to help on the first two versions of the film script (which included both characters and scenes, including sad ones, no longer present in final script). Finbarr accompanied the project to the end and worked alone on the final drafts.

The plot of the movie released, as supplied by Anthony Pereyra {hypersonic91@yahoo.com} at imdb: "The beautiful world of Gaya is home to a community of creatures, known as the Snurks, who are much smaller than humans, but who have an uncanny resemblance to them. But the Snurks are facing imminent danger. Someone has stolen the magic stone called Dalamite without which this world is doomed. Two Snurks named Boo and Zino embark on a dangerous mission to track down and recover the stone. As they attempt to find the stone, their journey takes them into another world that is both strange and frightening!"

The voices of the movie were supplied, in Germany, by (among others) Michael Herbig and Vanessa Petruo, while the big names of the English version were Patrick Stewart and Emily Watson.

Trailer:

Dario Fo: Malerei / Paintings 1945-2012

(ISBN-10: 3925782788 / ISBN-13: 978-3925782787) Hardcover, 136 pages, with texts by Peter Femfert, Stefania Canali, Sarantos Zervoulakos, and Dario Fo.

This catalog was published in conjunction with a retrospective-style exhibition on display at Die Galerie, Frankfurt from 6 June to 31 August, 2013. Curated Maren Kirchhoff M.A., the exhibition featured over 60 pieces spanning a 70-year period, including the piece shown below.

From the gallery press release (which I also translated): "Multi-talented artists have remained a rarity throughout history, but the Italian Dario Fo (born 1926) is definitely one: as a playwright, set designer, Nobel Prize laureate for literature, instructor and lecturer, painter, actor, satirist and critic he describes and paints the eventful history of his homeland. And he has done so since the 1940s, when as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera he began to sketch the world around him — continuously, resolutely, ceaselessly."

Biomimicry: Inspired by Nature / Biomimikry — Natürlich genial! (2011)

I translated the voiceover text to this 4-part documentary series (TV, 4x52 min, HD) directed by André Rehse. Over at gebrueder beetz filmproduktion, the blurb to the film is as follows: "Humanity is facing huge challenges today: climate change, ocean pollution and non-renewable energy sources are all pressing environmental problems. But nature provides some sustainable answers. The four-part series Inspired by Nature deals with selected biomimicry topics such as locomotion, construction, apperception and processing and also shows how biological processes are applied to solutions of technical problems."

The episodes in detail:

Episode 1: The Art of Movement 
"The first episode, The Art of Movement, gives an introduction to the field of the new science of biomimicry. How can this new discipline help us overcome our limits? What can we learn from nature beyond that?"

Episode 2: Building with Efficiency 
"The second episode deals with the real estate of nature: plants and sponges. They are forced to find the best survival strategy on their 'land'. In millions of years there has emerged a kind of natural archive of strategies and solutions that is being improved. We can utilize this archive, we just need to learn to read and understand it."

Episode 3: Orientation in the Chaos 
"In the third episode we learn how to decode the communication of dolphins, how the collective intelligence of ants works, or how a slime mold helps us improve traffic routes."

Episode 4: Fabrics of Future 
"The fourth and final episode of the series Inspired by Nature shows, by means of numerous examples, how we can get a grip on the problems of our industrial society by consulting the principles of nature."

Trailer:

Biomimicry - Episode 1 from gebrueder beetz filmproduktion on Vimeo.

A Tense Situation

Taken without permission from another translator's blog, Musings from an overworked translator.

Sovia: Death Hospital (Germany, 2007)

Written by Raimund V. Tabor and directed by Robert Franke.

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I occasionally do subtitles (although I don't do spotting). This one of the many films I've subtitled, rare only in that it's a feature film and not a documentary.

Also rare is that I liked the movie so much that I reviewed it on my trashy film blog A Wasted Life, perhaps the last movie that I worked on that I also reviewed. (My current stance is: never review anything you were in any way involved in — one of the reasons why I never reviewed Transfer [2010 / German trailer], despite finding it the cat's meow.)

The plot of Sovia, as summarized in the review: "Sovia (Diana Radnai) is a young, beautiful and pregnant nurse in a Berlin hospital who is in the midst of losing her egoistic co-worker boyfriend Konrad (Sascha Kudella) to another nurse, the Teutonic blonde Sarah (Andrea Gerhard). A badly beaten emergency patient (Vera Hübner) dies while in emergency treatment, for which Sovia is held responsible. And, as if that weren’t enough, Sovia gets run over by a car, loses her baby and has a near-death experience during which she meets the dead emergency patient, who leaves a strange bruise upon her body. A bruise that is mysteriously passed on to anyone she comes into contact with. Relegated to the nether regions of hospital work due to the accidental death, one by one her coworkers begin to die puzzling deaths, deaths that the police are sure Sovia is answerable for. Can she stop the seemingly steady string of deaths and save herself as well?" 

German Trailer:

Personally, I found the film very atmospheric and suspenseful, and view it as a shame that it remains so unknown. Director Robert Franke has since gone on to write and direct The Basement (trailer) in 2009 and Berlin Dance Battle 3D (2012 / trailer).

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) Woodcuts

 

Or, in German:  Edvard Munch (1863-1944) Holzschnitte. (Michael Imhof Verlag; ISBN-10: 3865686818 / ISBN-13: 978-3865686817 [2012]) 

The catalog was for an exhibition of Munch woodcuts at the Museum Behnhaus / Drägerhaus in Lübeck from 19 June – 5 September 2011. Among other works, it featured a large number of rare woodcuts from a Norwegian private collection.

Like the catalog The Bloemaert Effect: Colour and Composition in the Golden Age, this catalog was actually a project of my fellow translator Finbarr Morrin for which, due to a variety of reasons and as is common in the business, he pulled in a second person — me — to assist in the translating and proofreading of the texts. As is often the case with art-related projects, I enjoyed the job immensely and was rather jealous of being only a subcontractor — although I do believe I was given credit in the imprint.

Amazon.com gives the details: "Forty pieces from a private Norwegian collection of the elegant woodcuts of Edvard Munch are presented in this collection, and are supplemented by the Museum Behnhaus Drägerhaus exhibition and catalog. [...] The showcase illustrates all woodcut works in detail, contains a short biography of Munch, and is presented as a bilingual edition in both English and German."