East meets West, according to Danquart

by Camillo de Marco

18/10/2006 - The second day of the section dedicated to German cinema (see news) within the RomeFilmFest marked the press screening of out-of-competition film Offset [trailer] by Didi Danquart, the director of experimental films and documentaries whose debut feature Viehjud Levi was presented at the 1999 Berlinale.

Offset, set among the sepia-coloured urban landscapes of Bucharest, exposes the jarring cultural clash between Eastern and Western Europe, as Danquart called it, through a story of extreme jealousy: a Romanian girl wants to marry a young German who lives in Bucharest for work while her lover, an editor, is unhappy about their union.

"I was particularly fascinated by the various attitudes present in a formerly Socialist society that, after four decades of centralist indoctrination, is absorbed by Western culture," said the German director. "Politics and emotions are resolved 'off set' (off-screen) rather than 'on' (in the scenes), so that the mature spectator is asked to question his or her established 'visual habits'".

(Translated from Italian)