Through the eyes of Propaganda (artistically)
I had a history professor in college who insisted on screening for us the entirety of Leni Rifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the propaganda documentary about the rise of the Third Reich. “I’m sorry,” he said afterward. I think the point of showing us over two hours of endless lines of soldiers marching perfectly, Hitler youth smiling in training camps and vast ceremonial halls that would later influence George Lucas’ Star Wars was to suggest that monotony can be hypnotic and, ultimately, can make resistance seem futile.
The German film festival KinoFest returns to Manila this month with an opening screening of the provocative 2024 documentary Riefenstahl, which re-examines the unapologetic life of Hitler’s chief myth-builder. Riefenstahl was controversial as a Nazi documentarian, but even more so in ensuing decades, a tireless apologist for her own art, raising the eternal question of how we separate artistic skill from one’s legacy, and how propaganda in cinema can both shape and distort history.
The screening is on Thursday, Oct. 15, 6 p.m., at Shangri-La Plaza’s Red Carpet Cinemas, followed by a hybrid Q&A with the film’s producer Sandra Maischberger.
It’s all part of an eclectic mix of eight German films and five Filipino shorts running from Oct. 16-19 at Shang Plaza.
For those interested in jazz—and I’m pretty sure “The Köln Concert” is one of the most circulated used vinyls in Metro Manila—there’s Köln 75, which tells the rousing true story of how 18-year-old Vera Brandes risked everything to bring jazz pianist Keith Jarrett to the Cologne Opera House in 1975. The resulting double LP of improvised pieces became the best-selling solo jazz and piano album of all time. (Screening Friday, 6 p.m. and Saturday, 7 p.m.)
The roster this year shifts from the animated Woodwalkers (2025), in which 13-year-old Carag discovers he can shapeshift into a puma, and soon finds a secret school of similar shapeshifters whom he befriends, to the story of Vena (2024), in which Jenny, a reluctant, drug-dependent, soon-to-be mother with a pending jail sentenc, meets Marla—her midwife—who supports Jenny in her growth towards self-acceptance.
In 2023’s animated Giants of La Mancha, Alfonso Quixote, heir to the Don Quixote legacy, protects his town of La Mancha from monsters no one can see. In The Light (2025), the fractured Berlin-based Engels family are set on a journey into the unknown by the arrival of the mysterious housekeeper Farrah.
Another German Tank Story (2024) sets a Hollywood TV production about the Second World War in the small village of Wiesenwalde, where villagers are confronted with a tank that appears in front of the mayor’s house. And From Hilde, With Love (2024) sets a love story between Hilde and Hans in war-torn Berlin, 1942, where the couple join an anti-Nazi resistance group called “Red Orchestra.”
Brought to Manila by the Goethe-Institut, this fourth edition of the German film festival brings the newest German films to audiences in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Thailand, Vietnam and Timor Leste.
A highlight of the Manila program is “KinoFest Special: Stories Across Continents” on Oct. 18, which brings together five Filipino short films engaging with climate change. These works imagine the climate crisis not only as an ecological challenge but also as a lived reality interwoven with love, myth, displacement and grief. Writer and transfeminist artist Jaya Jacobo will moderate a discussion with other filmmakers after the screenings, including Krystahl.
Krystahl Guina and Miko Reyes (Baradiya), Carl Joseph Lara (Rumbles of the Earth), and Whammy Alcazaren (Water Sport).
Then on Oct. 19, 5 p.m., Svenja Vanhoeffer, producer of Vena, will sit for an in-person talkback session following the screening, sharing her insights on the making of Vena and on contemporary German cinema.
PhilippinesKinoFest 2025 is jointly organized by eight Goethe-Instituts in Southeast Asia and New Zealand and made possible in Manila through the partnership with Shangri-La Plaza Red Carpet Cinemas under the Culture in Focus program, with support from the Film Development Council of the Philippines.
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For full program details, visit: http://www.goethe.de/manila/kinofest.
