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Ziegler Film celebrates 35 Years – 1973-2008
By Ron Holloway | August 21, 2008
Back in the early 1970s, when I was asked by my Variety editor if I could pen a couple reviews on German cinema, I looked around to see what was available. Fortunately, I had seen Wolf Gremm’s Ich dachte, ich wäre tot (I Had a Feeling I Was Dead) (Germany, 1973) and Meine Sorgen möcht’ ich haben (I’d Like to Have My Troubles) (Germany, 1975), the first films produced independently by Regina Ziegler.
So off the reviews went, and soon I found myself in demand – as a more than willing critic of productions by promising New German Cinema directors. I remember in particular one time when I reported on a minor hickup at a German TV station. Why Bayerischer Rundfunk in the First German Television (ARD) network refused to air Wolf Gremm’s Tod im U-Bahnschacht (Death in the U-Bahn Shaft) (Germany, 1975) eludes me even today. Apparently, though, German policemen were not supposed to be stumbling all over each other to solve a crime. Notwithstanding similar American hits in the gangster genre.
Later, Regina Ziegler and I became colleagues – in 1977, when Wolf Donner invited both of us to serve on his Selection Committee for the reorganized Berlinale. So I got to know how a German producer thought when watching a film, and she seemed to enjoy listening to my comments on the same production. In any case, we were never very far apart in our voting consensus. After all, she had produced some of the NGC films I particularly liked: Ulrich Schamoni’s Chapeau Claque (Germany, 1974), Rosa von Praunheim’s Berliner Bettwurst (Germany, 1975), and Peter Stein’s Sommergäste (Summer Folk) (Germany, 1976), a screen adaptation of his Schaubühne stage production of the Gorki classic.
Following the Donner years at the Berlinale, we found ourselves rubbing shoulders at several international film festivals. Once, at the Venice Film Festival, we were crossing the lagoon in a taxi-boat to the Lido – where she was to present Krzysztof Zanussi’s Ein Jahr der ruhenden Sonne (The Year of the Quiet Sun) (Germany, 1984) in the competition. And, if I am not mistaken, a young Tanja Ziegler was on that same boat trip. It goes without saying that I liked Zanussi/Ziegler’s A Year of the Quiet Sun – in fact, over a breakfast date I said so to Günter Grass, one of the Venice jury members. He confided that he shared the same opinion. Presto – the Golden Lion was a foregone jury decision!
Years later, in 1992, I was asked by Regina if I would be interested in a job at Ziegler Film as a Special Consultant on a series of short films produced for Westdeutscher Rundfunk. Of course, I agreed on the spot. Who wouldn’t! The Erotic Tales were conceived as an answer to the soft porno films aired by private TV stations to raise their dubious viewing quotas. It was Regina’s ingenious idea to enlist internationally renown directors to exercise their erotic fantasies. Over the next eight years and more, the series ran on and on – altogether, 30 short features, or some 15 hours of viewing time.
In my modest opinion, WDR/ARD made history by airing the films on the First Channel every Friday evening immediately after the “Bericht aus Bonn” political roundup. I would also venture to say that the Erotic Tales ended up in the library of the Museum of Modern Art because the production duo, Regina and Tanja Ziegler, were enlgihtened women with an refined sense of what constituted the “erotic” in all its subtleties. The ETs would not have succeeded without them. Nor many other successes in the Ziegler portfolio.
– Ron Holloway
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