Frost

Germany

1997

270 Min

Color

German

Currently 4.4/5 Stars.
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CAST Paul Blumberg, Anna Schmidt, Mario Gericke, Harry Baer, Isolde Barth, Adolfo Assor, Thomas Baumann

ED Fred Kelemen, Klaus Bieberthaler

PROD DES Fred Kelemen, Julia Rogge

MUSIC Charles Mori

Rotterdam (Competition): FIPRESCI Prize, CPH PIX (3X3)

Synopsis

Time between the years, when everything appears to stand still and when everything has been decorated for sacred celebrations. Time of darkness. Time of fire kindled against cold and fear. During the Holy Night, the seven year old Micha has to escape with his young mother Marianne from the violence of his drunken father. The most necessary things packed up in a big bag, mother and son secretly leave their basement apartment in a backhouse of an apartment building in Berlin. Marianne remembers her childhood in the country side of former East Germany . She wants to travel there. After days, in the moment she thinks to be at the end of there voyage, she finds herself in a landscape covered with ice. The trees are standing rigid in the frozen movements of water. At the horizon, the top of a drowned church is breaking through the wintery soil. Did the place of Marianne’s childhood ever exist here? A place now flooded and frozen over. Or is she misled by her memory? The journey continues. Endless seems to be the country. Snow-covered fields. Frozen lakes. Hard, dark earth. Icy roads. The few houses are abandoned and destroyed. Having run away from her hellish life in the basement, Marianne finds herself in a void, in the apparent endlessness of a glacial age which she cannot fill by any vision of new existence. During their one week odyssey through frozen Germany , mother and son meet people which offer them shelter. Led by ulterior motives, crushed by their own poverty, or dominated by their feelings of being lost, these people just hurt them deeper and they can be nothing else than stations of their continuous escape. At the provisional end of their way, in the hotel of an unknown town, Micha and Marianne find a long desired peace. It cannot last. —Fredkelemen.com

Director

Fred Kelemen

Descending of German and Hungarian families, Fred Kelemen was born in West-Berlin/Germany.He studied painting, music, philosophy, science of religions and theatre sciences and worked in different theatres as a director’s assistant before he began his studies in directing and cinematography at the German Film & TV Academy Berlin (dffb) from 1989 to 1995. He graduated from the dffb with a diploma as a director and as a cinematographer.

For his diploma film “Fate” he received the German National Film Award in 1995. Since that time, he has made a number of films and videos as director and collaborated as cinematographer with several film directors like Béla Tarr (“Journey to the Plain”, Hungary 1995, “The Man from London”, Hungary/France/Germany 2007, “The Turin Horse”, Hungary, France, USA, Germany 2009/10 ), Rudolf Thome (“The Visible and the Invisible”, Germany 2006), Gariné Torossian (“Stone, Time, Touch”, Canada/Armenia 2005) a. o.

Since 1995 he is working as an… read more

Descending of German and Hungarian families, Fred Kelemen was born in West-Berlin/Germany.He studied painting, music, philosophy, science of religions and theatre sciences and worked in different theatres as a director’s assistant before he began his studies in directing and cinematography at the German Film & TV Academy Berlin (dffb) from 1989 to 1995. He graduated from the dffb with a diploma as a director and as a cinematographer.

For his diploma film “Fate” he received the German National Film Award in 1995. Since that time, he has made a number of films and videos as director and collaborated as cinematographer with several film directors like Béla Tarr (“Journey to the Plain”, Hungary 1995, “The Man from London”, Hungary/France/Germany 2007, “The Turin Horse”, Hungary, France, USA, Germany 2009/10 ), Rudolf Thome (“The Visible and the Invisible”, Germany 2006), Gariné Torossian (“Stone, Time, Touch”, Canada/Armenia 2005) a. o.

Since 1995 he is working as an assistant professor or giving master classes and lectures at the Centre of Cinematographical Studies of Catalania (C.E.C.C.) in Barcelona/Spain, at the College of Fine Arts (ESBAG) in Geneva/Switzerland, at the Harvard University / USA, at the Kidderminster College / England, at the Latvian Cultural Academy (LKA) in Riga, at the University of Santiago de Chile – Department of the Arts and Sciences of Visual Medias, at the Thammasat University Bangkok/Thailand, at the German Film and TV Academy Berlin (dffb)/Germany, at the Tel Aviv University – Department of Film and Television/Israel and at the National School of Fine Arts (ENBA) Lyon/France.

Since 2000 he directed several plays at different theatres in Germany.Retrospectives of his work had been presented at places like the Anthology Film Archives New York, the Tate Modern London, the Hungarian National Film Theatre Budapest and at cinematheques, film museums and film festivals worldwide. Future retrospectives are planed to be presented in Mexico City/Mexico (2011), Thessaloniki/Greece, Montpellier/France, Vienna/Austria and Moscow/Russia.

With his film production company Kino Kombat Filmmanufactur he produced his film “Krisana”/”Fallen” (co-producer: Laima Freimane/Screen Vision, Latvia, 2005) and he produced or co-produced the films “Moskatchka” by Annett Schütze (co-producer: Laima Freimane/Screen Vision, Latvia, 2005) and “Fragment” by Gyula Maár (producer: Béla Tarr/TTFilmmühely, Hungary, 2007) and “Roku Roka” (“Hand in Hand”) by Jana Marsik (co-producer: Laima Freimane/Screen Visison, Latvia – Jana Marsik Gemany 2008). —fredkelemen.com

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