CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Screening Berlin: Filmmakers' Views of the City
Panel Discussion

Weill Recital Hall
Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 2:00 PM

Panelists to include:
Volker Schlöndorff
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Michael Barker
David Denby, Moderator

In recent years, Berlin has again become a center of attraction for great filmmakers of contemporary cinema. Stars of today’s film industry present their perspectives on the city that has fascinated directors from Fritz Lang to Billy Wilder and beyond.

Presented by Carnegie Hall in partnership with the American Academy in Berlin.

The Berlin in Lights festival is made possible by a leadership gift from the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation.

Major funding has also been provided by Mercedes and Sid Bass, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from Martha and Bob Lipp, Fundación Mercantil (Venezuela), and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Additional funding provided by Axel Springer AG, GWFF USA Inc., and the Jerome Robbins Foundation.

Panelists to include:
Volker Schlöndorff
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Michael Barker
David Denby, Moderator
VOLKER SCHLÖNDORFF
Volker Schlöndorff is a Berlin-based German filmmaker who won an Oscar as well as the Palme d’Or in Cannes for The Tin Drum (1979). Mr. Schlöndorff is famous for his cinematic adaptation of major literary works but also his interest in post-war German politics. He studied economics and political science in Paris and worked as assistant director to Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville, among others. In 1966, he directed Young Törless to critical acclaim and became a founding member of the German New Wave. He has also made a number of documentaries and TV films, and served as chief executive for the UFA studio in Babelsberg. His major films include The Lost Honor of Katherina Blum, Coup de Grace, Swann’s Way, A Gathering of Old Men, The Handmaid’s Tale, Homo Faber, The Ogre, Palmetto, and The Legends of Rita.

FLORIAN HENCKEL VON DONNERSMARCK
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck was born in Cologne in 1973 and grew up in New York, Frankfurt, Brussels, and Berlin. He holds a degree in Russian from Saint Petersburg; in politics, philosophy, and economics from Oxford; and in filmmaking from the Munich Film Academy. His student short films won him several major awards, among them the Max-Ophüls-Preis and the Shocking Shorts Award from Universal Studios. Donnersmarck both wrote and directed his first feature film, Das Leben der Anderen, a political drama set in 1984 East Berlin. He received the European Film Award and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of 2006. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s interests include tennis, philology, comparative religion, and African tribal art. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of the Bavarian and North Rhine–Westphalian Order of Merit. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

MICHAEL BARKER
Michael Barker is the co-president and co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics (with Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom), an autonomous division of Sony Pictures Entertainment founded in January 1992. Sony Pictures Classics distributes, produces, and acquires independent films from the US and around the world.

The trio has worked with many of the world’s finest independent filmmakers. Honors bestowed on this team include 23 Academy Awards and 90 Academy Award nominations, including three for Best Picture (Howards End; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Capote), as well as nine opening-night presentations at the New York Film Festival.

Mr. Barker and his partner Tom Bernard (with SPC co-founder Marcie Bloom) have also received the Honors Award from the Directors Guild of America, the IFP / West Independent Spirit Award, the GLAAD Media Award, the Gotham Industry Lifetime Achievement Award from the IFP, and the FINDIE Spirit Award.

Mr. Barker serves on the Entertainment Media and Technology Dean’s Advisory Board at New York University’s Stern School of Business and is a member of the Visiting Committee to the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago. He is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Texas. He was born in Nuremberg, Germany.

DAVID DENBY
David Denby was born in New York in 1943 and was educated at Columbia and Stanford universities. He has been film critic for The Atlantic Monthly, Boston Phoenix, New York magazine, and since 1998, the New Yorker. He has written two books, Great Books (1996), an account of a year spent in middle age reading Western classics with Columbia undergraduates, and American Sucker (2004), a personal story of greed and loss during the stock market bubble from 1999 to 2002.