Last Thursday night, my wife and I went to the German Film Festival in Ludwigshafen on the Rhein, where we watched the distinctly "non-art" German-American media-ethical thriller September 5, about the ABC film crew who captured live footage of the terrorist hostage-taking of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The question of effectively live-streaming a terrorist attack, reporting hopeful hearsay and then having those hopes dashed was all well put together: I did find the timing of things confusing though, as some characters drove off to a nearby airfield, and a few minutes later were back again - the film was fast and pacey, so lacked any feeling of the longeurs between key events, the filling time, switching from the unfathomably new to the routine - and back again.
After the film, we went to the food hall for dinner and a filmic glass of wine, to find the whole zone staffed by school kids and students. Now, that's fine, particularly as it's all just temping and short-term holiday or evening jobs - but it did get me wondering how else it could have worked, who could have benefitted from the work, been trusted and integrated to work the tills, cook the Flammkuchen, pour the drinks, beyond the kids.
We enjoyed out meal huddled on a bench beneath a thankfully large and
leafy tree as the rain poured down, drenching those still watching an
open-air film showing. The evening ended with a stroll down by the
river, and then the drive home.
