20 years later, remembering East German film and football
The sixth edition of the 11mm Fußballfilmfestival revels in Ostalgie (“Eastalgia”) by screening 14 films from or concerning the former East Germany. With film listing and podcast »
Category: Cinema & Visual Arts
The Zen of Mathare: brew changaa, carry water, play soccer
The final installment, from Nairobi and Cape Town, from Gwendolyn Oxenham’s diaries supporting The Soccer Project, a documentary about pickup soccer worldwide.
Nov 30, 2008 | 2 comments
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Cinema | Football’s happy existence inside Parisian ‘museum’
The third installment, from Paris, from Gwendolyn Oxenham’s diaries supporting The Soccer Project.
Nov 28, 2008 | 0 comments
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Cinema | Attempting Jewish-Arab reconciliation in a 10-minute game
The second installment, from Jerusalem, from Gwendolyn Oxenham’s diaries supporting an in-process documentary film, The Soccer Project, about four recent college graduates and their pursuit of improvisational soccer matches around the world.
Nov 25, 2008 | 0 comments
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Cinema | Trading ‘fruitcakes’ for fútbol as ‘Soccer Project’ reaches La Paz
Filmmaker, writer and footballer Gwendolyn Oxenham chronicles The Soccer Project, an in-process documentary film that tells of the intimate bonds soccer creates through pickup games (aka “kickabouts”) in South America, Israel, France, Kenya and elsewhere.
Nov 23, 2008 | 0 comments
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Cinema | A soccer player’s escape from Argentina … into philosophy
Claudio Tamburrini—philosophy professor and former goalkeeper—speaks about his Mar 1978 decision to “opt for life” and escape an Argentine prison. With podcast »
Aug 27, 2008 | 0 comments
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Visual arts | Defeating the forces of Babylon through love and soccer
Using red-clad players and supporters from local side Hapoel Tel Aviv as leitmotif, artist and autodidact Ido Shemi shows how benevolent objectives might be achieved through humor, creativity and football.
Aug 23, 2008 | 0 comments
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Iran | In clothing meant to conceal, football becomes ‘a means of fighting’
Toward the end of a Jun 17 National Public Radio interview, Marlene Assmann of BSV Al-Dersimspor discloses that her multicultural Kreuzberg side from Berlin again will brave Islamic strictures for a second friendly match in Iran.
Jun 19, 2008 | 0 comments
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Art | At Vienna stadium installation, ‘you will only be nude for a short period of time’
Avant garde photographer Spencer Tunick has requested 2,008 nude participants—each with football—for a May 11 “installation” at Ernst Happel Stadion in Vienna, site of the Euro 2008 final.
Apr 14, 2008 | 0 comments
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Cinema | For cinéastes, Fußballfilmfestival offers definitive fixture list
As one should not judge a book by the cover, one should not judge a film by its trailer. But the trailer for Maradona: La mano de Dios, which opened the 11mm Fußballfilmfestival in Berlin on Apr 4, sounds a warning: handle with care.
Apr 05, 2008 | 0 comments
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Cinema | ‘Football Under Cover’ receives unveiling
Promotional material for the documentary Football Under Cover (see interview with director Ayat Najafi, 29 Sept 07) celebrates the display of “Frauenpower” in its chronicle of an Apr 06 friendly between BSV Al-Dersimspor of Kreuzberg, Berlin, and the Iranian women’s national team.
Feb 06, 2008 | 2 comments
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Cinema | ‘Die besten Frauen,’ the best women (w/ video)
Ian Plenderleith, not for the first time, has done great service by offering a synopsis and highlights in translation of director Britta Becker’s 90-minute documentary Die besten Frauen der Welt (“The Best Women in the World,” Jan 7).
The film chronicles Germany’s championship at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Sept 07 and, along the way, points to “the obvious contrasts between the Germans and the US team that failed to advance beyond the semi-final.”
Mixed media | Round ball, flat art
The quiet launch to the Web of a portion of 50,000 drawings and an even greater number of prints—so-called flat art—within the British Museum collection makes football-related arcana even easier to find. With multimedia »
Nov 20, 2007 | 0 comments
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Canada | First among soccer nations
Beckham, on Vancouver swing, tries football by Canadian rules
Vancouver, British Columbia, Nov 7 | As usual, David Beckham’s North American barnstorming circuit—with a stop tonight at BC Place Stadium—to us raises more interest in pre-existing soccer traditions than in the soccer actually being played.
Iran | ‘As if one were under water’
In Iran, Kreuzberg team learns about football under cover
Berlin, Sept 29 | Filmmaker Ayat Najafi had to content himself with experiencing the centerpiece of his new project, Football Under Cover, as an exile.
At Ararat Stadium in Tehran on 28 Apr 06, Najafi stood outside the arena along with husbands of the women inside—players for the Iranian women’s national team, their amateur opponents, BSV Al-Dersimspor of Kreuzberg, and about 1,000 female supporters.
Sep 29, 2007 | 2 comments
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Israel | Bnei Sakhnin, by cultivating football, hopes to harvest peace
A small Arab Israeli town of 25,000 residents, nestled in a lower Galilee valley among fig and olive orchards, with an illustrious history and a difficult present, has become world famous within the past three years—all thanks to its soccer team.
A new documentary film, Sons of Sakhnin United, examines Bnei Sakhnin’s place as a bridge builder in divided Israel.
Sep 05, 2007 | 3 comments
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Cinema | Top-5 films do not feature soccer on the Sly
In choosing our five favorite football films we have limited ourselves to those available via DVD and to those we have actually seen, resisting the urge to include Le Ballon d’Or (The Golden Ball; France/Guinea, 1994) based on reputation alone.
File under ‘aesthetics’ | 5 epiphanic goals from Marta Vieira da Silva
Normally we do not post goal videos, but that these are goals by a woman—albeit one of the world’s best-known players, Marta Vieira da Silva of Brazil—and that they were scored at a “lesser” football competition, the 15th Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, means that otherwise they will rapidly fade into obscurity, as if they had never happened.
Jul 25, 2007 | 0 comments
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Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, has campaigned to relocate the remains of goalkeeper-cum-existentialist Albert Camus from their resting place in Lourmarin. 
