Sentimental Value | The Film

HOTA Gallery View from Top | Credit phb Sentimental Value - Ein filmisches Meisterwerk: Filmkunst und das Thema Versöhnung - My Review Als ich gestern morgens an der Gold Coast in QLD Australien dank HOTA den neuesten Film von Joachim Trier erleben konnte , wurde mir klar: Dies ist mehr als nur ein Familienportrait - es ist eine tiefgründige Meditation über Generationenkonflikte, künstlerische Integrität und die heilende Kraft der Versöhnung.Triers norwegischer Originaltitel "Affeksjonsverdi" - wörtlich "Affektionswert" - trifft den Kern präziser als der englische Titel. Es geht hier um den subjektiven Wert, den wir Beziehungen, Orten und Erinnerungen zuschreiben: Im Kern um Familie und ein HOME. In London konnte ich Harold Pinters Dramen erleben, zuerst The Caretaker (Taking care ...) und The Homecoming.  In Berlin (damals die Jahre im Studium an der FU) die Berliner Schaubühne mit ihren unvergessenen Inszenierungen: Der Kirschgarten, Shakespeare mit JUTTA LAMPE und Michael Koenig und anderen. Gute Filmauszüge von Bergmann wurden in meinen Leistungskursen analysiert:  Mann und Frau, Beziehungen und Kommunikation und mehr ... Zum Film (vgl. dazu Cannes): Stellan Skarsgård spielt den begnadeten fiktiven Gustav Borg, einen Filmregisseur auf der Suche nach Erlösung. Seine Tochter Nora (Renate Reinsve) lehnt die Hauptrolle in seinem Comeback-Film ab - ein symbolträchtiger Moment der Verweigerung. Als ein Hollywood-Star Elle Fanning die Rolle übernimmt und immer mehr in ihrem Aussehen zur eigenen Tochter wird, wird der Film zu einer komplexen…

Continue ReadingSentimental Value | The Film

Dream Job

What's your dream job? My dream job was High School Teaching German and English Literature. No regrets & loved it till I retired in 2015 in North Germany.

Continue ReadingDream Job

Adventure

Coming home after three full weeks of camping, we had a longer break half the way in Maclean in NSW at the mighty Clarence River. Credit phb Credit phb Credit phb Credit phb

Continue ReadingAdventure

Road Trip

Think back on your most memorable road trip. Quite a few, actually, when living in Windhoek Namibia: The first three years from 1988 we travelled around 10 weeks into the Namib and National Parks annually and slept on our Landrover with a roof top tent, we had imported from Germany by container, awesome experiences, indeed! Credit phb

Continue ReadingRoad Trip

Truman Capote

When studying in Berlin around 1974, I bought the Penguin Classic I found now in a Camp Kitchen along my Camping Trip Northern Rivers area in New South Wales in Australia before Xmas 2025. One of the best US books ever written, for sure. True Crime Genre and Podcasts were not even at the Horizon. And I am glad I found a copy of Moby Dick as well. Nothing like reading when camping in Australia. By the way: The Place to be, if not in Berlin. In Cold Blood: The Birth of True Crime Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) remains the definitive work that created the true crime genre—a “nonfiction novel” that reads with the psychological depth of fiction while maintaining journalistic rigor. The Achievement Capote spent six years researching the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in rural Kansas, conducting over 8,000 pages of interviews. His breakthrough was treating real events with novelistic techniques: shifting perspectives, building suspense, and developing the killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickock as complex characters rather than monsters. The result transforms crime reporting into literature. Enduring Power The book’s strength lies in its moral ambiguity. Capote neither romanticizes nor demonizes the murderers, instead revealing how circumstance, psychology, and choice intersect tragically. His depiction of small-town America shattered by random violence captured something essential about American anxiety in the post-war era—a theme that resonates even…

Continue ReadingTruman Capote

Deutsche Welle

This site is known to Learners of German around the world … Linked More than The Language only: Culture and Landeskunde Menschen in Deutschland News and Background Infos. Credit phb

Continue ReadingDeutsche Welle

Dangar Falls

There are places and there are really good places: One of the best for us is this one here with real Camping like 50 years ago named Lodge. But it is in fact an old Dairy Farm, the second wave of taking the land after logging … Very cool up here at 900 m above Sea Level, which is called Coffs Harbour Coastline and Northern Rivers in NSW. In OZ, of course😎 and not in the USA. And the beautiful but overcrowded South Pacific Ocean Coastline between Sydney and Brisbane. One of our annual 18 nights Loops from the Gold Coast since we both retired. View from my Fire Place 👌 Credit phb Published by Peter H Bloecker, retired Director of Studies (North Germany).

Continue ReadingDangar Falls

Coraki

Timber Harvested | History of NSW Australia Image Credit: Richmond River Historical Society, Website Dream of a Magnificent Tree | Credit phb Camping at Richmond River | Credit phb This post is about the History of the Richmond River area west of Evans Head and Woodburn. Camping 2 nights at Coraki at the Richmond River, I have time for some research what this area looked like when industrialized from 1860 on and what happened to the local tribes there and the river area, now mostly used for Sugar Cane production. The Drogher Aggie and Timber Raft on the Richmond River What This Image Reveals This remarkable photograph captures a moment in the industrial transformation of the Richmond River valley, likely from the late 19th or early 20th century. At first glance, it appears to be a simple documentary image of timber transport, but closer examination reveals the mechanics and scale of an industry that would devastate one of Australia’s largest subtropical rainforests within a single human lifetime. The Raft Itself: In the foreground, we see an “immense raft” of squared timber logs—probably 30-40 visible in this section alone, though the full raft likely extended much further. These are pine logs, not the prized red cedar that drew the first timber-getters to the Richmond in 1842, a telling detail: by the time photography became common enough to document this scene, the cedar…

Continue ReadingCoraki

Duerrenmatt

Credit phb Next to Max Frisch one of the authors I wish to recommend for young readers and Teachers and Learners of the German Language and Culture. Inspector Bärlach, dying of cancer and with only a year to live, investigates the murder of his colleague Schmied in a rural area near Bern. The case leads to the wealthy industrialist Gastmann, whom Bärlach has suspected of numerous crimes for forty years but never been able to prove guilty. The investigation reveals that Schmied was actually working undercover on Bärlach's orders to gather evidence against Gastmann. The ambitious young Lieutenant Tschanz becomes Bärlach's assistant, but the dying inspector gradually realizes that Tschanz himself murdered Schmied out of jealousy over a woman. Rather than arrest Tschanz through conventional means, Bärlach manipulates him into killing Gastmann, then allows Tschanz to believe he's gotten away with both murders - only to have him arrested at the novel's end. The title's meaning crystallizes: Tschanz becomes Bärlach's "hangman," the instrument of justice against Gastmann, even as he himself is guilty.Why It's So Masterfully WrittenDürrenmatt achieves something quite extraordinary here - he's written what appears to be a detective novel but is actually a profound meditation on justice, morality, and human nature. The crime plot becomes a vehicle for philosophical inquiry in the best Swiss tradition of skeptical humanism.The narrative structure is deceptively simple yet brilliantly constructed. Dürrenmatt inverts…

Continue ReadingDuerrenmatt

Peter Ludlow's "Moreton Bay History" – Eine Würdigung Peter Ludlow (Brisbane), Historiker und Freund, betrieb bis vor kurzem einen der bedeutendsten regionalen Geschichtsblogs Queenslands: "Moreton Bay History" (peterlud.wordpress.com). Altersbedingt wurde die Seite inzwischen eingestellt – ein Verlust für alle, die sich für die maritime, soziale und kulturelle Geschichte der Moreton Bay Region interessieren. Ein Lebenswerk der Lokalgeschichte Seit 1977 – dem Jahr, in dem ich meine Lehrtätigkeit in West-Berlin begann – widmete sich Peter Ludlow der Erforschung der Moreton Bay Geschichte. Sein besonderes Interesse galt Peel Island, jener kleinen Insel in der Moreton Bay, die als Quarantänestation und Leprakolonie diente. Aus dieser jahrzehntelangen Forschung entstanden grundlegende Werke: Peel Island: Paradise or Prison (1989) Exiles of Peel Island: Quarantine (1991) Exiles of Peel Island: Leprosy Queensland's German Connections Für meine eigene Arbeit als DaF-Berater (1998-2005) war besonders relevant: "Queensland's German Connections" (2012), das Ludlow zusammen mit Matthew Tesch und Robin Kleinschmidt verfasste. Dieses Werk dokumentiert die deutsche Einwanderungsgeschichte Queenslands – jene Siedler des 19. Jahrhunderts, deren Nachkommen die kulturelle Grundlage bildeten für die 1.000+ Deutschlehrer, die ich später unterstützen sollte. Ludlows historische Forschung zeigte, warum Deutsch in Queensland überhaupt eine Rolle spielte: Deutsche Siedlergemeinden, lutherische Kirchen, kulturelle Netzwerke, die sich über Generationen hielten. Maritime Geschichte und menschliche Geschichten Ludlows weitere Publikationen umfassten: The Port of Brisbane – Its People and its Personalities (2013) World War I Heroes of the Redlands (2015) Moreton…

Continue Reading

End of content

No more pages to load