GERMANY FACES MALAYSIA in Kuching - The Germans Are Here!
Written by Kenny William Nyallau

And they have come with a good reason. Sarawak Film Society had the privilege to meet up with Dr. Volker Wolf, the director of Goethe Institute at Hilton Hotel, Kuching regarding the German Days which will be held at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) from 22-24th of April 2009. The Goethe-Institute is the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany with a global reach. The institution promotes knowledge of the German language abroad and fosters international cultural cooperation. The Goethe-Institute Kuala Lumpur organizes a wide spectrum of activities in contemporary German culture in cooperation and exchange with Malaysian cultural partners.

This April, local students will have the opportunity to experience German culture since the Goethe Institute, in collaboration with UNIMAS and Swinburne University, will be conducting an education and business fair at UNIMAS and the students also will have the opportunity to watch a selection of German films. This great event encompasses business, science and technology, politics, art, cultural events, German language and information campaigns as well as possibilities to win attractive prizes.

We couldn't help but to admire Dr. Volker's enthusiasm as he talked us through about German culture and provided some of his personal insights on Malaysian film industry...

SFS: Tell us about yourself and the Goethe Institute.

VW: My name is Volker Wolf and I've been the director of the Goethe Institute, Kuala Lumpur for a few years now. The Goethe Institute is the official German cultural centre... which may not really mean much to many people...um, yet, but you can compare the GI to the British Council, Alliance Francaise (France), Societa Dante Alighieri (Italy), and the Cervantes Instituto...so, there are various cultural institutes which are actually financed by their governments and have certain liberty and freedom to do cultural work for their country. We have basically three different branches: The first is language teaching, so we have about 450 Malaysian learners, all year long. We have a liasion department to the Ministry of Education... so we know all the teachers and lecturers of German in this country and we offer them seminars, training and scholarships. There are 12 states schools; Sekolah Menengah Sains from Kuala Perlis down to Batu Pahat with German and two Day Schools as well; in Miri, Sarawak we have the RRSS and College which teach German.

SFS: Which is?

VW: The Riam Road Secondary School and RIAMTEC Automotive Mechatronics College. It's a huge school, now around 1000 students and they have started this year under a program which is called “Partner School Program With Germany”.

Let me get back to the three different branches of the Goethe Institute. As I was saying, there are language teaching, liasion work and the third one is cultural exchange. We have based our cultural work on partnership, which means if we have no Malaysian partners, we have no events. But, if we have partners in music, dance, film, literature, etcetera, we will start arranging programs with them. We'll ask them what their needs are, what they would like to do with us and then, we'll look at our own supplies in those areas and bring them together. So, we will organize events together with Malaysian partners in culture.

SFS: What was the significance for cooperation in Film?

VW: Film is one of our own strong and major areas but because in Malaysia, film has a particularly strong impact; if you look at the prizes which the indie filmmakers won overseas that’s not bad at all. FINAS is also strong in master workshops...we do a lot of master workshops with them, with German animators, professors from Germany who teach scriptwriting... The film area is very, very active. As I have mentioned before, we have film festivals with the Asian-Europe Institute this year in UPM, then in Kelab Seni Filem in the HELP University College just last weekend. This year, we are also focusing on many regional projects because Goethe Institute has regional branches in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. So, we were looking at interesting areas like choreography and modern dance!

Two years ago, I brought a German choreographer out for 3 weeks into Istana Budaya. Last year, I had someone in KLPac with the Kwandung Dance Group. So, this year and the next year we are focusing on choreography and dance and our major partner is ASWARA in Kuala Lumpur. We had done theatre but theatre is a difficult area because you need a long time to prepare plays and this is relatively cost intensive. We do a lot of translating. We have translated poems, short stories, are publishing kisah dongeng rakyat jerman (fairy tales) on April 20th at 4pm in PWTC together with ITNM, Institut Terjemahan. These books are bilingual so that they can be used by Malay native speakers and by German native speakers and by everybody in between who knows either language. And they also can be used by universities for Malaysian learners of German. So, for example, we published Latiff Mohidin's poems after he came back from Germany, he wrote a lot of poems and they were translated in a few years ago with a German publishing company (Horlemann) also bilingually. So, literature is also very important part for our work.

Then, we also do music of course. We have classical music with master sessions, we had jazz groups... always focusing on young people doing music in conservatories or voluntary music schools. So, music is also a focus, its huge groups coming on tour throughout the region. I could go on forever, but we seem to have covered every area.

SFS: So, it's a one huge cultural society.

VW: Yes, in a way it is, in spite of its small staff. But ‘Goethe' is not a public society you can become a member in but everybody can participate in anything for no payment, it's all free always.

SFS: Is Goethe considered as non-government organization (NGO)?

VW: In a way, we are NGO. On the other hand, we are part of the German government. The German government pays 100% of our expenses and we are contributing our own share from the language department. So, all the money we have is always getting re-invested. In that sense, we are NGO. The German ambassador is very, very active in supporting the education of young Malaysians in all areas. So therefore, based on his experience in United States and in Australia, he likes to cooperate with universities. The first one is UNIMAS, the second one will be USM (from 12-18 October 09). So we look at the universities and their prime areas and fields of study and we try connect them with German counterparts. At the same time, we are looking at German business companies that are present in the university city. So, the German ambassador invited various German companies like solar energy, environmental, pharmaceutical and of course car companies, to present their product in stalls, presentations, in talks and in exchange with the students.

SFS: How significant is the exposure of the German culture to Malaysia?

VW: If you want to talk about the trade between Malaysia and Germany, then Malaysia is a rather important trading partner. And for Malaysia, Germany is probably the most important European trading partner and it shows because we have about roughly 400 German companies here. Some of them have German management, others Malaysian management and they range from all areas. There are the big players like Siemens, Mercedes and you have pharmaceutical companies like Bayer... and these companies have a certain need of German language training which is done in Germany. So, when these German companies are searching for staff, of course they want people who have good degrees, who know English quite well and it's a special asset if they know some German.

For Goethe, the language department is very busy with German companies. Either we go to the German companies or the employees come to Goethe and learn German in the evenings. I think as far as the interest of both countries in each other is concerned: Germany as the gate to Europe in a way, also language-wise because Germany has 80 million native German speakers, and in Europe there are more than 100 million speakers of German! And when you go to countries like Turkey, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia, the more eastern part of Europe, their first foreign language is German. You can travel through Turkey with German but not with English, not yet.

So Germany is a gateway to Europe, whereas Malaysia is a gateway for Europe to Southeast Asia and a lot of these European companies have their base camps here in Kuala Lumpur.

SFS: Could you tell us something about the German Film Screening which will be held here?

VW: We have a list of, I would say, about 50 films on our homepage and we have of course, what is interesting for Sarawak Film Society, films from the last few years. We have also an excellent collection of short films, it trickles down in short films to scientific films, even children films. This time, we were thinking of showing feature films like 'The Lives of the Others', prize-winning films, award-winning films of the last few years.

SFS: What is the German film industry like at the current moment?

VW: At the moment, if you go by the results of the Berlinale, they are very happy. On the way here, on the plane, I read an article which said Berlinale has become more international and the German actors and actresses are becoming more international too. The German films shown in the Academy Awards have become fashionable and trendy. Some of the (previous) German films were rather serious, philosophical, but now they are obviously getting more relaxed and playful, and contain lots of humor. The Germans are now making films which are aesthetically good, they have good content, good script and are interesting for general public, the mystical elements have gone, they have now taken the heavey religious, philosophical and seriousness out of their films; they make them more light-hearted, the scripts are more appealing, are more modern. In a way, German films are representing modern German society quite well.

SFS: Do you mean the film industry is becoming more main-stream?

VW: I would say it's becoming more main-stream. Sometimes, when you think of French films, you may think of these long conversations, and of the popular philosophies in the scripts. I think the modern German films are also more like that, they go deep into relationships between man and woman, into gender and environmental issues, into any other issues you can find in international films...German films have modern issues, all modern issues that we also have in our daily society.

SFS: What would you like to suggest in order to improve the local film industry?

VW: I talked to the director of FINAS, I asked, “Why don't you have people like Yasmin Ahmad under contract? She is winning prizes, she is making good films! Look at James Lee, Ho Yuhang, Tan Chui Mui or Amir Muhammad, they are winning prizes”. And he said to me, “If they come to us, we will do something for them.” So that shows they are obviously distinguishing (the indie film scene and mainstream). They are not taking the indie seriously enough.

SFS: Does it occur in Germany as well?

VW: That is a good question. I think the indie scene there is very much attached to the academic institution, which is also the case here. Sunway College for example, has very good lecturers. I think out of these colleges, come a lot of good people... but, what happens then? That's exactly the question; that's what happens in Germany. I think the link between the established scene and the young and upcoming film artists there is stronger.

SFS: Could you tell us the objective of the event at UNIMAS and Swinburne which will be held soon?

VW: UNIMAS is this time practically our centre and base camp for the German culture and business. The idea of course is to show the young elite in the university that there are different perspectives in culture and in business from different other countries. I've mentioned the Partner School Program initiative, this initiative is from the German government which has come out last year and they are saying, “We would like to introduce German to schools, just to certain levels of German, in order to have more students later in German universities.” That's their idea and why? Because Germany needs such foreign intellectual input. It was always like that.

When you look back at history, in Einstein's days, they founded an organization which invited intellectuals from all over the world to join in and that gave Germany the boost to be the main inventor worldwide. They are no other countries that have as many patents as Germany and it has a lot to do with the foreign intellectual input. On average, 12% of a university population in Germany is foreign! Can you imagine that? In Heidelberg university for example, maybe you have 50,000 students and 10%, or 5000 are foreign students in that university. And we want even more. In order to have more, you must start early. We want to start from Form 1 to Form 4, introduce them just enough German to end of elementary level in order to study in a German university because now you have bachelors’ degrees. For international degree courses, you need 300 units of German only. You could do that in Goethe for 3 months and you are 'in' language-wise. Your courses in German universities will then be held in English. We have around 800 Malaysian students in Germany. Most of them study technical subjects, engineering down to IT, whatever, they do, many of them do it in English! So, they need TOEFL score of 500, they need 300 units of German, they need STPM for A-level and after that, they are in.

SFS: Why do you want to bring and show the German films in Sarawak?

VW: The German ambassador came to Kuching in July last year, he went to UNIMAS and had an appointment with the vice-chancellor... and the vice-chancellor obviously warmed to the idea to have a German week. And when I 'Googled' UNIMAS, I found UNIMAS's CIPTA exhibition; they had something like a culture week. So, that just fell into place. Then, the vice-chancellor was immediately interested and the ambassador explained to him that he wants to address young people. His idea is, as I've said before, that we all give a perspective on the German education system, culture and business.

SFS: What is your expectation from this event?

VW: If we go and people say, “My gosh! I didn't know all that, let’s get more of this.” That will be great...just to raise an awareness for Germany.

The German Week will be showcasing four films; 'Mostly Martha', 'The Lives Of The Others', 'One Day In Europe' and 'The Wood Is Not Enough'. Please check the date and venue for more information of the event. -SFS