Word: westphalia
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...understand what they're saying). Meanwhile, the German Export Union is being revamped to focus on promoting German films abroad, complete with a budget nudge (from €3.5 million to €5.8 million). But according to critics like Konrad Pechen, director of the Film Association of North Rhine-Westphalia, the new law will push producers to make art-house movies for international juries instead of more popular crowd pleasers - which could hurt the popularity of German film back home. Last year the market share for local films in local cinemas rose to 17.5% (up from 11.9% in 2002) thanks mainly...
...fine. After all, the economy was in recession through the first half of 2003, and unemployment rose by 305,000 over the past year, bringing the jobless total to 10.4%. "What kind of upswing is it when you have increasing unemployment?" asks Ullrich Heilemann, vice president of the Rhine-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research (RWI). "The bad days may be gone but we're not in heaven yet." How do economists explain the incipient turnaround? The euro has weakened from its recent highs against the dollar, aiding big exporters like steelmaker ThyssenKrupp and electronics giant Siemens. The U.S. economy...
...story from the East," says director Wolfgang Becker. "I'm a man and make films about women. I live in the 21st century and make films about the 19th century. I think that's more complicated." Becker, 48, moved to West Berlin from a small town in North Rhine-Westphalia as a university student in 1974 and was a frequent visitor to the East. "I knew the city, I knew the people there and I knew how it felt," he says. Much of the film's humor derives from the increasingly desperate attempts by the son, Alex (Daniel...
...Traffic moves faster on the information highway, and people are using the Web to help reduce congestion on the tarmac too. At www.autobahn.nrw.de, drivers in North-Rhine Westphalia can see a real-time simulation of traffic conditions on its 2,250 km of motorway. The man behind the site, Michael Schreckenberg of Duisburg-Essen University, is now at work on the world's largest traffic-information system, using sensor-gathered data to channel travel advice to TV, radio and motorway screens. If you still can't face the rush hour, try staying home like the 2% of Europeans...
...conduct surveillance but isn't allowed to arrest anybody. And officers of the two agencies are only allowed to communicate via their bosses, who meet for weekly "information boards" to exchange notes. "It's a mess," says Wilfried Albishausen, a criminal investigator in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. As officers of the Federation of German Criminologists (BDK) trade union, Jansen and Albishausen have been petitioning the Interior Ministry for more than two years to revamp the security apparatus. Even before Sept. 11, the BDK recommended moving federal agents out of their centralized HQs and into regional offices, where they...