The film festival and Gauting: It’s not a great romance. More like scenes of a marriage. Especially when it comes to money. But that could change. People want to approach each other, do more together, it said in the local council when Matthias Helwig presented his Fünfseen-Filmfestival there and explained how much Gauting benefited from it. It is possible that open airs will also take place there next year, as before in Starnberg or Weßling. Helwig could imagine the Reismühle grounds in the south of the village. Whether it will work will not be known until February at the earliest, when the financing is in place, he said.
He had already looked at possible open-air locations in Gauting, Helwig told the SZ on Thursday. Among them was the swimming pool, which he considers unsuitable. When asked by the local council on Tuesday, he brought the rice mill into play for the first time. “I definitely plan to do that,” he said when asked by the cultural advisor Stefan Berchtold (Pirate Party) whether an open-air cinema was possible in Gauting.
Helwig had previously explained the importance of his Fünfseen film festival in general and for Gauting in particular. He named it in a row with places like Berlin, Cannes and Venice and said it was “bigger than the Munich Film Festival” with a much higher budget of six million euros. What was meant was: In the Corona year 2021, Helwig offered twice as many films as the shrunken festival in the state capital, which nevertheless attracted significantly more viewers. Helwig put his budget at 350,000 euros. In Gauting he will apply again for a grant of 10,000 euros for 2022, he hoped for broad approval. According to the organizer, the money is not thrown on the street, but rather flows into the local economy. One result of the performance was that there should be a meeting with tradespeople to talk about how the festival can be more present in the locality. The role model is for Helwig Solothurn in Switzerland. The logo of the film days there can be seen everywhere in town.
However, Helwig made a slip right at the beginning of his promotion of sympathy for his festival, which is headquartered in the cinema in Gauting. The former councilor and cultural advisor for the neighboring community of Gilching was not sure whether Gauting was a town and had to be instructed by Mayor Brigitte Kössinger (CSU) that one was proud to be a community. The impression arose that the festival was being held in Gauting, but not with Gauting, she said later. You have to get used to each other a bit.
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