Arthouse

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Hanni (Eva Mattes) is only 13, but mature at an early age. Her Franz (Harry Baer) is 19 and an unskilled worker. His relationship with the minor does not go undetected.

Based on Franz Xaver Kroetz’s play, which is in turn based on a true story, this film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder tells the story of a very young girl who, after persuading a local boy to become her lover, induces the lad to kill her father, whose incestuous sexual attentions to her have grown unbearable. The site they choose for this deed, which gives its name to the film, is a wild-game crossing.Read More »

A man, a woman, two children: a family. He is a musician. She used to be one until the children came. One day, Marie discovers that not far from where they live, her husband Thomas has set up a second life for himself, a second home with a second family. Marie falls into shock, slowly sinking into her pain by the end of the day. Finally, she is driven by her desperate need for consolation and explanations to seek Thomas at his night concert in an old castle, where there is a masked ball. From then on, she embarks on an emotional journey that will lead her to make an unexpected decision.Read More »

Here’s the debut feature film by director Uwe Schrader, who’s still a well-kept secret of german cinema. I first read about him in the most recent issue of Cargo. His realistic “Milieu” films recall the works of Klaus Lemke, Roland Klick or the austro-canadian filmmaker John Cook. Kanakerbraut is only one hour long, and it is about the dull life of Paul (Peter Franke) and his encounters with similar characters in Berlin Kreuzberg.Read More »

Here’s the final film of Uwe Schrader’s proletarian trilogy, following White Trash AKA Kanakerbraut [Germany] and Sierra Leone [Germany] . Without a straight narrative, a couple of stories revolve around the last days of a stripclub called ‘Mau Mau’.

MAU MAU is located right in the middle of the red light district. When night falls on the city, the joint starts jumping in MAU MAU. Stripping, pimping, ripping off and grifting are the order of the day. Sometimes it’s all very agreeable and sometimes all hell breaks loose. Celebrations and snivelling go hand in hand here. In this world of the marooned, the stumbling and those who have gotten back on their feet, the film traces the lifelines of Inge and Heinz, of Rosa and Doris and of Ferdi and Ali on their search for love, happiness and life. “If I had the choice of filming in heaven or hell,” says Uwe Schrader, “then I’d choose hell”.Read More »

Even more so than The Orchid Gardener, this film anticipates Lars von Trier’s later work. The cross-wielding figure who emerges in the final shot before the end title in The Orchid Gardener appears here as “the Jew” who keeps the garden in the cloister where Menthe’s would-be mistress attempts to make her “remember” the things that they have lived together in a series of images that play with expectations about dominance.Read More »

Lars von Trier submitted this film as part of his application to film school. Many of the aesthetic and thematic fetishes of his later feature length films (including the Dogme films and his more recent return to the ‘fantastic’ in Antichrist, Melancholia, and the forthcoming Nymph()maniac) are already evident here. The film, as its subtitle says, tells “part of the story of Victor Marse”, an artist (played by Lars himself). The only English language synopsis of this film that I’ve found is reproduced in this wiki and seems to be a poor translation of a summary written by a 12 year old. Consult it at your own peril!Read More »

The plot:
Doralice is a simple minded woman romantically fascinated by marriage. However, when she is raped by a butcher, a friend advises her to become a prostitute – and she does it. After that, all her wishes and longings will curl up into a fascinating vortex.Read More »

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Patricia Lumumba and Emile Rousseau stumble across each other one night in an abandoned television studio. They meet for seven evenings to carry out a three-year plan to create a new cinema. In the first year, images and sounds are collected and experimented with. In the second year all that has been collected is criticized, decomposed, and recomposed to bring forth, in the third year, ideal building blocks for a new cinema.Read More »

Set in the year 1590, the story follows Hendrick Goltzius (Ramsey Nasr) and his crew of writers, workers and performers as they arrive in Colmar at the palace of a rich and powerful margrave (Abraham), who the engraver hopes will finance a printing press he can use to publish illustrated versions of the Old Testament and the works of Ovid. In order to seal the deal, Goltzius needs to titillate the nobleman and his court with live renditions of what he refers to as the ?Six Sexual Taboos,? beginning with Adam and Eve?s original sin and covering such transgressions as incest (via the Genesis passages on Lot and his daughters), prostitution (through the tale of Samson and Delilah) and necrophilia (in the story of St. John the Baptiste and Salome).Read More »