Germany

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After being commissioned by the 1936 Olympic Committee to create a feature film of the Berlin Olympics, Riefenstahl shot a documentary that celebrates the human body by combining the poetry of bodies in motion with close-ups of athletes in the heat of competition. Includes the marathon, men’s diving, and American track star Jesse Owen’s sprint races at the 1936 Olympic games. The production tends to glorify the young male body and, some say, expresses the Nazi attitude toward athletic prowess. Includes the lighting of the torch at the stadium and Adolf Hitler looking on in amazement as Jesse Owens wins an unprecedented four Gold MedalsRead More »

Synopsis:
This crime thriller contains enough comedy and blood to interest almost any movie fan. Shady underworld thugs gather in a seedy Soho hotel in Room 13 to plan a train robbery. They plan to rendezvous in the mansion of a member of Parliament who is being blackmailed for his ties to the gang 20 years earlier. Simultaneously, a mysterious slasher is murdering women with a straight razor. Jonny Gray (Joachim Fuschberger) is the detective who is called on to solve the robbery and the murders.Read More »

For a movie lover, the wait between truly original cinematic experiences can be years. You might slog through a hundred retreads or more before you stumble onto a Topsy-Turvy or an Atanarjuat or something as blissfully unique as The Cave of the Yellow Dog. But when you do, the memory of a thousand Hollywood boilerplates can’t cloud the experience, and for two hours at least, your mind is fresh again. Shot on location in the Altai region of the Mongolian steppe and starring the five members of a real nomad family – none of whom had acted before – The Cave of the Yellow Dog blurs the line between documentary and fiction and, in doing so, creates its own singular dramatic language. Read More »

From the director of The White Rose and The Nasty Girl, comes this stunning adaptation of Hungarian author George Tabori’s autobiographical, somewhat surreal novel. Shifting between Nazi-occupied Budapest and present-day Berlin, the film artfully depicts the true story of how Tabori’s mother Elsa escaped deportation to Auschwitz.Read More »

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Lars, a male nurse from Saarbrucken, moves with his lover Roland, a sweet-spirited musician with a lilting voice, to the bustling Berlin. They renovate an apartment with the intention of finally living together. For Roland, their happiness seems almost complete. What he doesn’t know, however, is that while secretly checking out Berlin’s nightlife, Lars is experimenting with a deadly poison – an obsession that will lead to a horrific outcome for the couple.Read More »

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In 1991, when images of the Gulf War flooded the international media, it was virtually impossible to distinguish between real pictures and those generated on computer. This loss of bearings was to change forever our way of deciphering what we see.Read More »

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Jedes Jahrzehnt hat seinen eigenen Zugang zum Himmel.

Clonetown, 1974 bis 1979, die Chronik eines Abschieds. Charon, ein abgesprungener Terrorist, sitzt am Ufer zur Vergessenheit und kommentiert die bevorstehende Vermoderung eines entführten Autohändlers. In seiner Erinnerung ziehen seine zweiten und dritten Ichs herauf, der megalomanische Künstler und der perverse Teppichhändler. Die ehedem achtlos mißhandelten Dinge rächen sich in seinem Kopf.Read More »

“In 1962, as a young artist, I came to live and work in Paris. That period until 1969, when I left the city, was not only one of the most formative for me, it was also an era of intellectual, political, and social upheaval in modern history. The film Paris Calligrammes combines my personal memories of the 1960s with a portrait of the city and a social cartography of the age. Like Guillaume Appolinaire’s poetry collection ‘Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War’, I have given it the form of a filmic “picture-poem” (calligram) in which the words and images, complemented by language, sound, and music, form a mosaic that emerges from the vivacity of those exciting years while speaking to the fragility of all cultural and political achievements.” ––Ulrike OttingerRead More »

Synopsis by Mark Peranson (cinema-scope):
James Benning is not quite Stravinsky, and his first high-definition video (and first film shot outside the US) is not exactly the Rite of Spring, but a trip to the heart of the Ruhr Valley for the premiere of Ruhr at the Duisberg Film Week carried a certain nervous anticipation. After years of shooting on 16mm and finally abandoning it for HD because of an endless series of processing and projection errors, Benning was about to enter further unexplored territory: digital projection.Read More »