Quote:
HEDONISTIC COMMUNICATION / IRM ED SOMMER / KONTAKTE / ICH DU UND ICH is the title of this super obscure experimental short film including also explicit sex.
Very raw and primitive, it features a great soundtrack made of amazing psychedelic abstract electronic music (the song is “I Of IV” by electronic music pioneer Pauline Oliveros), which is probably what makes this short some kind of mesmerizing experience.
We can only suppose the short is german, since the only information besides the title is the name of the “actors” involved, and they sound german (F. Scherz, Gabi Kaa, Hartmut Kaa).
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Germany
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Irm Sommer & Ed Sommer – Hedonistic Communication (1970)
1961-1970EroticaExperimentalGermanyIrm Sommer and Ed Sommer -
Roland Reber – Illusion (2013)
2011-2020DramaEroticaGermanyRoland ReberSynopsis:
Eight people that cannot be more different meet in a bar. For one night they escape their everyday life which is paralysed of rituals and find themselves in a journey to their world of thoughts, their quintessential lust. Oppressed wishes, sexual fantasies and fears come to the surface and forgotten experiences are revealed. The evening takes its course.Quote:
A film about people, their wishes, fears, hopes and longings.
A visually stunning glance behind the facades of daily routine…
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Ester Amrami – Anderswo AKA Anywhere Else (2014)
2011-2020DramaEster AmramiGermanyYou left your home to move far away. You were struck by a wind of change and were unfaithful to yourself. You reinvented yourself and you are now feeling free. But suddenly pressure arises in you.Read More »
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Harun Farocki – Parallel I (2012)
2011-2020DocumentaryGermanyHarun FarockiVideo ArtParallel I opens up a history of styles in computer graphics. The first games of the 1980s consisted of only horizontal and vertical lines. This abstraction was seen as a failing, and today representations are oriented towards photo‐realism.
“For over one hundred years photography and film were the leading media. From the start, they served not only to inform and entertain, but were also media of scientific research and documentation. That’s also why these reproduction techniques were associated with notions of objectivity and contemporaneity — whereas images created by drawing and painting indicated subjectivity and the transrational.Read More »
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Andreas Dresen – Stilles Land AKA Silent Country (1992)
1991-2000Andreas DresenDramaGermany

A young, naive and enthusiastic theater director named Kai comes to a grim provincial town to put on Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Although the lethargic theater company shows no interest in the play, his spirit remains undaunted. Meanwhile, it is fall 1989. The world is changing and somewhere, far away in the capital, a revolution is taking place and it seems that wishes might come true. Great hopes emerge in the little town and unexpected events overtake Kai’s mutating production.
—DEFA Film LibraryRead More » -
Richard Blank – Friedliche Tage AKA Peaceful Days (1984)
1981-1990ArthouseDramaGermanyRichard BlankQuote:
The dramatic arc of Friedliche Tage was developed from images and the people who sustained those images. As long as the film is set in the building where the executions are carried out and the delinquents await their end, the tale is told with “classic” suspense. After Hanna leaves there with Robert, her potential executioner played by Branko Samarowski the traditional, linear narrative form dissolves into individual motifs; images that taken together show that these two, as a couple, can’t manage in the “normal” world. And in the end, some viewers are happy that the executioner returns to his old domain. He knows his way around there, he admits to being guilty of leaving. His career is advancing there. Happy ending?Read More » -
Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Chinesisches Roulette AKA Chinese Roulette (1976)
1971-1980ArthouseDramaGermanyRainer Werner Fassbinder

Synopsis:
A wealthy couple, with a daughter Angela, a young teen who walks with crutches, tells each other they are off for the weekend on business (he to Oslo, she to Milan). Actually, both are meeting their lovers, and both go to the family’s county home, Traunitz castle. Surprising each other, there’s sophisticated laughter; they decide to continue as planned. Dinner, however, is interrupted by the arrival of Angela and her mute attendant, also named Traunitz. The next day, the child initiates a game of “Chinese roulette,” in which one team tries to guess which of them the other team is thinking of by asking questions. The game has an edge of cruelty and the results are explosive.Read More » -
Thomas Ostermeier – Richard III (2015)
2011-2020ClassicsGermanyPerformanceThomas OstermeierWilliam ShakespeareRichard III
by William Shakespeare
Direction: Thomas Ostermeier
Translation and version by Marius von MayenburgRichard is hideous. Born prematurely, he is a deformed, hobbling, hunchbacked cripple who, on the battlefields of the Wars of the Roses – which flared up after the death of Henry V – served his family and above all his brother, Edward, well. Now Edward is king, thanks to a number of murders carried out on his crippled brother’s own initiative. But the end of war brings Richard no peace. His hatred for the rest of the world, to which he will never belong, lies too deep. And so he does what he does best and kills some more, clearing away every obstacle that lies in his path to becoming king. If fate prevents him from being part of a society of those blessed by good fortune, he will at least lord over them. He plays off his rivals against each other with political cunning, unscrupulously exploits the ambitions of others for his own ends and strides spotless through an immense bloodbath until there is no one left above him and the crown is his.Read More »
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Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Angst essen Seele auf AKA Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
1971-1980ArthouseDramaGermanyRainer Werner FassbinderQuote:
Ali (Salem), is a young Moroccan Gastarbeiter (guest worker) in his late thirties, and Emmi (Mira), a 60-year-old widowed cleaning woman. They meet when Emmi ducks inside a bar, driven by the rain and drawn by the exotic Arabic music. A woman in the bar (Katharina Herberg) suggests Ali ask Emmi to dance, and she accepts. A strange and unlikely friendship develops, then a romance and finally they decide to marry.What follows is a bitter and noxious reaction over their relationship. Gossipy neighbors treat them with contempt, complaining their (already noticeably dilapidated) tenement building has now become filthy. Emmi is shunned by her coworkers, and Ali faces discrimination at every turn. Emmi tells her son-in-law Eugen and daughter Krista (Fassbinder himself and Irm Hermann) that she is in love with Ali; Eugen thinks she is screwy.Read More »






