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For his feature debut, Rainer Werner Fassbinder fashioned an acerbic, unorthodox crime drama about a love triangle involving the small-time pimp Franz (Fassbinder), his prostitute girlfriend, Joanna (future Fassbinder mainstay Hanna Schygulla), and his gangster friend Bruno (Ulli Lommel). With its minimalist tableaux and catalog of New Wave and Hollywood references, this is a stylishly nihilistic cinematic statement of intent.Read More »
from German Postwar Films: Life and Love in the Ruins by Wilfried Wilms & William Rasch
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(…) By the time Liebeneiner’s film appeared in theaters, the genre of the “returnee film” (Heimkehrerfilm) and the “rubble film” (Trümmerfilm) had become the stuff of ironic commentary. In Robert Stemmle’s Berliner Ballade (1948), the imaginary Berlin of 2048 is juxtaposed with “archival material from 1948” and a voiceover expresses the likely dismay of many in the audience: “not another Heimkehrerfilm!” And in Rudolf Jugert’s Film ohne Titel, a screenwriter, an actor, and a director debate what kind of film will attract audiences. If anti-Nazi films that explored questions of guilt were unpopular, they agreed, then the “rubble film” and the “returnee” film would certainly not fill movie houses. Once tragedy, these genres were now the subject of satire; their time had come and gone.Read More »
Music, art and chaos in the wild West-Berlin of the 1980s. The walled-in city became the creative melting pot for sub- and pop-culture. Before the iron curtain fell, everything and anything seemed possible. B-MOVIE is a fast-paced collage of mostly unreleased film and TV footage from a frenzied but creative decade, starting with punk and ending with the Love Parade, in a city where the days are short and the nights are endless. Where it was not about long-term success, but about living for the moment – the here and now.Read More »
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My best friend when I was 17, was a girl called Andrea Wolf. She died in 1998, when she was shot as a Kurdish terrorist in Eastern Anatolia. There was a warrant out for her in Germany, as she was suspected of having participated in terrorist activities, for example the complete destruction of the deportation prison in Weiterstadt. She was also suspected of having been an associate to the Red Army Faction.
In 1996, she chose to go to Kurdistan in order to join the womens army of the PKK, the Workers Party Kurdistan. She took on the name “Ronahi”, trained and lived with the womens army for a few months, mostly in camps in Northern Iraq. Then in October 1998, her unit was tracked by the Turkish army close to the border. A heavy firefight took place. Only a few of the units members remained alive. They were under heavy fire by Army helicopters. Most of the survivors took refuge in what is being described as an earth hole. As surviving earwitnesses who remained in the hole say, she was shot by either army members or Kurdish village keepers after having been dragged out as a prisoner. Her case is only one of the many extralegal executions which structure this war.Read More »
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In this autobiographical feature, Frank Ripploh plays himself: a German elementary-school instructor who lives a double life in his beloved Berlin, socializing with his fellow teachers only when he has to, and venturing into a world of anonymous sex whenever he can. In-between bathroom encounters and trips with his colleagues to the bowling alley, Ripploh manages to forge a steady relationship with a handsome, sad-eyed theater manager named Bernd Broaderup. As Ripploh’s sexual ardor for Broaderup gives way to a wandering eye, and Broaderup begins pressuring Ripploh to give up the city and its many temptations, the couple’s relationship replays a scene that was occurring in urban areas across the world and was satirized in such cultural snapshots as the Larry Kramer novel Faggots. Ripploh, who wrote, directed, and starred in Taxi Zum Klo, which, unlike most German films at the time, received no state funding, saw the picture become an international art-house hit after it played at 1981’s New York and Berlin film festivals.Read More »
A wolf strives through the woods around an isolated German village. Jakob the young local police officer is onto him, but scents something more in the darkness. What he finds is a man, it seems, wild eyed, of wiry build, in a dress. He carries a katana, a Samurai sword. When the Samurai invites Jakob to follow him on his crusade towards the village, it becomes Jakob’s mission to pursue the lunatic to end this wanton destruction. At the end of the night Jakob has experienced too much, is too far from whom he once was. Something hidden has been unleashed to meet the first rays of daylight. – imdb.com
Berlin International Film Festival 2014: DIALOGUE en Perspective (Nominated – Till Kleinert)Read More »
Synopsis
Junta is hated by the people in the village where she lives, especially by the women, who suspect her of being a witch. Only she can climb the nearby mountains to a cave high up, whence a mysterious blue light glows when the moon is full. Many young men of the village have died trying to follow her. She is driven out of town, and takes to living in the mountains. Eventually she shares the secret of the blue light with one man, and he betrays it.Read More »
Christian Petzold’s drama deals with a woman, who leaves her hometown for a promising job and a new life,
but is haunted by the truths of the past. As her marriage to Ben broke and her professional career has no future
in her native town in the Eastern part of Germany, Yella has decided to search for a job in the West. When she gets
to know Philipp, a smart executive at a private equity company in Hanover, she becomes his assistant and gets involved
into the world of ruthless and big business. Realizing her dreams could come true with Philipp’s help, she starts hearing
voices and sounds from her past, which menace her new and better life…Read More »
German review by T. Groh:
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[…] Ein Meta-Fernsehkrimi. Für dieses Vorhaben bietet der BR-“Polizeiruf” um Kommissar von Meuffels einem etablierten Auteur wie Christian Petzold das ideale Experimentierlabor: Schon die Initialzündung im Jahr 2011 (Dominik Grafs “Cassandras Warnung”) setzte einen deutlichen Akzent, der sich im weiteren Verlauf der Reihe bestätigte: Der Münchner “Polizeiruf” (mit weiteren Beiträgen u.a. von Hans Steinbichler, Leander Haußmann, Hendrik Handloegten, Jan Bonny, nochmal Graf) ist im Wesentlichen ein Regieformat, das Reibeflächen zwischen Formatvorgabe und individueller Handschrift nicht nur zulässt, sondern offen sucht. In verlässlicher Regelmäßigkeit entstanden hier die besten oder wenigstens interessantesten Fernsehkrimis der vergangenen Jahre. Und mit dem von Matthias Brandt kongenial verkörperten Kommissar von Meuffels etablierte sich eine der spannendsten, trotz gedämpftem Spiel facettenreichsten Ermittlerfiguren. […]Read More »