Germany

Quote:
A reminder of the New School philosophy professor Hannah Arendt, and the controversy she provoked when she published her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, might not be such a bad thing in an era in which so many feel so compelled to simplify societies’ most galling atrocities. Just as it’s more inviting to believe that various terrorist factions around the world are inhuman creatures concerned only with gobbling up America’s precious freedom, it’s also more comfortable to deny the architects and executioners of the Holocaust their humanity, as that distances everyone else from their own potential capacity for cruelty.Read More »

Synopsis:
Sarah and her best friend Charly (13 & 16) have already lost count of the men they have been to bed with: one night stands, nameless, and interchangeable – no commitments. Then Sarah meets 18-year-old Lukas in a chat room, and for the first time in her life she longs for a real relationship, for true love even. But is Lukas really interested in her? Or is he just using Sarah for a reason that lies far beyond love and affection…Read More »

Raimund Gregorius, a Swiss Professor, abandons his lectures and buttoned-down life to embark on a thrilling adventure that will take him on a journey to the very heart of himself.Read More »

Christine, an American advertising executive working in Germany, is working with her protégé Isabelle on an ad campaign for a new smartphone. Isabelle, who is secretly having an affair with Christine’s boyfriend Dirk, comes up with a well-received marketing idea. When Christine claims it as her own, Isabelle is disappointed but reconciles with her boss when Christine shares the story of how her twin sister died. At the urging of her loyal assistant Dani, Isabelle uploads a self-made version of her ad to the web, where it goes viral. Angered at the attention Isabelle has received, Christine vows revenge, taunting her with a sex tape which Isabelle had made with Dirk. After an angry Isabelle crashes her car in the company’s parking garage, Christine shares the security footage with the rest of the company, humiliating Isabelle who spirals into a depression and begins abusing pills. Christine tries to get Dani fired and then threatens Isabelle with a letter she typed on Isabelle’s computer vowing revenge.Read More »

Quote:

“The most dangerous threat to the happiness of any young married couple, besides matrimony itself, are the mothers-in-law; this terrible feminine lobby, since the dawn of time , has always meddled and tried to disturb the tranquillity of newlyweds and sometimes their evil schemes succeeded in making a contented life impossible for the youngsters.

The great German director, Herr Ernst Lubitsch, captured pretty well these universal mother-in-law treacherous manoeuvres in “Als Ich Tot War” ( When I Was Dead ) (1916) a two-reel silent comedy shown recently at the Schloss theatre.

The film depicts the story of a young married couple ( Herr Ernst Lubitsch himself and Frau Louise Schenrich ) who live in the same apartment with their mother-in-law ( Frau Lanchen Voss ), a terrible mistake. At least if the mother-in-law lives far away, her dangerous intentions require more exertion to work. Herr Ernst likes very much to play chess with his pals at the club, a thrilling sport that will bring him a lot of problems ( that’s what happens when you play such weird games ). One night Herr Ernst arrives home late due to one of those exciting and lengthy chess matches and finds the door to his home locked, forcing him to sleep on the stairs. It is not necessary to say that the party responsible for such an evil act is his mother-in-law who continually uses the long chess matches to poison her daughter’s mind against her husband. She finally succeeds and Frau Luise divorces her mate.Read More »

Quote:
For their 35mm Materialfilme (1976), the Heins randomly spliced together a mix of color and black and white material taken from the header and footer of commercial films. The scratches, scribbles, hand-written and commercially printed numbers and dots that adorn such footage rush past the eye until they are replaced by images consisting only of washed-out colors or scratched black and white frames. The Heins acquired this material during their years as programmers and projectionists for various avant-garde and commercial film screenings. […] Over the years, this watercolor paint had faded and cracked, and various blotches, scratches and other irregularities have scarred the surface of the filmstrip. In projection, these marks of the material enter into arbitrary rhythmic relationships with the movement of color and the interrupting flashes of white light.Read More »

Quote:
Life, Death, God, Salvation, Revolution? Those living in the abyss have left the worst behind. Dostoyevsky’s “Devils” takes place in the transition between religious belief and materialistic ideology, foreshadowing not only the approaching death of God, but also the collapse of socialism. Written in the 1860’s, the novel opens not only a philosophical panorama of different types of human quest for transcendence, but also establishes such fateful bonds among those involved in the quest that in the end only state terror can prevent widespread annihilation. Beauty and terror mate before dusk.Read More »

Description
The two happy fitters Eddy and Tommy are doing overtime to ensure the great travel-exhibition of the department store they work in is ready for display. Outside, they see a poor newspaper seller, who looks longingly at the beautiful things in the display window. So they simply decide to smuggle the unfortunate inside and compete to win her favor by giving her gifts from the shelves of the department store. In their frenzy of happiness, they don’t notice that the girl is taking the fun little game for the truth. When she realizes that she has to give back the alleged gifts, she runs away.
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Plot / Synopsis

Ingrid Jonker lived an impossible contradiction, writing heart-rending poetry about being a woman of privilege living under apartheid rule, all the while dealing with pressure from the head of the censorship board, a man who also happened to be her father. “Black Butterflies” is the story of how Jonker, a woman with unending sexual cravings and a noted mental imbalance, managed to cope with this dichotomy. In the opening, the least poetic of a number of unconvincing metaphors writ large, Jonker is saved from drowning by handsome publisher Jack Cope, an older gentleman who immediately falls for the leggy writer. What he doesn’t know is that her self-abuse, due to living under the rule of her oppressive, emotionally-abusive father, has fractured her personality. She is not the creator she becomes when she puts pen to paper, but rather a little girl seeking stimulation (which she chases in a number of unavailable men) and hoping for the approval of her father (an impossibility).
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