Germany

Stefan (Klaus Grünberg) hitchhikes to Paris and there at a party meets Estelle (Mimsy Farmer), a beautiful but elusive American. Soon afterwards, she leaves for Ibiza and an already smitten Stefan vows to follow her, but he has to help out in a robbery to raise the cash to do so. Finally, he meets up again with Estelle and the two become lovers. In an atmosphere of easy sex, nude sunbathing and lots of drugs, Stefan\’s hold on his life begins to crumble.
More was Barbet Schroeder\’s directorial debut and it set the Iranian-born, French-national writer, director, producer and occasional actor on a fascinatingly wayward career. He has made films all over the world, often tackling \’difficult\’ subject matter (drugs here, sadomasochism in Maitresse, also available as a DVD from the BFI). Unfortunately the last decade or so has been spent making increasingly routine material in Hollywood.Read More »

A film set in the front room of a Berlin commune with a large shop window leading to the street outside. The film uses an actor and an actress, a pianist (visible playing the film’s incidental music in the room next door) and occasional people on the street. Scripted action is located inside the room, unscripted on the pavement outside where passers-by occasionally stop and watch the actors in the same way that the audience is watching them on screen from a cinema or the comfort of home. The ‘intellectual/ aesthetic’ rationale for the film (in the director’s words at the time) was to: “signify the similarity of social codes in East and West; to cement – seal with a kiss (there is a central scene where the actor and actress kiss in the traditional Hollywood manner) – two systems that, despite surface differences, seduce and cajole their citizens into obedience and passivity; to emphasise the common bond of bourgeois family values and traditional role-playing prevalent in consumer capitalist and state socialist countries.” An ambitious agenda for a short film, but the serious (immaculately delivered) speeches and exchanges on personal/social positions and solutions are lightened by Woolley’s tongue-in-cheek filmic observations and the comedic role of a pianist, who provides live musical comment and life-support in the room next door. The ending, where the inmates escape from their intellectual prison to the reality of the street outside, is a simple but effective critique of the obsessive search for theoretical answers to everything that hallmarked the early 70’s. [richardwoolley.com]Read More »

Like every other teenager in school Simone has a crush on a rock star. When her idol, the lead singer ‘R’, comes to town to make a television appearance Simone is gripped by a trance-like state, leaving school, friends and parents behind her – she must meet him. However, when Simone comes to realise the shallow nature of the ‘glamorous’ music industry and of ‘R’ himself, she plans a calculated, ritualistic and bloody revenge on her obsession.Read More »

This Nazi propaganda film compares the ancient Egyptian pharaohs with the contemporary German regime of Adolf Hitler. Read More »

PLOT: “Mountain-film” specialist Luis Trenker plies his trade with his usual expertise in the Austrian Velorene Sohn (Prodigal Son). Trenker himself plays the leading role of Tonia Feuersinger, a Tyrolean mountaineer bound and determined to scale the American Rockies. He also wants to journey to the States to court pretty American tourist Lillian Williams (played by pretty American actress Marian Marsh). Leaving his broken-hearted local girlfriend (Maria Andergast) behind, Tonio treks to New York, but never quite makes it to the Rockies; instead, he gets a welding job on a skyscraper, then achieves success as a prizefighter. In the end, however, he realizes that his heart is still in the Tyrol and thus returns to the arms of his hometown sweetheart. Though aimed at the German-speaking clientele, Verlorene Sohn was financed in Hollywood by Universal Pictures.
-allmovie.comRead More »

Film restored by Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana (Spain)

At a chancery a lawyer helps his female customers, predominantly with his member. Watch how even back in silent-movie times girls expressed themselves freely on camera. By the way, back in those days, women with ‘Rubens’ figures were considered beauty-queens, but the sex was similar to what’s happening today! There’s merry threesomes, lesbian games and a priest off the straight and narrow! Porn-fodder of the rare kind: A movie from 1920!Read More »

Gerhard Steidl has spent the last 40 years printing and publishing books. His legendary, unconditional obsession with his trade has led him to become the publisher of choice for an A list of artists that include Martin Parr, Ed Ruscha, Robert Adams, Jeff Wall and Robert Frank among others.Read More »

Three shorts by Hans Richter.

Inflation, 1927 link
Zweigroschenzauber, 1929 link
Rennsymphonie, 1929 linkRead More »

3 Films by Hans Richter.
ALLES DREHT SICH, ALLES BEWEGT SICH (1929) (00:03:25)
RHYTHM 23 (1923) (00:03:22)
TWO PENCE MAGIC (1930) (00:02:17)Read More »