Germany

According to this documentary, East Germans have twice as much sex, start much younger, have more partners, are more experimental and are more satisfied then their capitalist counterparts. When the Iron Curtain came down, 40 years of division left its mark in many places – including the beds of the German people. At the end of World War II, the starting point was the same on both sides of the wall. Germans shared the same culture, the same lifestyle, the same morals, but four decades on everything has changed. Why? Was it the lack of church and easy availability of divorce and abortion? Filmmaker André Meier uses archive material such as state education films, locally produced porn magazines and East German home videos to compare both systems based on their dealings with sex. Meier discovers which Germans are cooler, more advanced, less inhibited and less prudish in the bedroom.Read More »

Beyond Caligari: The Films of Robert Wiene (Uli Jung, Walter Schatzberg), pp 166 ff.
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Panik in Chicago was an enormous success in all major cities in Germany, as reported in the press. “The D.L.S. branches in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt a.M. had such record bookings for the film Panik in Chicago during the following two weeks that several new copies had to be distributed in these districts because the available subsidiary copies could not fulfill the demand for screenings. Other reports refer to the unusual popular acclaim the film enjoyed in Leipzig, Halle, Munich, and Stuttgart.Read More »

Synopsis:
A four man US fireteam on patrol seizes a passing young vietnamnese girl and continue to torture, rape and kill her. Only one soldier refuses to take part in it and reports this incident to his superior, who dismisses it as simple wartime incident. As a consequence for his report, the soldier has to fear for his life. Later, the perpetrators are convicted, although subsequent appeals reduce their sentences significantly.
The plot takes place in a bavarian forest and reenacts a real war crime that happened in the vietnam war. The soldiers wear US uniforms, have authentic names but speak with a pronounced bavarian accent – a conscious directing decision known as Brechtian distancing effect.Read More »

Synopsis

Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide wrote:
Historian, author, and movie critic Lotte H. Eisner is the subject of this documentary. She recalls her early childhood in Germany and her association with such legendary directors as F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. Leaving Germany for Paris in 1933, her anticipation of WW II saw her relocating to the South of France. Eisner gives her considerable and insightful opinions on classic German Expressionist Films, as several of her admirers drop by during the interview conducted by director Sohrab Shadid-Saless.Read More »

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Made for Bavarian TV in 1983, this documentary traces the life and films of the most popular female star of the late Weimar cinema, Lilian Harvey. From the very beginnings in some films by Richard Eichberg to her eminent stardom together with Willy Fritsch in classics like “Der Kongress tanzt”, her subsequent time in Hollywood and her return to Germany because of her love for director Paul Martin, to her escape from the nazis and her later life, the film gives a fine portrait of the actress and the big changes in the German film industry of the 20s and 30s.Read More »

In a strict Prussian boarding school for girls, sensitive student Manuela von Meinhardis develops a forbidden love to one of her teachers, the compassionate Elisabeth von Bernburg.Read More »

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If you are moved by the death of a parakeet at the beginning of The Elementary Particles (Elementarteilchen), you are in for a bumpy ride, as all of humanity as we know it will be wiped out by the film’s end in a brief written epilogue. Of course, those who have read the novel (Les particules élémentaires in its original French, Atomised in its UK version) saw this coming, but for those who are unfamiliar with Michel Houellebecq’s cult hit that explosively mixes sex, death and science to annihilate mankind – and blames the flower power generation for it in the process – this might come as something of a shock.Read More »

Twenty-two-year-old Lynn lives spontaneously waiting to see what the day brings. Earning money as a dancer in a trendy nightclub allows her to release her pent-up energy. Impulsive, she has difficulty relating to her disciplined boyfriend David, a professional swimmer with a strict practice schedule. Her love life takes a turn when she meets Japanese student Koji, who shares her sense of freedom, sensuality and abandon. –Celluloid DreamsRead More »

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Die Legende von Paul und Paula (English: The Legend of Paul and Paula) is a 1973 tragicomic East German film directed by Heiner Carow. It was based on the novel of the same name by Ulrich Plenzdorf.

The film was extremely popular on release and drew as many as three million viewers (the GDR had a population at the time of around 17 million). However, due to the film’s political overtones it was almost not released; East German leader Erich Honecker personally decided to allow it to be shown. Today it is considered one of the best-known East German films.Read More »