Anselm Kiefer is one of the greatest contemporary artists. His past and present diffuse the line between film and painting, thus giving a unique cinematic experience that dives deep into an artist’s work and reveals his life path.
Faust I und II. By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Arena Treptow, Berlin. 16/17 December 2000.
It took Peter Stein more than ten years to realize his life-long dream of staging both parts of Goethe’s tragedy in an unabridged version. He finally succeeded in raising sufficient funds to hire an ensemble and, most importantly, to engage Bruno Ganz for the part of Faust. They had worked together before; early in both their careers Ganz played Tasso in Stein’s famous production at the Bremen Municipal Theatre in 1969 and Peer Gynt and the Prince of Homburg at the Berliner Schaubühne in 1971 and 1974 respectively. However, even though casting was settled, a series of disasters still seemed to haunt the production. Read More »
Quote: In East Berlin in the late 70s, two boys meet one evening in a disco: Thomas, who is from a working class family and is doing an apprenticeship, and Michael, a 16-year-old school pupil from an educated middle-class family. They both miss the tram home and walk together instead, ending up at Michael’s house where they discuss God and the world into the early hours. Following this encounter the two boys enter into an unusual friendship, united by their mutual desire to get away from the phoniness, the limitations and the restrictions of their parents and of society.Read More »
Quote: In the little town of Herzsprung – whose name harks back to an ancient legend of broken hearts – almost nothing has changed since German unification, except a rise in unemployment. Johanna, a young mother and widow, becomes one of the unemployed and lives on welfare. To make matters worse, she falls in love with a dark-skinned, roving adventurer and the whole village starts talking about it.Read More »
An intimate quest by a son to understand the identity of his father; a look back at the Berlin of the 30s and a special group of friends who loved life and, in the darkest hours of German history, ultimately chose good over evil.Read More »
Grüner wird’s nicht, sagte der Gärtner und flog davon (2018)
Georg “Schorsch” Kempter is a gardener in a small Bavarian town. When the owner of the local golf course tries to cheat Schorsch for his money, he grabs the control stick and flies away in an attempt to save his plane and himself.Read More »
After almost the whole family decimated by soldiers of the Roman Empire, the noble Germanus is captured as a slave. Humiliated and tortured by the mighty of Rome, he is obliged to endure the most terrible trials. In the bloody combat that wages as a gladiator in the Roman arenas, Germanus ends up losing his only brother, who dies in the hands of the cruel lakes. But Germanus will not give up and now will have to use all his spirit of struggle and leadership to command the masses against oppression towards freedom.Read More »
On his fifth attempt at boarding school, young Benni has one last
chance to prove to his parents he can function in the academic world, and, most importantly, pass math. But Benni has other concerns; he is partially paralyzed and struggling with typical teenage issues – making friends, falling in love and having sex. When his mother decides to move him to yet another school, Benni must decide whether to make a stand for what truly matters to him. Based on an autobiographical novel by Benjamin Lebert, Crazy has earned Schmid great praise for its honest portrait of teenage life. Read More »