Germany

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In the last decades of the 19th century, Karl May (1842-1912) was the most successful author in Germany. For 30 years he turned out 40 pages a day, constructing a staggering body of kitsch adventure-fiction that may originally have owed a certain debt to James Fenimore Cooper but that, finally, created a mythology quintessentially German.
In his most popular stories, written in the first person, May recalled his adventures in the American West with his idealized white blood-brother, Old Shatterhand, and the equally idealized Indian warrior, Winnetou. Seeking a change of locale, May also wrote similar first-person tales about adventures in the Near and Far East.Read More »

Nursing homes in Holland have a long waiting list. It has become customary to register as early as possible to ensure future placement.
Impressive is Rob Houwer’s film which casts its eye on an old peoples’ home. Filmed in colour, it contains the haunting image: an eerie, disquieting shot of numerous residents all peering out of their windows simultaneously, all silent, all looking heartbreakingly lonely. Were this a horror film it would be terrifying, as it is it strikes a more melancholy chord.Read More »

This documentary explores the life and work of the Austrian novelist, playwright and political activist, Peter Handke. The director managed to meet and stay with Handke in his house in the country side near Paris. Director Corinna Belz also did a portrait on the artist Gerhard Richter.Read More »

Gertie, called Flo by her friends, sees her big chance of a model carreer, when she manages to get the business card of successful model Chantal at a fashion show in her sleepy village. She goes to Berlin and nests in the flat share of Chantal and Freddie. Whereas country girl Flo is still busy to find herself, Chantal is about to lose herself more and more in the depths of stardom. The story of a very unusual female friendship.Read More »

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In 1919, before Ernst Lubitsch was known for his famous “touch,” the master director made something like nine films–a perfect opportunity for an artist to really practice his craft. Even he had to start somewhere.

Madame du Barry was retitled Passion to avoid the anti-German sentiment after World War I. Even though it was a French title and a French story, in Europe the movie was connected to the German director Ernst Lubitsch. Lubitsch’s name appeared nowhere in the American posters or movie titles so the movie wouldn’t bomb in America.Read More »

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In THE BETRUCTION OF THE BLUE SAILORS, Tabea Blumenschein “plays four different roles in changing appearances and in fantastic costumes that structure the film: a mythical figure that permeates the film on desert sand with siren song; a bird that is killed; a Hawaiian girl and a Sailors. While the siren, accompanied by Asian music, strides along the desert, sailors and birds become the victims of perverted naturalness in the form of the wild Hawaiian girl.” (Claudia Hoff) In the collage principle, areas and quotations from commercialized everyday life and the music, which ranges from noises, sacred gongs, Hawaiian music, Schuricke melodies, musette waltzes to Burmese songs and cultic Ketchak rhythms, and the language – literary texts by Apollinaire, which already use the quotation method, phrases from the world of American show business (Hollywood veteran star), lamentations of a Russian silent film mother […], come satire, the grotesque, the caricature, the clown and the doll up; and it is the deep meaning of these forms of expression, through the demonstration of the marionette-ness, the mechanization of life, through the apparent and real torpor, to let us imagine a different life. (Raoul Hausman). (From the conversation between Ulrike Ottinger/ Tabea Blumenschein and Hanne Bergius)Read More »

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Das sind die Gewitter in der Natur is a fragment of a long gone time. A time that should not be forgotten. Following Wenzel Heindl, a former farmhand who was 80 years old at the time of the shooting. Hobbles through the ruins of his past and is given all the time he needs to tell stories from his life, dominated by war and poverty. It is a very personal film for Werner Fritsch because the paths of the two crossed on the farm of Werner’s parents and Wenzel was an important figure for him in his childhood. As Fritsch himself writes, he heard all kinds of stories from Wenzel and thus learned from him not only how to speak but especially how to tell. A craft that shaped Werner’s life as a writer and filmmaker. It’s not surprising that Werner Fritsch created such an impactful film already 20 years before he began his magnum opus Faust Sonnengesang series.Read More »

Germany 1934: The Nazi authorities in Hamburg need an executioner to put a group of political prisoners to death, otherwise Hitler won’t visit their town. Teetjen, the butcher, facing bankruptcy, agrees to do the dirty deed.
Adapted from the novel by German-Jewish author Arnold Zweig and co-scripted by Wolfgang Staudte (director of The Murderers Are Among Us, Rotation and The Kaiser’s Lackey) this important classic was directed by a former anti-Nazi resistance fighter, Falk Harnack.
Ironically the film, which starred concentration camp survivor Erwin Geschonneck in the lead role, was withdrawn after its release because its nuanced portrait of a Nazi perpetrator was considered too sympathetic.Read More »

Rebellious young Werther is passionately, but hopelessly, in love with Lotte. Although he knows that she is married to somebody who can offer her a secure future, Werther tries to be near her. Lotte cannot decide between these two men. She eventually rejects Werther, who does not survive her decision. Based on the novel by Goethe. Director Egon Günther and set designer Helga Schütz make cameo appearances.
—DEFA Film LibraryRead More »