Germany

Part of DVD release Die “Oberhausener” – Provokation der Wirklichkeit (Provoking Reality)
Edition Filmmuseum 69

Oberhausen Manifesto 1962:
28.2.1962

The collapse of conventional German film has finally removed the economic basis for a mentality that we reject. This gives the new kind of film the chance to come to life.
German short films by young filmmakers, directors and producers have in recent years received a large number of prizes at international festivals and gained the recognition of international critics. These works and their successes show that the future of German film lies with those who have proven that they speak a new film language.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘It is June 1941 and a company of German soldiers is stationed near the Lithuanian border. While on leave, three soldiers – Wagner, Lick and Paulun – go off on a hunting trip. All is fine until one of them accidentally shoots their captain’s daughter. Out of fear, the three men decide to leave the body and tell no one of the accident. Tensions mount and the soldiers are pushed to the breaking point when accusations and troubled memories collide.’
– DEFA Film LibraryRead More »

Synopsis
Two adolescents, Sauly and Mick, get to know each other while hitchhiking and stick together for the long haul. They both want to reach the ocean, which is some thousand kilometers away. An old car picks them up, but the trip ends shortly thereafter in a sleazy motel. At the bar, a man named Landolfi approaches them. He explains to Sauly that he must have sold his guardian angel to a man by the name of Miller in the city of Prince. Though the boys do not believe in guardian angels, Sauly slowly succumbs to his own fears. He would like to have his guardian angel back again. On their trip, Sauly becomes sick. Mick works on a farm to pay the doctor’s bills. Once Sauly is well, they travel farther – until they reach Prince. In this mysterious city, all of the people are named Miller, and once Sauly and Mick finally are at the ocean, they meet Landolfi once more.Read More »

Plot:
A young, impoverished German woman named Hanna (Maria von Tasnady) gives her infant up for adoption and emigrates to American to live with her husband. When her husband commits suicide, Hanna returns to Germany and works her way into becoming the live-in maid and nurse to her child being raised by an orchestra conductor and his wife.Read More »

A sociological essay on a Bavarian region where the economic miracle is left out. The documentary emphasises the declining populations due to migration and notes how such places come with “a lot of past [but] not much present or future”.Read More »

Quote:
Presentation of a commited State Party (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) secretary at the Chemicals Combine in Buna. A former miner and small farmer rises to a leading political position – symbol of a typical Party career.Read More »

Quote:
Between Broadway act, classical music and operetta – cinema never came that close to the good old mixtape!

In MY WIFE IN FIVE, Schlingensief composes tracks and takes to a shimmering cinematic music piece. The playlist changes constantly between the styles, as if this record had a jump – Irving Berlin’s This Is The Army, Mr. Jones, an Ave Maria Variation and Jacques Offenbach’s world-famous Infernal Galop can be heard. Equally to the music the pictures also have scratches.

The music film MY WIFE IN FIVE was created during a sound seminar by Christoph Schlingensief with students of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach. It already contains all forms of cinematic means and alienation, which he later used in his theatre and opera productions.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
Friedrich Wilhelm Georg Platow worked for the railways his entire working life. He took up service at the small station of Luege 34 years ago. Now, the line is to be electrified and Platow, who cannot cope with the new technology, has to work on a secondary local line. Georg, his son, a railway worker as well, is to attend a training course, but Georg refuses to go. Then his father comes to a surprising and highly unusual decision. He pretends to be Georg Platow, making himself twenty years younger than he really is and registers for the course.Read More »

EXPLICIT CONTENT
It is the year 2060 and AIDS has been eradicated. However, in some, the HIV virus has now mutated into a gene from which a drug can be produced that has become the white powder of the twenty-first century. With a virtually supported scanning system, secret police are trying to identify anyone who carries this gene. Filmed in Berlin, Taiwan-born multimedia artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang’s science fiction dystopia revolves around a struggle to gain control over the production and exploitation of bodily fluids. Her film is like an orgiastic opera; a breathless round of bodies, secretions, performances and sexual acts often performed in the service of an overriding economy. An unusual, largely experimental and deliberately parapornographic drama in which the borders between the sexes as well as homo-, hetero-, bi-, trans- or intersexual are constantly blurred.Read More »