Germany

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Rüdiger Neumann is a filmmaker and professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg whose teaching has influenced two generations of filmmakers, many of whom now play an active role in shaping German cinema today. In the 1980s and 1990s, the HfbK was the only experimental and political alternative to the film schools in Munich and Berlin. Rüdiger Neumann’s controversial Thursday seminars are legendary. These five keys films by Rüdiger Neumann are released for the first time on this DVD.Read More »

Young Heini Volker has a problem. His unemployed father demands he joins Berlin’s young communists. But his heart belongs to the Hitler Youth. As violence escalates between these camps, Heini’s quandary deepens. How he finds his way to National Socialism is the story of Hitlerjunge Quex. Produced in 1933, just after Hitler’s ascension to power, this movie draws from the real-life story of Herbert Norkus, a Hitler Youth killed by communists in 1932. With its vivid recreations of Depression-era misery, it offers a fascinating portrait of Berlin’s working-class life viewed through the transformative lens of Nazi ideology. An immediate box office success, the film became a Nazi propaganda staple, viewed by 20 million by 1945.Read More »

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A female cabaret singer is put on trial for murdering a predatory musician.

Wikipedia wrote:
Warner Brothers Studios acquired the U.S. distribution rights but shelved the film in favor of its own scene-by-scene 1937 English language remake, Confession, which starred Kay Francis. Mazurka’s sets were designed by the art director Hermann Warm. It was partly shot on location in Warsaw. The film was made by Cine-Allianz whose Jewish owners Arnold Pressburger and Gregor Rabinovitch were dispossessed during pre-production of the film.Read More »

Plot:
The body of Franz Wozzeck lies on a table in an anatomy lecture of a small German university. Whereas the doctor in charge of dissecting the cadaver can only see the murdered corpse lying on the table, Buechner, a medical student, sees the corpse of a “human being.” “A human being” he adds, “that we have murdered.” Buechner then proceeds to tell the story of Franz Wozzeck. Franz Wozzeck was a poor soldier. He endured the harassment and humiliation of his military superiors. His meager soldier’s pay allowed him to provide for his beloved wife, Marie, and their child with the bare necessities and secure a modest future for them. It was this basic desire to earn money for his family that lead Wozzeck to be the guinea pig in a series of harsh medical experiments – for his participation in the experiments Wozzeck earned a few pennies. Read More »

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The German middle class takes another drubbing in novice helmer Matthias Luthardt’s pingpong, a chamber piece with four characters full of unspoken needs that rarely bursts with the kind of tension required to make an impact. Well-crafted with a confidently quiet style, pic trods where others have gone before, entering into the hothouse world of the bourgeoisie where communication is non-existent and manipulation is king. Though strong enough for small fest play, pingpong is unlikely to be bouncing around multi-territory art cinemas.Read More »

Seventeen-year-old Jennifer recently moved to a new city with her parents, but finds no connection with her new classmates. The dreamy and in social interaction with others insecure and shy girl thinks that her social environment finds her ugly. She takes refuge in the virtual reality of the online game ‘Avalonia’ and spends more and more time in the artificial world. As a result, she completely neglects her obligations at school and at home. Parental prohibitions and sanctions can not keep her from her passion. The desire to play has long become a menacing addiction.Read More »

Ilse/Elza (Alice Hechy) is into a local painter but her father wants her to marry Count van Trutwitz or some American.
Two of her friends pretend to be these would-be suitors with intentionally disastrous consequences.Read More »

»The Open View – Artists of the Sinti and Roma« presents artists of the Sinti and Roma who shape the trauma of persecution and very personal experiences in their works. They use a wide variety of forms of expression and means, but what they all have in common is an open view.
Peter Nestler succeeds in making this tangible by meeting them without cultural fixations and at eye level. Gitta Martl and her daughter Nicole Sevik read short texts. They commemorate the Sinti and Roma in the Austrian »gypsy detention camp« Weyer.Read More »

Plot Summary
Arnulf Kabe and his wife Andrea live in East Berlin. Arnulf has only one ambition in life: to be able to leave the East and live in the West. He hatches a plan to get himself arrested at a border crossing and is eventually bought out by the West Germans. He has reached his aim and is living in West Berlin now, he even has an affair with the attractive Veronika, but he can’t help missing his wife. And he finds a way to be able to return to the East: he will work as a spy for the East German state security. That way he’ll be able to cross the border any time and pay her a visit. Eventually, he even manages to bring his wife to the West on a borrowed passport. However, she finds it difficult adapt to life on the other side of the Wall.Read More »