For Nina, her husband Frieder, and their daughter Charlotte, a new house in a new town could mean the beginning of a phase of domestic bliss. But Nina is having her doubts; she stands about in the half-empty rooms, feeling thoroughly alienated. Suddenly, without saying a word, she decides to leave.Read More »
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Rudi Prange intends to have a fresh beginning once he is released from prison, and he’s off to a good start with a new job at a transportation company. Yet, despite his good intentions, Rudi is pulled into a smuggling incident by a colleague. Even though he has decided to remain silent on the issue to protect his new position, another unrelated crime—the murder of two police officers—leaves behind evidence that leads to Rudi. He finds himself defending his innocence until a new piece of evidence finally leads the police to the real perpetrator.Read More »
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Stage play directed by Berthold Brecht, filmed by Carl Koch, about a civilian who is press-ganged into a machine-gunner’s squadron and transformed into the perfect soldier.
Man is Man, a tragi-comedy written in 1927, a work of Brecht’s youth that marks his entry into epic theatre. How can Man manage to adapt to all the different roles that the industrial society of the 20th Century demands, in an apparently intransigent call for change ? Galy Gay is this unorthodox hero who starts out as a messenger and becomes an active soldier under nauseating pressure from dubious soldiers. French critic Bernard Dort noted that the construction and dismantling of Widow Begbick’s refreshments carriage in this play take place at the same time as the transformation of Galy Gay into Jeramiah Jip. The mobility of the location, theatrically points to the instability of the characters in the epic form. Thomas Ostermeier seized upon the theme of deconstruction, and has his actors play furiously with the different states of reality.Read More »
Labeled as an erotic thriller this is the third full feature by Alan Vydra.
Besides being producer, and director Vydra also edited the movie and did camera.
Poor Mario an orphan who had served in the foreign legion works for a night club owner and gangster boss who has a human trafficking operation running. Mario is in love with Cora the girlfriend of the boss. Our hero plans to take the girl and leave the city of Hamburg straight to the Bermudas. Trouble ahead?Read More »
From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
An excellent example of a particularly interesting new genre of young German cinema; bizarre, deadly serious variations on the reactionary German “Heimat” films of yore – those insufferable, sentimental “kitsch” prosodies to Fatherland, Soil, and Family. This fully realized work effectively upsets this tradition by recounting a tale of oppressed 19th-century German peasants who become rebels against the state out of poverty, revealing (instead of romanticizing) the brutal degradation of German rural life at the time. Particularly audacious is the presence of an itinerant Jew peddler as mastermind (!) of the conspiracy, predictably leading to (unfounded) charges of anti-semitism against a young director who has dared to reintroduce the Jew into German dramaturgy.Read More »
Carl is having trouble writing. As the film progresses, his novelistic character develops into a real person who intervenes in his life with increasing menace. The lector Roy supports Carl but is marked by a severe illness. To escape his difficulties, Carl accompanies Jon and Liza on an architectural journey. Bela and Fred remain behind with Roy and are confronted with his approaching death. For his friends, his death becomes the motive to reconstruct their life spent together.Read More »
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Thirteen noted German filmmakers offer their impressions of the past, present and future of the land they call home in this anthology. Coordinated by Tom Tykwer, Deutschland 09, 13 kurze Filme zur Lage der Nation is comprised of thirteen twelve-minute films, each from a different director and each focusing on an individual aspect of Germany’s political and social reality, spanning the six decades that encompassed World War II, the post-war “Economic Miracle,” the tumult of the 1960’s, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of the two Germanys, and the new era of reform that emerged in the 21st Century.Read More »
Arnold Hohmann wrote:
Peter Lorre achieved international fame for his performance in the myth-making role in M. This character has held a peculiar fascination for generations of cinephiles. However, at the time, whilst such success meant recognition, it also weighed on the Hungarian actor as a constrictive burden. Using photographs and film extracts, Das doppelte Gesicht reconstructs the ups and downs of Lorre’s career, taking into consideration the economic imperatives and workings of the film industry at the time.Read More »
Clemens Brentano, an artist in his prime, no longer wants to be an artist. The poet and bon vivant goes to the bedside of the nun Anna Katharina Emmerich as a simple “scribe of God’s wonders” to write down her visions and views. Emmerich became famous for her stigmata of Christ, which appeared on her chest, forehead and hands. In order to receive comfort and encouragement, believers make pilgrimages to the sickbed of the weakened nun. Brentano places great hope in his encounter with her. But the meeting of the famous poet and the nun becomes a crossroads for both of them.Read More »