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The subject is a 50-year-old dwarf who stopped growing at 1 meter 40. He is fat and plays the piano strangely but the point Seidl makes is that he is like others, and you should judge him according to the same criteria you would judge them.Read More »
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Seidl takes his camera to an abstract-art exhibition and asks the public to comment on what they see. Some analyse the work from a strictly Freudian angle as they nibble their canapés; others can only see penises. In reality, the paintings are simply an excuse for Seidl to unmask the anguishes, fears, suspicions and sexual taboos of gathered together there.Read More »
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Whether in the countryside or on the edge of the city, amusement parks or fun fairs are hot across Europe. Their names, amusement parks and fun fairs, say it all: People want to be amused, they want to have fun. For example, at the Europark in southern Germany a dummy with a contorted face sits in an electric chair. Smoke comes out of him and a light flickers off and on from out of the roasted “brain” of the dummy, which shudders and cries in pain. A film on the culture of amusement in today’s “leisure” society.Read More »
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The Last Real Men (Die letzten Männer) is an hour-long piece following the Viennese teacher Karl S. on his search for a wife who doesn’t question traditional gender roles and “doesn’t talk back”. In so doing, Seidl probes the motives that make Austrian men look for wives in Thailand and the Philippines.Read More »
A 1997 TV film. Two descriptions:
“Main character of this movie is Rene Rupnik, a former math teacher. He is forty years old and lives together with his mother in a desolate block of flats. Ever since his early youth women with big breasts have fascinated him, because they symbolise a kind of earth mother to him. He has never had an especially close relationship with his own mother; she was too ‘bony’ for him. Object of Rene’s fantasy is the actress Senta Berger, to him everything a woman should be. Standing by the blackboard and explaining the mathematical laws of sine and cosine (‘sinus’ is bosom in Latin), Rene sings the praises of the female curves and those of Santa Berger in particular. Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl let the former teacher speak freely about his obsessions and desires, intercutting his monologues with scenes from the protagonist’s day-to-day life.”Read More »
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With stars like Angie Stardust (also music credits), Judith Flex, and Joaquin La Habana, director Rosa von Praunheim has fashioned a film about the teeming flip side of life in Berlin centered on eccentric characters of almost every imaginable sexual orientation, or disorientation – most are American performers drawn to the city of “lost souls” as a place where they can give full rein to their creative natures.Read More »
In a apocalyptic 19th century landscape where wealthy vampires have taken over the world, a group of humans prepare an uprising, and select an adventurous young man to track down the leader of the undead and destroy him.Read More »
“We shall make sure that this work will not be separated from those who built it.” (Adolf Hitler)
Legend has it that Hitler came up with the idea of the autobahn while he was in prison in the twenties, and for this reason it was also called “Adolf Hitler’s road”. But neither Hitler nor any other Nazi invented the autobahn – the industry had already worked out the plans before 1933. What the Nazis, however, did invent was the “aesthetic of the autobahn”: it was supposed to be a cultural monument – “not the shortest but the noblest connection between two points”. The autobahn was planned as an artistic work of construction and was elevated to an object of art.Read More »
Praunheim’s first big feature film was produced in 1970: „Die Bettwurst“ became a cult movie.
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The touching story of Dietmar and Luzy, two not so young lovers in the drastic world of Rosa von Praunheim.
Incredible, truly incredible. What Rosa von Praunheim has done is far beyond description.Read More »