German

Quote:
A self-portrait documentary on Werner Herzog. He discusses his childhood, hiking and several of his films.Read More »

In Ostkreuz (1991), Michael Klier tells the episodic story of 15-year-old Elfie, who literally and metaphorically inhabits a no-man’s-land between the two Germanys during the Wende, and deploys a neorealist aesthetic to reinforce the difficulties confronting the girl, and by inference, Germany. (Filmgalerie 451)Read More »

Quote:
Gesualdo was a nutcase, but a brilliant one. His madrigals are among the most moving moments in music history. You will walk away from this film realizing all of the above. While using what appears to be actual employees at the various sites of Gesualdo’s life, we are given a tour of his physical life and his music. There are performance excerpts from his madrigals. There is a learned professorial type giving us a biography of his life.Read More »

Quote:
In this film, director Margarethe Von Trotta presents an inspiring and impressionistic portrait of the European socialist leader (1870 – 1919) who spent much time in prison as a result of her unpopular political views. In a performance which won her the Best Actress nod at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, Barbara Sukowa reveals Rosa’s multifaceted personality which encompassed a love of nature, a sensitivity to suffering, an unflagging hatred of militarism, and a yearning for peace. After viewing this screen biography, many will no doubt agree with Helen Deutsch’s evaluation of Rosa Luxemburg: “She was too great to be considered ‘only a woman,’ even by her enemies.”Read More »

In Germany during World War II, a well-known psychic decides to collaborate with the Nazis. (IMDB)

Klaus Kinski stars in this World War II tale of a well-known clairvoyant who is forced, not altogether unwillingly, to collaborate with the Nazis. (Brian Gusse, www.allmovie.com)Read More »

Quote:
Jag Mandir is a quiet and often overlooked film in the vast oeuvre of Werner Herzog. Apparently, 20 hours of footage was shot that covered the whole fest and the film hardly presents us a twentieth of that. A native walking into the film in between may well fail to immediately realize that it is his country that is being shown and these are figures from the mythology of various sections of his nation. You might take if for a scene from a procession in Thailand or a sketch from festival from Africa or even a snapshot from the gala celebrations in Brazil. Such is the diversity it presents that it reminds us of those clichés about Indian culture.Read More »

Schroeter set out to make a film about Marilyn Monroe ten years after her death as a meditation on the new feminism in America. The result was this bizarre chamber melodrama about three women who turn an abandoned shack in the Mojave Desert into a kind of Charles Manson commune. The three lure men to their lair, force them to have sex, then rob and murder them. With a music track that includes Bizet, Yugoslavian folk tunes, the Andrews Sisters and the Blue Ridge Rangers, Schroeter fashions a spectacle of female power which critics have compared to Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and Altman’s Three Women.

– San Francisco CinemathequeRead More »

Quote:
Werner Herzog returns to the South American jungle with Juliane Koepcke, the German woman who was the sole survivor of a plane crash there in 1971. They find the remains of the plane and recreate her journey out of the jungle.Read More »

Quote:
The film is an interview done at the time of Stroszek, it has Herzog talking about each film, talking about their creation and what he hoped to achieve. Its the director explaining his films in a way that enlightens on more than just a cinematic level. Herzog not only talks about his films but also his larger ideas about what film is, both fiction and documentary.Read More »