German

  • Peter Sempel – Kazuo Ohno: Ich tanze ins Licht aka Kazuo Ohno: I Dance Into the Light (2004)

    2001-2010DocumentaryGermanyPerformancePeter Sempel

    This is a wonderful documentary movie about Butoh-dancer-legend Kazuo Ohno.
    It’s a German movie, so there will be some introductory talk and some voiceovers in German, but the other parts of the movies mostly consist of talks in English or in Japanese with an English interpreter sitting next to the people talking in Japanese – so you will be able to understand pretty much without knowing any German. And even if you dont understand anything, the film is just worth it for the wonderful material showing Kazuo Ohno.Read More »

  • Olivier Assayas – Paris s’éveille (1991)

    Drama1991-2000FranceOlivier Assayas

    An ARTE chanell broadcast. Film quality is very good though. This is one of the first films by Assayas, featuring the great Jean Pierre Leaud. Enjoy.

    The story: Nineteen-year-old Adrien comes back to his father’s flat to live; the two haven’t seen each other in three years. Clement has a teenage girl living with him who is using heroin. Louise, the girl, at first rejects Adrien, then later falls in love with him. An unstable situation becomes worse as we learn that Adrien is sought by the police for theft.Read More »

  • Egon Günther – Ursula (1978)

    1971-1980DramaEgon GüntherGermany

    The soldier Hansli Gyr returns 1523 to the “Zürcher Oberland”. The he reencounters the love of his youth Ursula, who is now part of a world renouncing sect, the Anabaptists…

    Quote:
    Das TV-Historiendrama nach Gottfried Kellers Novelle galt 1978 als SkandalfilmRead More »

  • Klaus Lemke – Amore (1978)

    1971-1980ComedyCultGermanyKlaus Lemke

    Quote:
    Maria is in her mid-20s and lives with her father, a widowed small greengrocer, in Haidhausen. Her friend Bärbel is madly in love with the charming Italian Pietro. His father is a vegetable wholesaler at the Munich wholesale market. Except Maria, who can’t stand him at first, all the girls are interested in the heartbreaker. When Pietro leaves Bärbel, Maria decides to take revenge on him. She makes him fall in love with her, which also makes her friend Franz, a Bundeswehr soldier, very jealous.Read More »

  • Alfred Vohrer – Der Mann mit dem Glasauge AKA The Man With the Glass Eye (1969)

    1961-1970Alfred VohrerCrimeDramaGermany

    Based on the story by Edgar Wallace, this engrossing suspenser follows a Scotland Yard detective as he investigates a string of drug-related murders involving several women and gangsters. Searching for a mysterious man with a glass eye who may hold the answers to the killings, he encounters backstabbing thugs and plenty of excitement.Read More »

  • Herbert Vesely – Das Brot der frühen Jahre (1962)

    Drama1961-1970GermanyHerbert Vesely

    Quote:
    Based on the novel of the same title by Heinrich Böll.

    The young electrician Walter Fendrich has started a promising career. Everything seems to be on the right track. As the future husband of his employer’s daughter Walter even can hope to once succeed him as head of the company. All of a sudden, the visit of a girl from his home town, whom he last saw seven years ago, changes his entire life. Walter realizes that his entire life so far has been all wrong. He breaks out of his former “reasonable“ life and gives up and the wonderful security of the affluent society. He simply disapperas without a farewell or explanation… Read More »

  • Hans Jürgen Pohland – Katz und Maus AKA Cat and Mouse (1967)

    1961-1970ArthouseDramaGermanyHans Jürgen Pohland

    Quote:
    In 1966, a former gymnast returns to his hometown Danzig, which is now a part of Poland. He begins to reflect on one of his classmates, Joachim Mahlke, who disappeared during World War II. Mahlke was initially marked as an outsider due to his oversized Adam’s apple, but when he turned out to be a great diver, the in-crowd embraced him. Then he steals a Knight’s Cross from a soldier and is expelled from school. Volunteering for war service, he earns a medal himself and hopes his reputation will be rehabilitated. But the school principal refuses and Mahlke deserts from the army … Read More »

  • Harun Farocki – Zwischen zwei Kriegen AKA Between Two Wars (1978)

    1971-1980ExperimentalGermanyHarun FarockiPolitics

    Quote:
    A film about the time of the blast furnances – 1917-1933 – about the development of an industry, about a perfect machinery which had to run itself to the point of its own destruction.

    The essay from the Berlin filmmaker, Harun Farocki, on heavy industry and the gas of the blast furnace, convinces through the author’s cool abstraction and manic obsession and through the utilization of a single example of the self-destructive character of capitalistic production: “The image of the blust furnace gas is real and metaphoric; an energy blows away uselessly into the air. Guided through a system of pipes, the pressure increases. Hence, a valve is needed. That valve is the production of war material.”Read More »

  • Phil Jutzi – Berlin Alexanderplatz [+Extras] (1931)

    1931-1940ClassicsDramaGermanyPhil JutziWeimar Republic cinema

    Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
    Most modern-day viewers are familiar with German author Alfred Doeblin’s naturalistic novel Berlin Alexanderplatz from its epic TV miniseries presentation, directed in 1980 by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The Doeblin work was previously filmed on the very brink of the Nazi takeover in 1933, with Heinrich George as the ex-convict protagonist. Yearning for respectability, George finds he cannot escape the influence of his old criminal cohorts. When George refuses to pay “hush money” to the mob, his faithful wife Margarete Schlegel is killed. George resignedly returns to a life of crime, ultimately descending into madness. The 1933 adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz ran a brisk 90 minutes; Fassbinder’s 1980 TV version ran ten times longer.Read More »

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