German

S y n o p s i s
A woman living in the Paris suburbs struggles with a loveless marriage and apathy toward her family and friends as she spends her days quietly wandering about her house. Austrian playwright and novelist Peter Handke contributed screenplays to a number of films by director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick). Here (in a film that Wenders produced), he provides both the scenario (adapting his novel of the same name) and direction for this meditative examination of domestic ennui.Read More »

In “Mixwix”, a department store owner high above the rooftops of Munich reflects on the extent to which his current life, which mainly revolves around underpants and socks, makes sense.

He has long been the king of underpants and socks. He even has the largest selection of underpants ever. Mr. Mixwix is a department store owner and so successful with his underpants and socks that something new has to come, something that stimulates him again, lets him continue. Tennis clothing, for example! Or maybe not? While Mr. Mixwix, quiet as Buddha, sits high above the rooftops of Munich and waits for the building permit for the extension of his department store for tennis clothing, he ponders whether he is on the right track with tennis clothing, or whether he is on the right track at all, and what the right track is in the first place. This immersion in Far Eastern life wisdom, the questioning of his own existence as a big capitalist and of capitalism itself, lead Mr. Mixwix to all sorts of philosophical and peculiar games of thought, but also to statements such as: “How can one be as inspirited by one’s own stupidity as the Bavarian people”.Read More »

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One of the highlights of this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, it’s already apparent, is a retrospective of the work of Dominik Graf, a genre specialist mostly unknown outside his natve Germany, who has worked in both film and TV, specialising mainly in crime dramas. The program also includes other German crime TV shows selected by Graf to contextualise his work (including Sam Fuller’s Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street and uber-rare work by Czech emigre Zbynek Brynych, best known otherwise for The Fifth Horseman is Fear).Read More »

From “Three Film Buffs”
Whity is a strange but beautiful movie. It is a German language western set in 1878. The only time any English is used is during the songs sung by the saloon whore who performs like she’s in a cabaret in Berlin in the early 1930’s. It was shot in Spain on the sets of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood.

The bizarre story (believe me this is unlike any western you have ever seen) centers on the title character – real name Samuel King – the bastard son and slave to the wealthy Nicholson family. The father is a sadistic son of a bitch whose favorite form of punishment for his grown-up sons is a buggy whip. In one scene Whity willingly steps in for one of his brothers and takes the beating for him.Read More »

Here’s a film so rare and forgotten, it isn’t even listed the German Lexikon des Internationalen Films, so it’s unlikely that it ran anywhere after the war. The overly bright but quite good copy of unknown provenience has Dutch and French subtitles burned in.
The story is about a theater star (Olga Tschechowa) who finds herself suddenly a mother again after her daughter (Irene von Meyendorff) who lived with her father for 16 years got thrown out by him because she wants also to become an actress. Naturally the mother isn’t too pleased because she fears to be recognized as a mother losing some star appeal, so they present themselves as aunt and niece. However the young girl soon proves to be a competitor in love and career …Read More »

Various quality, some mpg, some avi. Recommended if you like Len Lye.

1930 Studie Nr. 6
1931 Studie Nr. 7
1931 Studie Nr. 9
1933 Kreise
1934 Muratti Greift Ein
1935 Komposition in Blau
1935 Muratti Privat
1941 American March
1943 Allegretto
1947 Motion Painting
1952 Muntz-Tvmercial
1955 Oklahoma GaspanyRead More »

Aber den Sinn des Lebens hab’ ich immer noch nicht rausgefunden / … but I Still Haven’t Figured Out the Meaning of Life (OmeU)

Every year on his birthday, Jan Peters filmed one reel of Super-8 material; later on he turned to video. In these few minutes of film he reveals something from and about himself. Maybe it is exhibitionism – the way he chatters on, until the blotches on the film indicate the end of the reel. Enthusiastic, sometimes tired, often doubtful, he, like everyone else, quarrels with what has come about from his own actions. On top of this, Peters, the filmmaker, blurs the individual of the same name with his dense texts and images to create something quite different: Jan Peters, the fictional character.Read More »

Plot from IMDB: The feared bandit Cobra Verde (Klaus Kinski) is hired by a plantation owner to supervise his slaves. After the owner suspects Cobra Verde of consorting with his young daughters, the owner wishes him gone. Rather than kill him,the owner sends Cobra Verde to Africa. The only white man in the area, Cobra Verde finds himself the victim of torture and humiliation. Later, he trains soldiers in a rebel army. Far from home, Cobra Verde is on the edge of madness.Read More »

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Two single parents decide to move in together and their two teenage children fall in love.Read More »