German

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When Edgar Reitz made the Heimat film series in 1984 he created an incredible chronicle of German rural life in the 20th century. He went on to release another couple of mini-series, bringing events up to the modern era. At over 53 hours they were beautifully made and together are an epic saga of the Simon family and the village of Schabbach. He returns to familiar ground for this prequel, charting the fortunes of the same clan between 1840-1844, in Home From Home: Chronicle of a Vision.

Jacob (Jan Dieter Schneider) dreams of escaping the hard, oppressive and poor life in Schabbach by emigrating to the tropics. His father (Rüdiger Kriese), the local blacksmith, despairs that his son is stuck with his nose in a book whilst there so much work to do. His mother (Marita Breuer) on the other hand, is happy to indulge his daydreaming. He falls for Jettchen (Antonia Bill), the daughter of a mill owner, but they are fated not to be together. When his brother Gustav (Maximilian Scheidt) returns from war, a drunken night with Jettchen leads to her getting pregnant, whilst Jacob is arrested after his first brush with rebellion.Read More »

German-language documentary on the actor. Numerous excerpts.
(A conventional companion piece to Herzog’s My Best Enemy).
42 min 40 sekRead More »

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Based on fragments from Günther Anders’ novel The Molussian Catacomb, which was written between 1932 and 1936, Nicolas Rey’s captivating nine-part film presents allegorical stories and musings by political prisoners sitting in the pits of an imaginary fascist state called Molussia. Shown in random order whenever it is screened (there are 362,880 potential versions of the film), the film’s nine 16mm reels ruminate on capitalism, imperialism and resistance—accompanied by gritty, unsettling self-processed images of undefined landscapes. A haunting and moving meditation on brutality and control, differently, Molussia has galvanized audiences at festivals around the world.

Since 1993 Rey has been making films that hover between photography, documentaries and the avant-garde. He is one of the founders of the Paris-based artist film lab L’Abominable. (synopsis from Northwest Film Forum)Read More »

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Theo, Marite, and Franz cannot make any money selling magazines door to door, so they try a little robbery.Read More »

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David spends the last of his money on a room at the luxury hotel Waldhaus, where he plans to commit suicide. As part of his final act he invites his unsuspecting brother Gian along, ostensibly to spend his last days with him. Unexpectedly, Gian comes along with his girlfriend Valeria. David’s decision to end his life is constantly with them, and as the trio float through the days at the hotel, they come face to face with their past, unfulfilled dreams and an almost unbearable present. Eventually, Valeria becomes so captivated by David’s suicidal romanticism that the three of them end up in a ménage à trois – either their salvation or the end for each of them.Read More »

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Somewhere in the distant future … the United Nations have decided on a new system of imprisonment as an answer to escalating street violence: VORTEX, a mysterious and completely isolated prison complex that is said to securely keep anyone arriving from ever going back.

Vincent, a constructional engineer in his mid-thirties, is attacked by a man in a dark alleyway. To protect his own life, he shoots the man. Vincent must stand trial for murder. Despite his protest and affirmations that he only acted in self-defense, he is found guilty and sent to VORTEX, where according to the judge, he will have to fulfill a certain “rate” each week.Read More »

Celebrated for his rigorous films about the experience of architecture (Schindler’s Houses, Loos Ornamental), Heinz Emigholz launches a new chapter of his “Photography and Beyond” project with an ambitious four-film cycle titled “Streetscapes” (which premiered to great acclaim at the recent Berlinale). The first installment is an open-ended response to Godard’s One Plus One, which chronicled the Rolling Stones in the studio at the height of the 1960s counterculture. This 21st-century update documents the German post-rock band Kreidler at work on their album ABC in a wood-paneled hall in Tbilisi, Georgia. Throughout Emigholz cuts to shots of the city streets outside and to the briskly leafed pages of his densely illustrated notebooks, while a voiceover ruminates on the nature of art and desire.Read More »

A documentary which looks at Heartfield primarily as a political activist working in a specific historical context. It demonstrates this relationship by the use of documentary material, such as archive footage of inter-war Germany, in juxtaposition with Heartfield’s works. (These are here frequently shown, as they are rarely reproduced, in their original format as magazine or book covers.) Far from manifesting an obsequious reverence for the works, the film takes the bold step, thoroughly justified by its results, of re-using the elements of Heartfield’s montages for short snippets of photo-animation. It also documents artistic influences on Heartfield’s work – Berlin Dada, which was in general more immediately political in nature than its Zurich counterpart, and George Grosz in particular – and includes a detailed demonstration of how the photomontages were produced and printed.Read More »

All of a sudden, 16-year-old Martha vanishes. Her father Lothar, who for years has had no contact with her or his ex-wife, sets off unwilling to find her. He soon realises other young people are also vanishing from the city inexplicably. Lothar follows their trail across the country. He meets the occasional young person but the trail goes cold. In the next city he encounters militia groups and a reinforced police presence. Children are forbidden to be on the streets unless accompanied by adults. The world has changed…Read More »