German

Quote:
Winner of the Student Critics Jury Award at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, German director Dietrich Brüggemann’s Stations of the Cross (Kreuzweg, 2014) takes on as its burden the wry dissection of hardline Catholicism in fourteen supremely crafted long takes. Dividing each of his film’s chapters according to the traditionally depicted stages of Christ’s condemnation to death, his Crucifixion and his subsequent burial in anticipation of the Resurrection, Brüggemann offers up a darkly comic, contemporary reworking of Catholic doctrine that never shirks away from illuminating both the ridiculous and the sublime (although the former outnumbers the latter).Read More »

Quote:
As great as it is merciless, a film that inevitably precipitates violent disagreements, Fox and His Friends (the rhyming German title of which roughly translates as Fists of Freedom or, better, Might Makes Right) is the male mirror of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant: a portrait of class exploitation and emotional sadomasochism amongst a group of homosexuals. Fassbinder plays Fox, a carnival entertainer who wins a lottery and thereby becomes an alluring object of desire for an antiques dealer who is on the verge of bankruptcy. The posh businessman takes the naïve carnie as his lover and introduces him to the world of Munich’s upper-crust gays, with tragic results.Read More »

Carl Celler (CC) Culture Institute specializes in selling art projects to big companies: Carl Celler, the dynamic boss with an inherent melancholic drift towards failure, feels that his first project proves to be a difficult one. For the project, he invited a young elite group of artists and curators to Berlin to realize a project: videos, photos, campaigns, and art objects about a specific topic, namely brand logos and animals. The invited artists are furnished with a sufficient budget and insight into Berlin’s arts milieu. Furthermore there are two male (anti-)models, Kai and Jork, arbitrarily chosen, non-styled, people from the street. Kai is over 30 and he confronts this world with nonchalance. He feels his late juvenile attitude is in anger and the ambition he encounters in CC takes him by surprise. Rena Yazka, one of the invited artists, catches his attention. Their little flirt is the background for Kai’s experience to become an object, to be regarded as a body. Is he in love – or only eroticized in this dazzling experience? Is he exploited and abused by the creative industry? The mood of this bizarre, tightened coolness gives way slowly to an existential problem. What kind of life are they working for, or, if they live for their work, what kind of life is that? (IMDb)Read More »

Kemal Kayankaya, a private detective, was hired by a Turkish women, Ilter, to search for his husband, Amend, who has been missing since the death of her father, Vassif. Unknownst to him, he was about to unravel the secrets of his client’s family, as well as their various dealings with the underworld and the police. Moreover, being a Turk raised in a German foster family, he has also begun to understand and accept his own ethnicity.Read More »

German plot description:
Polizeimeisteranwärterin Ariane Fink aus Dortmund verschlägt es ausgerechnet nach Starnberg: gesichtsloses Städtchen, Wahnsinnssee. Höchste Millionärsdichte Bayerns. Eine Idylle mit Reißzähnen.

Und eben hier wird Ariane gleich an ihrem ersten Arbeitstag mit dem bayerischsten aller Klischees konfrontiert: Der tote Kini, oder besser gesagt, ein Wiedergänger von ihm, liegt am Ufer des Starnberger Sees, und zwar genau da, wo Ludwig II. 1886 ins Wasser ging.Read More »

Umay is a young woman of Turkish descent, fighting for an independent and self-determined life in Germany against the resistance of her family. Her struggle initiates a dynamic, which results in a life-threatening situation.Read More »

Quote:
In Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s brazen depiction of the alternating currents of lethargy and mayhem inherent in moviemaking, a film crew—played by, and not so loosely based on, his own frequent collaborators—deals with an aloof star (Eddie Constantine), an abusive director (Lou Castel), and a financially troubled production. Inspired by the hellish process of making Whity earlier the same year, this is a vicious look at behind-the-scenes dysfunction.Read More »

Auf geht’s – West Germany 1955, 11 min.
Directed by: Ferdinand Khittl
Written by: Just Scheu
Cinematography by: Gerd von Bonin
Edited by: Hans Dieter Schiller
Produced by: Olympia-Film, München

One of the 3 short films that came as an extra on Edition Filmmuseum 47: Die Parallelstrasse AKA The Parallel Street (Ferdinand Khittl, 1962).

Documentary short on the Octoberfest in Munich.
Read More »

Quote:
Sven lives with his mother Edeltraut, who is suffering from dementia. He shares his entire life, the apartment, even the bed with her. During the day he works at a bank. While he is at work, Daniel comes to the apartment to look after Edeltraut. He takes her to hairdresser’s, goes for walks, shopping, and tidies up the apartment. But one day while Daniel is cleaning the windows, Edeltraut locks him out on the balcony and takes off. The two men go out looking for her. But what they find is not just Edeltraut, but also a tender fondness for one another, one which turns both of their lives upside down. Production note: “HEAVY GIRLS” was completed in just three months, from the original idea to the finished film. The film was shot based on a treatment, which defined the order and content of the scenes, the dialogues were improvised. In order to attain the greatest amount of creative freedom and authenticity, we intentionally shot the film without a crew and film team and with a simple Mini DV camera.Read More »