German

A man, a woman, two children: a family. He is a musician. She used to be one until the children came. One day, Marie discovers that not far from where they live, her husband Thomas has set up a second life for himself, a second home with a second family. Marie falls into shock, slowly sinking into her pain by the end of the day. Finally, she is driven by her desperate need for consolation and explanations to seek Thomas at his night concert in an old castle, where there is a masked ball. From then on, she embarks on an emotional journey that will lead her to make an unexpected decision.Read More »

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After spending three years doing field installation work in West Africa, Fred returns home to his old neighbourhood, an industrial region on the outskirts of a major city. He is filled with confidence and optimism for a new start. He has brought home with him a pile of money that he made in Africa. But he never wrote to his wife Rita. He only wired her a money transfer every month. In the meantime, Rita has a new life that she now shares with a GI. Fred rents a room in the “Royal”, a sleazy hotel. There, he meets Alma, who takes care of the rooms and the guests and who is being kept by her sugar daddy – the aging hotel director. A passionate encounter with his old girlfriend Vera, who had high hopes for the two of them at some earlier time, dissipates into a brief carnal episode. For the old work buddies in the steel mill, Fred’s return is just an excuse to get drunk one night. Only Alma, the girl from the “Royal”, shows interest in Fred. For her, he personifies a bit of yearning, faraway places and the chance to get herself out of her little rat-hole. Together they set out on a journey, wandering aimlessly through Germany. . .
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Here’s the debut feature film by director Uwe Schrader, who’s still a well-kept secret of german cinema. I first read about him in the most recent issue of Cargo. His realistic “Milieu” films recall the works of Klaus Lemke, Roland Klick or the austro-canadian filmmaker John Cook. Kanakerbraut is only one hour long, and it is about the dull life of Paul (Peter Franke) and his encounters with similar characters in Berlin Kreuzberg.Read More »

Here’s the final film of Uwe Schrader’s proletarian trilogy, following White Trash AKA Kanakerbraut [Germany] and Sierra Leone [Germany] . Without a straight narrative, a couple of stories revolve around the last days of a stripclub called ‘Mau Mau’.

MAU MAU is located right in the middle of the red light district. When night falls on the city, the joint starts jumping in MAU MAU. Stripping, pimping, ripping off and grifting are the order of the day. Sometimes it’s all very agreeable and sometimes all hell breaks loose. Celebrations and snivelling go hand in hand here. In this world of the marooned, the stumbling and those who have gotten back on their feet, the film traces the lifelines of Inge and Heinz, of Rosa and Doris and of Ferdi and Ali on their search for love, happiness and life. “If I had the choice of filming in heaven or hell,” says Uwe Schrader, “then I’d choose hell”.Read More »

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Pornography in the service of politics. An outrageous provocation, this attack on reactionary German legislation discriminating against young film directors, features head-on, close-up shots of a penis ‘mouthing’ the parliamentary defense of the law by its author. This is followed by masturbation of the organ by an anonymous female hand, ending with ejaculation into the camera and a close-up of a nude behind ‘blowing’ out a candle (with appropriate sound). A landmark in political pamphleteering, the film was selected for the 1968 Oberhausen International Short Film Festival by a committee of leading German critics, and promptly banned by the (social-democratic!) city government, causing the withdrawal of almost all German directors from the festival and a national scandal. The title satirically refers to the official certificate of ‘Particularly Valuable’ given each year to the best film shorts by an Establishment selection committee.Read More »

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This is a pretty little student’s film with a peculiar background story. It was shot in spring 1968, produced by the Film- & Television Academy (dffb) of West-Berlin, which at that time was a hotbed of political turmoil. The recently founded film school played an important part during the escalation year of 1967/8. Among the students of these years were filmmakers such as Hartmut Bitomsky, Christian Ziewer, Harun Farocki and Wolfgang Petersen.

By 1967/68 the overall climate had become highly charged with politics and revolutionary fever. At least two students of that era abandoned filmmaking and turned into left-wing terrorists: the famous Holger Meins (1941-1974), who joined the RAF, and Philip Werner Sauber (1947-1975) who joined the lesser-known, but no less radical group “Bewegung 2. Juni”. While Meins died while on a hunger strike in the prison of Stammheim, the Swiss-born Sauber was killed during a shoot-out with the police in Cologne, just after he had shot to death a policeman.Read More »

Various objects are having a sunny outing together in the nature.Read More »

Stones of different shapes and colors live and die together.Read More »

Synopsis
Ruza left Serbia, her country, over 30 years ago and lives in Zurich. Her daily life is a string of repetitive moments until, one day, Ana arrives on the scene and upsets Ruza’s painstakingly organized world. A subtle friendship develops between the two strong willed women.Read More »