German

“Thomas Brasch’s Domino opens with glimpses of the Kurfürstendamm shrouded in snow, scenes of Christmas bustle. Lisa, a successful actress at the Schiller Theater, drops off her daughter at the Bahnhof Zoo and faces the presentiment of holidays to be spent alone. In the week to come, her life will come unraveled, her taken-for-granted security called into question. An undercurrent of the inexplicable and the unexpected will grip the artiste and ultimately sweep her into oblivion. Domino focuses on a woman living in abeyance…. Everywhere she turns the past seems to be on her trail: she confronts visions of her deceased mother (also an actress) while thinking of her own daughter. She learns that the director Lehrter, who seeks to engage her to star in his comeback production of Goethe’s Stella, may very well be her father [and learns also] of his internment in a concentration camp. Encounters on the street irritate and befuddle her. Passersby speak of mass unemployment, worry about pending war, and wander about sobbing, disoriented and confused….Read More »

Ein Versicherungsangestellter heiratet eine Frau aus reichen Haus, ohne Einverständnis ihrer Eltern. Eines Tages geht er zu einem Wahrsager, der seiner Frau ein jähes Ende prophezeit.Read More »

Werner Schroeter’s adaptation of a novel by Ingeborg Bachmann, Isabelle Huppert portrays a writer who suffers from an interminable case of existential angst.

Synopsis:
An unusual story of a triangular relationship set in Vienna. A woman shares an apartment with a man named Malina. The woman meets Ivan and falls in love. It will be her last great passion. The singlemindedness of her love is so great that it is more than the man can comprehend or respond to. The film’s subject is nothing less than love- and the loneliness of the lover. Read More »

A film set in the front room of a Berlin commune with a large shop window leading to the street outside. The film uses an actor and an actress, a pianist (visible playing the film’s incidental music in the room next door) and occasional people on the street. Scripted action is located inside the room, unscripted on the pavement outside where passers-by occasionally stop and watch the actors in the same way that the audience is watching them on screen from a cinema or the comfort of home. The ‘intellectual/ aesthetic’ rationale for the film (in the director’s words at the time) was to: “signify the similarity of social codes in East and West; to cement – seal with a kiss (there is a central scene where the actor and actress kiss in the traditional Hollywood manner) – two systems that, despite surface differences, seduce and cajole their citizens into obedience and passivity; to emphasise the common bond of bourgeois family values and traditional role-playing prevalent in consumer capitalist and state socialist countries.” An ambitious agenda for a short film, but the serious (immaculately delivered) speeches and exchanges on personal/social positions and solutions are lightened by Woolley’s tongue-in-cheek filmic observations and the comedic role of a pianist, who provides live musical comment and life-support in the room next door. The ending, where the inmates escape from their intellectual prison to the reality of the street outside, is a simple but effective critique of the obsessive search for theoretical answers to everything that hallmarked the early 70’s. [richardwoolley.com]Read More »

Like every other teenager in school Simone has a crush on a rock star. When her idol, the lead singer ‘R’, comes to town to make a television appearance Simone is gripped by a trance-like state, leaving school, friends and parents behind her – she must meet him. However, when Simone comes to realise the shallow nature of the ‘glamorous’ music industry and of ‘R’ himself, she plans a calculated, ritualistic and bloody revenge on her obsession.Read More »

PLOT: “Mountain-film” specialist Luis Trenker plies his trade with his usual expertise in the Austrian Velorene Sohn (Prodigal Son). Trenker himself plays the leading role of Tonia Feuersinger, a Tyrolean mountaineer bound and determined to scale the American Rockies. He also wants to journey to the States to court pretty American tourist Lillian Williams (played by pretty American actress Marian Marsh). Leaving his broken-hearted local girlfriend (Maria Andergast) behind, Tonio treks to New York, but never quite makes it to the Rockies; instead, he gets a welding job on a skyscraper, then achieves success as a prizefighter. In the end, however, he realizes that his heart is still in the Tyrol and thus returns to the arms of his hometown sweetheart. Though aimed at the German-speaking clientele, Verlorene Sohn was financed in Hollywood by Universal Pictures.
-allmovie.comRead More »

Gerhard Steidl has spent the last 40 years printing and publishing books. His legendary, unconditional obsession with his trade has led him to become the publisher of choice for an A list of artists that include Martin Parr, Ed Ruscha, Robert Adams, Jeff Wall and Robert Frank among others.Read More »

Germany in the 1970s: Murderous bomb attacks, the threat of terrorism and the fear of the enemy inside are rocking the very foundations of the yet fragile German democracy. The radicalised children of the Nazi generation lead by Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin are fighting a violent war against what they perceive as the new face of fascism: American imperialism supported by the German establishment, many of whom have a Nazi past. Their aim is to create a more human society but by employing inhuman means they not only spread terror and bloodshed, they also lose their own humanity. The man who understands them is also their hunter: the head of the German police force Horst Herold. And while he succeeds in his relentless pursuit of the young terrorists, he knows he’s only dealing with the tip of the iceberg. Written by Constantin FilmRead More »

Synopsis
Documentary film on the memories of four children from Eisenhüttenstadt who were all born at the same time the Berlin wall was built.

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1991 stellte der DEFA-Autor Thomas Heise seinen Dokumentarfilm ‘Eisenzeit’ vor, der vier Jugendliche aus Eisenhüttenstadt porträtiert. Der Film zeigt quälend und schmerzlich, wie sie an den Schwierigkeiten mit Staat, Gesellschaft und Familie zerbrachen. Schon 1981 wurde die Idee zum Film geboren, konnte aber aus politischen Gründen nicht umgesetzt werden. Erst zehn Jahre später zeigte der Film die selbstzerstörerische Flucht dieser selbstdenkenden Jugendlichen in Drogen und Selbstmord.Read More »