German

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Vienna in the 1950´s. A childhood captured on 8mm film, documented by 13-year-old Johanna. A childhood as it might have been. We see fragments of family life and family secrets, an apartment regularly visited by women, centered around grandmother Maria Steinwendner who holds weekly cooking clubs in her kitchen. But somehow, the women never actually seem to do any cooking.
“Papa always said you have to be quick if you want to see anything. Because everything vanishes so quickly”, Johanna says to herself as she films the dead body of a cat on the pavement. “But I don´t think that´s true. I think you just have to keep looking”. And Johanna keeps looking. Until the camera´s gaze suddenly turns on herself. (production note)Read More »

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Rock ‘n’ roll comes to Germany just ahead of the Berlin Wall in “The Red Cockatoo.” Stylish period piece is weighed down by a too-familiar love triangle, generating nostalgia for a difficult time not nearly as successfully as clear predecessor “Good Bye Lenin!”

Unlike helmer Wolfgang Becker’s “Good Bye Lenin!,” “Cockatoo” will work best for those with some knowledge of the early days of the German Democratic Republic and tension generated by the Wall throughout the country.Read More »

Documentary in two parts that blends dramatized reconstructions, personal reminisces and newsreel footage to tell the story of the flight of German refugees through occupied France to Marseille in 1940.

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Anna Segher’s novel Transit (1944) is the leitmotif of this film essay on German exiles in France and their escape to the South after Hitler marched into Paris. But Fluchtweg nach Marseille is neither adaptation nor documentary: actors recite and react to passages from the novel. Eyewitnesses speak. Documents from the Nazi era are contrasted with images of places and landscapes in which the settings of persecution and escape come back to haunt both the filmmakers and us. This is a search for evidence that interweaves facts, personal recollections, and both literary and visual reflections.
-Anke HahnRead More »

Bettina Böhler creates a memorial to the director Christoph Schlingensief on the 10th anniversary of his death, a portrait of the filmmaker’s work and influence.Read More »

Synopsis
JESUS – THE FILM is a monumental feature film in 35 episodes, shot on Super8. The individual episodes retell the story of the New Testament and were made by a total of 22 filmmakers from East and West Germany in 12 months. The project’s own history follows the story of Jesus Christ recruiting his apostles. The film’s creator Michael Brynntrup is a central and controversial figure of Berlin’s vivid independent community. His transgressive obsessions, as well as his capability to smuggle miles of Russian Super8 film-material through East-West customs, gathered a group of believers around him. Individuals and groups from various art factions filled the holy frame, inspired by the Dadaistic idea of an ‘ecriture automatic’. From one to another, they passed ideas, material and actors, including Michael Brynntrup himself as the title character. (IMDB)Read More »

The first science fiction film of the DEFA: Futuristic comedy about a revolutionary invention.

Synopsis:
In the country “Kapitalia” Dr. Alland has made a breakthrough invention.
The profit-hungry industrialist Da Costa tries to get to it by sending a series of alluring women towards him.Read More »

A family struggles with the teenager son who suffers from Hikikomori phenomenon. Suddenly, he closes the door and locks himself in, shutting out a helpless father, mother and sisterRead More »

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A story about a family after the Second World War. The petty bourgeois cashier Karl Weber of Berlin observes from a distance how his son Ernst participates in the building of a new socialist society. Karl does not understand Ernst’s visions, instead he confides in his other son Harry. However, Harry becomes involved in illicit business and Karl quickly realizes that it would be best to join his son Ernst in the citizen-owned factory. With this film, director Slatan Dudow (1903-1963) continued the traditions of proletarian German film from the Weimar Republic. As with his first feature film Kuhle Wampe, from a screenplay by Bertolt Brecht, Dudow wanted an art that “cultivates the viewer’s psyche.” His postwar films were intended to make the viewers realize the importance of supporting the “new order” in East Germany. Our Daily Bread became known as a premiere film of its day under the rubric of “socialist realism.” Slatan Dudow’s work was convincing mainly through his detailed descriptions of socialist everyday life. Music by Hanns Eisler was the centerpiece of contemporary review. After coming back from his exile in America, the composer created a score that challenged, thrilled, and focused. Berlin’s world of ruins is captured in almost documentary fashion.Read More »

This documentary focuses on the person and the films of one of Germany’s premiere post-war filmmakers, Wim Wenders. Wenders is a lifelong fan of American pop culture, particularly its rock music and B-movies, and his highly personalized filmmaking style is deeply influenced by both of these. He is best known for films featuring drifters and the lure of the open road and open spaces. The documentary features interviews with actors like Dennis Hopper, filmmakers (cinematographer Robby Muller) and rock musicians (e.g., Ry Cooder) and others who have worked with him over the years, as well as interviews with the director himself, who is well aware of his cinematic gifts and limitations.Read More »