Quote: The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berflede. Miss Charlotte survived the Nazi reign and the repression of the Communists as a transvestite and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.Read More »
Garibaldus lives in his inherited castle, but he has financial problems. To solve them, he wants to marry his son to a rich girl. A well-to-do widow with six daughters is a good chance. And the son tries the girls one by one.Read More »
A German U-boat stalks the frigid waters of the North Atlantic as its young crew experience the sheer terror and claustrophobic life of a submariner in World War II.Read More »
After the war in Congo, two mercenaries take a mission to safeguard uranium transportation in a South American jungle, fighting bandits and local miners.Read More »
Synopsis For some, a dirndl is just a pretty, colourful dress with an apron; for others, it is a symbolically charged provocation. Just like items of clothing, places can also be contaminated. The narratives constructed around them are constantly changed and adapted by private family histories and historical circumstances – and with each generation, a new reading is superimposed on these layers. This Super 8 film dives deep down into the idyll of Austria’s Lake Grundlsee to reveal the chasms that lie beneath.Read More »
An encounter between a young nurse and her patient of the same age, Frida, on the border of professional distance and the desire for closeness.Read More »
Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt (1971)
Quote: Praunheim’s film is at once a pedagogical caveat and political manifesto. Following naïve country boy Daniel after he moves to Berlin and encounters a thriving gay community, It Is Not The Homosexual is a provocative look at the lives of gay men in 1970s Germany. The film follows Daniel from heteronormative behaviour to finding a sugardaddy to a job in a local gay bar, making him the most eligible bachelor in town. Through Daniel’s journey Praunheim comments on everything from the shallower tendencies in gay culture to cruising for sex in the early ‘70s until Daniel meets a group of revolutionary gays who introduce him to the gay rights movement. Like many of Praunheim’s films It Is Not The Homosexual caused a scandal in both the liberal and conservative establishment as well as in homosexual circles after it was first shown on German state television in 1973. What makes Praunheim’s work so provocative as a queer director is his fearlessness, what others call audacity, to not only point the finger at society, but also at the gay community itself as guilty of homophobia.Read More »
Synopsis: This is the two-part film “Noon in Tunisia” by Peter Lilienthal, a meeting of jazz and Arabic music at various public or open-air venues in Tunisia. Under the direction of George Gruntz, European and US jazz musicians play his suite-like composition “Maghreb Cantata”, which is based on original Bedouin dances, together with Arab performers. The highlight is the Fazani, a rhythm of Bedouin tribes from the desert region of the Libyan-Tunisian border. The recording took place from 5.5. – 24.5.1969 in and around Tunis.Read More »
The ‘multiverse’ is one of the worst concepts to enter storytelling since Victoria Principal woke up in Dallas and discovered it had all been a dream. And so it’s weird to find yourself in a universe where the concept finally gets a decent cinematic treatment in Timm Kröger’s The Theory of Everything, not to be confused with Eddie Redmayne’s black hole.
Following a short prologue set in the seventies in which Johannes Leinert (Jan Bülow), an oddball science-fiction writer is interviewed on German TV only to reveal that his novel is actually non-fiction, we go back to his time as a research student. Johannes is finishing his thesis under the supervision of his rather stern professor Dr. Julius Strathen (Hanns Zischler). As part of his research, he accompanies his tutor to the Swiss Alps where a speaker is going to introduce an apparently radical breakthrough in quantum theory.Read More »