The life story of the multi-talented German nun Hildegard von Bingen. The film portrays an original woman – best known as a composer and religious visionary – whose grand claims often run counter to the patriarchal world around her.
The monks and nuns at the convent become a kind of family, offering both confidants and enemies. For example Jutta, struggling with her jealousy of Hildegard’s success, and the young Richardis who worships Hildegard both as an intellectual role model and a mother figure.Read More »
Quote: Lutz Eisholz’s first feature film was produced at West Berlin’s German Film and TV Academy. In an experimental documentary he portrays the working class outcast Bruno S., who prowls the city as a street musician, performing his own songs. The film unfolds Bruno’s story: abandoned by his mother as a child, he was maltreated in correctional institutions in Nazi Germany. On release after WWII he found work but started performing at the same time as a self-taught musician and poet. Although incapable of “normal” human bonding, he was still able to rejoice in life. When Werner Herzog saw this film he recognized Bruno’s potential and hired him to play starring roles in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), Heart of Glass (1976) and Stroszek (1977). –UCLA Library Film & Television ArchiveRead More »
Doctors say that Veronika, a woman in her 20s, is schizophrenic. She is compliant, which makes her an easy target for men. She’s religious, believing she is God’s favorite child; she searches for Jesus. She has sent a letter to a filmmaker suggesting her life as the subject for a movie. We see her raped than take up with a series of men she believes are Jesus, each willing or insistent on sex. A young man with his own crisis of faith invites her to join a cult. We see her involuntarily committed to an asylum from time to time where medication and constraints await. Her wealthy parents are helpless. Will a medical professional ever talk to her? If one did, would it help?Read More »
Ulrich Seidl’s documentary debut is about the foreigners who sell newspapers in their red uniforms on the streets of Vienna. A comparison between the world of the foreigner selling the newspaper and the Austrian who reads it in his living room.Read More »
Philipp Gerber is a smart, but self-satisfied car salesman. In an inattentive moment at the wheel of his car, he runs over a young boy riding a bike and drives away. As he has feelings of guilt, he tries to find out more about the accident’s victim and learns that the boy lies seriously injured in a hospital. Philipp wants to tell his mother Laura Reiser the truth, but he doesn’t. After a carefree holiday with his girlfriend Katja, he learns that the boy is dead. Meanwhile, Laura staggers between grief and the desire for revenge. One evening, she can’t bear it any more and jumps off a bridge, but Philipp saves her life…Read More »
Quote: The story of the student who sells his shadow for money and power only to find that the shadow reappears at certain moments and brings disaster upon him, should be well known from the original and the first remake. Robison however, introduces some new twists and angles to the story which should not be told here.Read More »
Quote: The story of Elisabeth and Paul who get married and drift apart. They have a very different take on life, hers rather bohemian and his disillusioned.
Repeatedly the film moves away from the pure narrative toward a discursive and parable style of storytelling.Read More »
Quote: “If an established film director such as Monsieur Benazeraf tries his hands at pornography, one should expect a superior example of the genre. Sadly, this picture does not live up to this expectation. Apparently shot in two versions, the porn version is a complete mess, with dreadful continuity errors: quite clearly, someone did not give a toss. The cast of unknowns fails to capture the screen, especially the dull-as-dishwater males.”Read More »
Kurt and Lydia are planning a relaxed vacation at the Gripsholm castle in Sweden . What Lydia does not know is that for Kurt, a well-known publicist, the journey is actually a flight from encroaching fascism and a direct threat from the Nazis.
The film takes us deep into the shady, pleasure-seeking cabaret world of Berlin at the beginning of the 1930’s, where “open season” has been declared on the last remaining bourgeois taboos, and the few remaining fig leaves of modesty are about to be swept away. Kurt, a campaigning journalist and satirist who has become a celebrity thanks to the rather saucy lyrics he has written for the songs of various shows has set off with his girlfriend Lydia, his princess, on a journey to Gripsholm castle in Sweden, in the course of a seemingly endless summer. Two friends, the fashionable variety show singer Billie and a temperamental aviator who goes by the name of Karlchen join them briefly on the holiday in Sweden. Erotic impulses inevitably lead to complications in their relationships.Read More »
