German

Quote:
It starts with “Peter Schlemihl’s Miraculous Story”, which tells of a man travelling the world in seven-league boots. Adelbert von Chamisso wrote the tale before setting off to Russia on scientific expedition in 1815. He analysed the flora of Alaska and then explored the Northwest Passage, just like Cook and voyager Bering had done previously, the latter with physician and naturalist Steller in tow.
A porthole reveals the view. Thus begins Ottinger’s journey from Alaska to Kamchatka via Chukotka, with her predecessors’ log books to accompany her on her way.Read More »

Quote:
A family man slowly becomes dangerously obsessive and paranoid in this grim Austrian drama that contains a graphically violent ending. As the story begins, George, an engineer who works at a science facility, has a normal happy life with his wife and kids. They are in the process of building a new house when George learns that a nearby chemical plant has been leaking dangerous gas into the air. This causes George to begin suffering from terrifying hallucinations. His paranoia increases every time he hears another report of violence, crime, war, or any other social problems on the news. After learning that his company may be overtaken by a larger corporation, George decides to send his family on an Italian vacation while he stays home and turns their apartment into a strange refuge from the terrible world he knows is coming.Read More »

Synopsis
The adventure of Melissa and Gustavo starts aboard a red cargo ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean. It takes them to Berlin, a city of constant movement, where the old has to give space to the new. The couple finds a home and transforms it into the center of their own universe. As time passes and seasons change, life and cinema become one and their room becomes an ever-changing stage, where friends are invited to play their own roles. In this state of transition Melissa and Gustavo lose sight of their path and their world starts to tremble. Until one day a cosmic portal appears in their home opening connections between the past, the present and the future, confronting the two travelers with extraordinary discoveries. MUITO ROMÂNTICO is a stream that carries along hearts and minds. A playful rearrangement of experiences, memories and fantasies into a journey transcending space and time.Read More »

Examines the forced participation of Sinti prisoners in the making of Leni Riefenstahl’s drama TIEFLAND. Nina Gladitz’ most controversial claim is that Riefenstahl knew these Sinti would be sent to Auschwitz. This led to court action and the film effectively being withdrawn. A rare film that supposedly was never screened again publicly after its 1982 TV premiere.Read More »

Wenders explained that the experience of directing this, his second film, was the usual one which occurs with a new director. It is much more difficult and much less successful. One of the biggest problems is that the interior shots were finished first (Normally exteriors are shot first). These were shot at a studio in Cologne. If you notice in the interior shots, the landscape outside the windows does not appear. The windows were covered with a variant of the rice paper you see in traditional Japanese homes. This was done because they did not know what the outside would look like. Care also had to be taken with not showing the environment outside the doors of interior shots. Read More »

Quote:
In post-war West Germany, the charming Von Bohm is appointed a city’s new Building Commissioner. His morality is tested when he unknowingly falls in love with a brothel worker, Lola, the paid mistress of a corrupt property developer.Read More »

In the heat of the summer. A lonesome house in the countryside between woods and corn fields. Nine-year-old twin brothers are waiting for their mother. When she comes home, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, nothing is like before. The children start to doubt that this woman is actually their mother. It emerges an existential struggle for identity and fundamental trust.Read More »

Quote:
A man with the mental faculties of a child must save his mother, thereby becoming god and devil.Read More »

Franz West (1909-85) remembers his youth in Vienna: the variety of the Jewish population of the so called Matzah-Island, his commitment to the worker’s movement of the Red Vienna and the rise of Austro-fascism and National Socialism. West’s masterly narration combined with impressing archive footage illustrate and elucidate the complex Austrian history between WW1 and WW2.Read More »