German

Shortly after the end of the war in 1945 in Germany: the doctor and former scientist Karl Rothe (Peter Lorre) works under a false name in a refugee and reception center. He is a “lost” man who has taken personal guilt on himself. He meets a newcomer named Nowak (Karl John). This was already in the war year 1943 his coworker and is actually Hösch. In flashbacks one learns that Rothes then fiancée, Inge Hermann (Renate Mannhardt) spied for the Allies and forwarded information to England. She agreed to an affair with the opportunist Hösch. Rothe killed his lover, more out of jealousy than loyalty to the line. But he was not punished for this crime. Hösch covered him out of “higher” interest. His research was more important to the Nazis than the atonement of murder. The terrible beginning of a deadly spiral …Read More »

Christoph Heider is caught as he abducts the body of his wife from the cemetery chapel. Marianne Heider allegedly died in a bathtub accident, but Heider considers her current partner Wilhelm Jordan guilty and would like to have her autopsied again abroad.Read More »

Der Prozeß. Eine Darstellung des Majdanek-Verfahrens in Düsseldorf
Teil 1: Anklage
Teil 2: Beweisaufnahme
Teil 3: Urteile

In über 8jähriger Arbeit entstand der Film DER PROZESS über die juristische Aufbereitung der Nazi Verbrechen im Konzentrationslager Majdanek. Es war das erste große Arbeits- und Todeslager, das von den Russen befreit wurde. Innerhalb von drei Jahren wurden dort mindestens 250 000 Menschen umgebracht: erschossen, vergast, erschlagen.Read More »

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When Irene gets a job as a hotel maid she soon finds out that the previous girl disappeared in mysterious circumstances.Read More »

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Fascinating and rich with wry humor, Exile Shanghai is an extraordinary cultural odyssey that affectionately conjures up the lost Jewish world of Shanghai. In the dark days of the 1930s, the Chinese metropolis was the last refuge for Europe’s persecuted Jews—a place that did not demand a visa. Those who managed to find refuge there brought with them the social and gastronomic delights of Vienna and Berlin. Ottinger’s four-and-a-half-hour mosaic features interviews with former members of the Shanghai expatriate Jewish community (many of whom relocated to Northern California), and her ever-curious camera cruises the city in search of its lost synagogues, schools, and salons.Read More »

The life of Jewish Expressionist poet and performance artist, Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945), told chronologically in vignettes given context by archival footage of turn-of-the-century Germany, World War I, and the ascent of the Third Reich. Her poetry often comprises the soundtrack. We see her in relation to men: her first husband, whom she leaves after her son is born; artists like Chagall and Franz Marc; an older muse and then a second husband; and, Gottfried Benn (1886 – 1956), physician and poet. Benn’s life is also chronicled: homosexual encounters, his attraction to Else and the Berlin scene, and his politics. Her poems addressed to him define this cultural moment.
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IMDB review by: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
In the unified Germany, the aspirant of singer Anna (Maria Schrader) drives her old Russian car to a small town trying to get the job of singer in a bar. Meanwhile, the twenty years old Lisa (Anna Thalbach), who is disturbed with the suicide of her father, arrives in the same town. They meet each other by chance in a bank, where they begin a successful career of bank thieves. A nasty detective from the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in charge of the investigation starts a touch chase trying to catch them and destroy the empathy of the population for them.Read More »

Farocki frequently chooses a single news photo as his pretext. In his film he explains convincingly that ‘learning from images’ is not so much a question of having power over the image or a consistent subject-position towards the image, which would allow the filmmaker access to complete knowledge. Instead he insists on pursuing photography’s separation of reference and discourse, by proving this to be a separation of the subject as well as a separation within the subject itself. The modern notion of representation, at least that which we owe to cinema, is based on iconicity, similarity and probability.Read More »

Lara has just turned sixty; it’s a very special day that will culminate in a career-defining piano concert given by her son. Viktor remains elusive, however, and his mother’s repeated attempts to get through to him come to nothing. German acting legend Corinna Harfouch stars in this precisely crafted psychological study by one of the most successful German filmmakers of his generation, Jan-Ole Gerster, who here takes up the thread of his critically acclaimed debut Oh Boy.Read More »