Hanns Zischler

Quote:
Set in a country estate beside the river Alz, the focus on this intellectual German drama, an adaptation of a text by Goethe, is on the complex interaction and conversations between four people involved with the film industry. Edouard is a restless filmmaker who is planning to make a film out of his fiancee Charlotte’s upcoming first book. She is an actress and will star in the film. To help with the scripting, Edouard invites screenwriter Otto to stay with them. The last member of the quartet is Charlotte’s pretty niece Ottilie, a classical guitar student. Tensions arise when Charlotte and Otto find each other equally inept as writers. Much of the film centers upon the heavy and frequently aloof discourse that goes on between the foursome as they wrangle their way towards finishing and marketing the script.Read More »

Florian Widegger wrote:
‘Goodbye romance – welcome reality’ is the almost programmatic title of one of the songs that accompanies this remarkable film by Siggi Götz and Jess Franco’s former assistant, who died young. The 18-year-old Dave is imprisoned for stealing a motorbike, but fakes a suicide and, chased by law enforcement officers, makes his way through West Berlin, which was surrounded by a wall at the time and is the film’s secret main attraction. First he seeks out his girlfriend, a stripper in one of the city’s hippest clubs, then he settles unfinished business with his ex-client … Schenkel’s official directorial debut – enriched with great punk and new wave music made in West Germany – is a chilly and visually stunning document of the no-future generation. Rightly cult!Read More »

Google translated description from the Harun Farocki’s site:
Harun Farocki’s film Something Becomes Visible does not want to explain why a war in such a distant country could for a moment spill over to the whole western world. It’s about distances, relationships between. Nor does he explain, he just reminds us that never before has a war been so massively covered. But it would be too much to say that the pictures helped determine its course. It shows the aftermath, the effects of the war. He combines a historical motif with a romantic one. Vietnam and a couple in love.Read More »

Synopsis:
Giving up-and-coming writers a chance, or better yet, two. The American playwright and later comedian Peter Paul Bergman wrote a film script in the summer of 1964 at the LCB workshop “Playwriting,” which formed the basis of Flowers is His Name. In this crime parody, detective Peter Flowers gets to deal with Nola, the “most beautiful and depraved woman in the world,” as it says in the opening credits: “Love is the material, ecstasy the action, today the time.”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 »

First part of Rudolf Thome’s Zeitreisen trilogy.

Barbara is a successful middle aged woman – a respected architect, a great mother and wife, has good friends; leads the good life in Berlin. Out of nowhere seemingly, but definitely out of her past, Ilke appears – her daughter from a relationship with a Turkish immigrant some 25 years ago. Ilke was raised by her father, who became a wealthy businessman and educated Ilke at Europe’s best schools, but without the benefit of a mother. After the Turk’s death, Ilke comes to Berlin with a great deal of cash. Through a detective with mysterious contacts, one day Ilke walks into Barbara’s life, and family, and is quickly accepted. However, as past details are revealed, Barbara in particular has to face what she had set aside so long ago.Read More »

Quote:
„SCHAUPLÄTZE was my first short film. But it got lost somehow. However, two leftover shots remained and became the first two shots of SAME PLAYER SHOOTS AGAIN. They form some kind of prelude. The rest of the film, after the title consists of a three minute shot repeated five times, like the five balls in a pinball machine. It was shot in black and white and then repeated five times, dyed in a different color each time. It did not really turn out a color film. Just a bit of blue, red, yellow and green along the road.” – Wim WendersRead More »

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Wyborny’s film is a startling modern take on Roman victor and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Combining traditional togas and contemporary casual clothes, the German director stages a visually puzzling balancing act between the Roman era and the present. He examines Sullas inner world and his distorted relationship to nature as well as the outer influences in his building of a nation. Juxtaposing the functions of Sullas body and mind, Wyborny has created a stunning portrait of the politician, in which he blurs the lines between advanced civilization and pornography.Read More »

Lemmy Caution investigates a German ruins.
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Jean-Luc Godard’s Germany Year 90 Nine Zero – the title being a pun on Roberto Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero (1947) – was made for French television in 1991 and continued his reflexive cinema/video image/sound practice that reached its zenith with Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1989-97). Germany Year 90 Nine Zero can be considered a sort of loose sequel to Godard’s Alphaville (1965). The film follows the adventures of Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine), “the last of the secret agents,” as he wanders through a post-Berlin-Wall Germany (from the East to the West) through a landscape littered with history. It is 26 years later, and Lemmy is looking exhausted, vulnerable, as befits the landscape of East Germany.Read More »