Plot and Background
Director Hellmuth Costard asked himself in 1974: “Is it possible to make films in Germany today?”. Benefiting from a television job, he equips himself with his own camera system and films with several cameras in order to make the illusion of filming clear. In 1977 he failed, interviewed colleagues like Hark Bohm (“North Sea is Murder Sea”) and met his idol Jean-Luc Godard, who came to Hamburg for a day but failed at the NDR and left again. Costard is speechless.

At the beginning of one of the most productive filmmaker associations of the 1960s, the Hamburger Filmmacher-Cooperative, there was the scandal surrounding Hellmuth Costard’s short film Particularly Valuable, which the selection committee wanted to show at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival in 1968, but the festival management withdrew.
Many from the Hamburg cooperative, including Hellmuth Costard, Werner Nekes and Dore O., later found themselves in Filmbüro NW. There, too, Costard remained one of the key figures in experimental film, which was primarily based in Düsseldorf in the context of the art academy.

Lars Henrik Gass is not only the head of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, but also the editor of the only book on Costard to date. The real thing had become a model. Little Godard is, he writes there, “one of the most radical films ever made in Germany, which shows something that he wasn’t even allowed to show. A film about why certain films and images could not and cannot be made in Germany.”

The event is the sixth part of Filmbüro NW’s series Giving the country its pictures, curated by Marcus Seibert. (Source: film workshop)

Little Godard. On the Curatorship of Young German Cinema Deutsche Kinemathek.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 25 min
Size: 	3.71 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	6 400 kb/s
BPP: 	0.129
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 98.7 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/0201BE892C63BC3/Little_Godard._On_the_Curatorship_of_Young_German_Cinema___Deutsche_Kinemathek.mkv

Language(s):German, French
Subtitles:English

The post Hellmuth Costard – Der kleine Godard an das Kuratorium junger deutscher Film AKA Little Godard. On the Curatorship of Young German Cinema (1978) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Realtime, an experimental feature, impresses as an early reflection of the interaction between computer graphics and military technology, of simulation and reality in a world governed by electronic systems and increasing automation. (MUBI)

	
Echtzeit.1983.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-WELP.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 50 min
Size: 	7.76 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1440x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	10 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.268
Audio
#1:  	German 2.0ch E-AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/31FE6B69C26C114/Echtzeit.1983.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-WELP.mkv

Language(s):German
Subtitles:None

The post Hellmuth Costard & Jürgen Ebert – Echtzeit AKA Realtime (1983) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Film by Hellmuth Costard, BRD, 1967, 3 min., 35mm

with Barbara Rieck and Peter Dahl

Cinema is also parodied in Warum hast du mich wachgeküsst: in the bombastic title announcement in beautiful colours and at the end in a …

(translated from kino-im-sprengel.de/)

35.1MB | 2m 38s | 1280×720 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/F2890019F0DCCD4/Warum_hast_du_mich_wachgekUsst_(Hellmuth_Costard,_1967).mkv
https://nitro.download/view/6979596C0324E3E/Warum_hast_du_mich_wachgeküsst_(Hellmuth_Costard,_1967)_Eng_subs_retimed.srt.txt

Language:German
Subtitles:English

The post Hellmuth Costard – Warum hast du mich wachgeküsst? AKA Why did you kiss me awake? (1967) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Pornography in the service of politics. An outrageous provocation, this attack on reactionary German legislation discriminating against young film directors, features head-on, close-up shots of a penis ‘mouthing’ the parliamentary defence of the law by its author. This is followed by masturbation of the organ by an anonymous female hand, ending with ejaculation into the camera and a close-up of a nude behind ‘blowing’ out a candle (with appropriate sound). A landmark in political pamphleteering, the film was selected for the 1968 Oberhausen International Short Film Festival by a committee of leading German critics, and promptly banned by the (social-democratic!) city government, causing the withdrawal of almost all German directors from the festival and a national scandal. The title satirically refers to the official certificate of ‘Particularly Valuable’ given each year to the best film shorts by an Establishment selection committee.
– Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art

170MB | 10mn 58s | 720×544 | avi

https://nitroflare.com/view/DD713DA355A080A/Besonders_Wertvoll.avi
https://nitroflare.com/view/DD954AF68BC6DE4/Besonders_Wertvoll.srt

Language:German
Subtitles:English

The post Hellmuth Costard – Besonders wertvoll (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The sun shone on Old Trafford on 12th September 1970 as Manchester United beat Coventry 2:0 in a league match. It was not an important victory; that season Man Utd would only be also-rans in the race for the championship. But a record was preserved of the match that is probably unique in the history of film and television. Using eight 16mm cameras, Hellmuth Costard, one of the most important experimental filmmakers in German cinema of the 60s and 70s, followed every move over the 90 minutes of the man in the red jersey with the number 11 – traditionally associated with the conventional outside left, but here worn by the mercurial George Best.

There are hardly any wide shots in this film, the cameras are trained on George Best throughout, and we follow the progress of the game only through his actions and reactions. We only see the ball when it comes near Best, and most of the time it is only Best in shot. The viewer can only guess what his happening on the pitch to make the 24 year old star from Belfast run, sprint, turn, pull up or stand still. We don’t even see the second goal, just Best’s lay-off that sets up the chance. Only when he congratulates Bobby Charlton do we realize who has scored. And it is only by observing the markings on the grass that we realize how little time Best spends in the vicinity of his own penalty area. Football As Never Before is a film without cut away shots, which makes it the exact opposite of most television today. Even the crowd is only a blur in the background.

What at first seems like an eccentric experiment turns in the course of the film into something much more valuable: never before has the spectator had such a clear view of a player’s progress through a match and his attempts to “read the game” – or such an insight into how carefully a player like Best paces himself. Particularly in the first half he spends far more time waiting for the ball than in possession of it. At times he seems to be just standing around hands on hips, at others he strolls around the pitch like a man out for a walk – even the referee overtakes him en route to the opponents’ goal. And then, out of nowhere, he explodes into action, as he does for the first goal.

With the passing of time, Football As Never Before seems like an exercise in nostalgia, and not only because George Best’s decline from the status of football icon has been so widely reported in the media. Nowadays football is much faster and more athletic; any Premier League manager of today, faced with a player who runs as little as Best, would substitute him at half time. The demand for total commitment must have been less unremitting in those days. So there is hardly a nasty foul to be seen, no one rolling on the ground theatrically to get an opponent booked, and certainly no arguments with the referee. And the absence of perimeter fencing to keep the crowd off the pitch would be almost inconceivable now.

The professional game today is surrounded by a lot of media hot air, with players encouraged to give an opinion on every trivial incident. Football As Never Before is a film without any kind of verbal commentary. When the players go off at half time in Costard’s film, the camera seems to follow Best until the star suddenly stops and looks straight into the lens – calmly, without saying a word. The shot seems to communicate his thoughts about the match, like an interview without words – until closer inspection of the state of Best’s beard shows this sequence was filmed on a different day.

The green grass of the Old Trafford pitch becomes on screen a shimmering blue-grey, as bleached and faded as the pale blue jerseys of Coventry City. The contrast makes United’s red shirts seem even more intense – like a fervent political statement. At around the same time the German documentary duo Rolf Schübel and Theo Gallehr were filming a workers’ strike. The title of their film was Rote Fahnen sieht man besser (Red Flags are Easier to See). Football As Never Before is a film that celebrates the iconic use of colour. As the Frankfurter Rundschau commented at the time, its concentration on one player actually shows “the true extent to which the sport is all about teamwork”. For such a politically aware filmmaker as Costard, reviews like that in 1970 would have been music to his ears.

https://nitro.download/view/BA7880A729BD627/FuBball_Wie_Noch_Nie_-_Soccer_As_Never_Before_(1970,_in_memory_of_George_Best).avi

Language(s):No dialogue
Subtitles:None

The post Hellmuth Costard – Fußball wie noch nie AKA Soccer As Never Before (1971) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Pornography in the service of politics. An outrageous provocation, this attack on reactionary German legislation discriminating against young film directors, features head-on, close-up shots of a penis ‘mouthing’ the parliamentary defense of the law by its author. This is followed by masturbation of the organ by an anonymous female hand, ending with ejaculation into the camera and a close-up of a nude behind ‘blowing’ out a candle (with appropriate sound). A landmark in political pamphleteering, the film was selected for the 1968 Oberhausen International Short Film Festival by a committee of leading German critics, and promptly banned by the (social-democratic!) city government, causing the withdrawal of almost all German directors from the festival and a national scandal. The title satirically refers to the official certificate of ‘Particularly Valuable’ given each year to the best film shorts by an Establishment selection committee.

196MB | 11m 25s | 718×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/9AA2799CADBE331/Besonders_wertvoll_(1968)_Hellmuth_Costard.mkv

Language:German
Subtitles:English

The post Hellmuth Costard – Besonders wertvoll (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.