Confectioner Mauritz is shot at close range. His wife, Thai woman Sita, whom he met two years ago through a marriage institute, is frightened and barely speaks German. Her five-year-old daughter, who she brought into the marriage, is also silent. The searches lead Commissioners Batic and Leitmayr to the Flügel Agency, that specialises in the placement of women with small children. Batic registers as an alleged customer with the institute.Read More »
Germany
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Dominik Graf – Tatort: Frau Bu lacht (1995)
1991-2000CrimeDominik GrafGermanyThriller -
Robert Wiene – Orlacs Hände AKA The Hands of Orlac (1924)
1921-1930GermanyHorrorRobert WieneSilentWeimar Republic cinemaA world-famous pianist loses both hands in an accident. When new hands are grafted on, he doesn’t know they once belonged to a murderer.Read More »
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Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – Machorka-Muff (1963) (HD)
1961-1970ArthouseDanièle HuilletGermanyJean-Marie StraubShort FilmQuote:
The caustic, satirical tone of Machorka-Muff is immediately evident, but successive viewings will reward spectators as they become more familiar with the nuances of Böll’s text—to which the film owes a great deal of its incisiveness—and will be more able to appreciate the precise orchestration executed by Straub and Huillet of the relations between sound and image, of tensions between voice, gesture, tempo, and action. The film’s opening—combining, in barely 48 seconds, extreme concision, lucid insight, and brutal parody—offers us an excellent example of this.— Cristina Álvarez López, MubiRead More »
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Peter Fleischmann – Das Unheil AKA Havoc AKA The Bells of Silesia (1972) (HD)
1971-1980Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseGermanyPeter FleischmannQuote:
A small town in Germany in the early 70s. Hille, the son of the local preacher, tries for the second time to graduate high school. Despite sophisticated efforts at memorization, he knows he won’t succeed this time either. At the same time other, more ominous problems occur: a choir girl thinks he impregnated her. His sister Dimuth, allegedly a successful model, returns from Rome followed by her pimp. The Silesian bell festival his father is planning threatens to become a political disaster. The impending doom spreads. Dimuth’s former classmate Uli, an apprentice at the local sewage plant, discovered tumorous swans and dead fish in the river, then drowns mysteriously in its polluted waters. Two students hiding in the bell tower of the church plan a terror attack.Read More » -
Ulrike Ottinger – Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse AKA The Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press (1984)
1981-1990ArthouseGermanyQueer Cinema(s)Ulrike OttingerQuote:
From the panoramic, historical revue of the many faces of social prejudice and ostracism, Ottinger turns her attention to the mechanism of exclusion invested with the necessary power to make or break people. Frau Dr. Mabuse, whose illustrious precursor is Fritz Lang’s psychopathic, counterfeiting boss of the underworld, derives her power from the fabrication of reality based on the seduction of images and words. Her perfect object and victim is the Bauhaus-dandy Dorian, whose relation to Oscar Wilde’s prototype is as marginal as his relation to power. The fairy-tale framework of Ottinger’s feature compositions asserts itself strongly in this film as Dorian replaces the evil tycoon and becomes king of the media conglomerate.Read More » -
Jean-Marie Straub – Einleitung zu Arnold Schoenbergs Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene AKA Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene (1973)(HD)
1971-1980ArthouseGermanyJean-Marie StraubShort FilmQuote:
In 1923, sensing the gathering storm of “fear, danger, and catastrophe” in Germany, the composer Arnold Schoenberg wrote a devastatingly prescient and heartbreaking letter to his former friend, the painter Wassily Kandinsky. Schoenberg aligned his fate with that of all Jews, knowing they were soon to face exile or violent death. Straub-Huillet’s film, a recitation both of Schoenberg’s letter and Bertolt Brecht’s 1935 speech to the International Congress in Defense of Culture, is a fierce condemnation of anti-Semitism, German crimes against humanity, and the barbaric war machine of capitalism.
—MoMARead More » -
Jean-Marie Straub – Einleitung zu Arnold Schoenbergs Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene AKA Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene (1973)
1971-1980ArthouseGermanyJean-Marie StraubShort FilmQuote:
In 1923, sensing the gathering storm of “fear, danger, and catastrophe” in Germany, the composer Arnold Schoenberg wrote a devastatingly prescient and heartbreaking letter to his former friend, the painter Wassily Kandinsky. Schoenberg aligned his fate with that of all Jews, knowing they were soon to face exile or violent death. Straub-Huillet’s film, a recitation both of Schoenberg’s letter and Bertolt Brecht’s 1935 speech to the International Congress in Defense of Culture, is a fierce condemnation of anti-Semitism, German crimes against humanity, and the barbaric war machine of capitalism.
—MoMARead More » -
Harun Farocki – Sauerbruch Hutton Architekten (2013)
2011-2020ArchitectureDocumentaryGermanyHarun FarockiTVFarocki’s latest documentary catches the creative process at work at Berlin-based architectue firm Sauerbruch Hutton.Read More »
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Peter Nestler – Die Hohlmenschen (2015)
2011-2020ArthouseGermanyPeter Nestler“Don’t be scared,” he’d whisper, “There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s just the hollow people.” Peter Nestler has made a film based on Israeli author and scriptwriter Etgar Keret’s short story “The Hollow Men”. a man’s memories of his childhood, marked by the fear of bodiless voices and masks. A beautiful and terrible miniature at the same time.Read More »