Germany

  • Hartmut Bitomsky – Staub AKA Dust (2007)

    Arthouse2001-2010DocumentaryGermanyHartmut Bitomsky

    A speck of dust is just about perceptible to the naked eye. It’s the smallest visible subject a film can be about – it’s a medium of disappearance and a criteria of perception. Wherever we go, it has already beaten us; wherever we turn, it follows us. It is our past, our present and our future. It is universal and has a name in every language. It keeps housewives busy, as well as scientists, inventors, artists and entire industrial branches. It is blamed for feeding vermin and causing illness. It takes ownership of our possessions, it penetrates laboratories, it creates planets and galaxies. We’re surrounded by it, it gets inside us, we shed it… It nestles right into the despair of its own existence.Read More »

  • Rolf Hansen – Der Weg ins Freie AKA The Way to Freedom (1941)

    1941-1950DramaGermanyRolf HansenThird Reich Cinema

    Synopsis:
    ‘In Vienna, during the 1848 Revolution, opera singer Antonia Corvelli marries Detlev von Blossin, a rich landowner. But, as she refuses to give up her career, her infuriated husband returns to Pomerania without her. After falling into the clutches of the cruel and wicked count Stefan Oginski, whose lover she unfortunately becomes, Antonia has no other choice but to pass for dead in order to escape him. She then returns to Italy where she joins small theater companies under various aliases. Until one day she is overtaken by her fate…’
    – Guy BellingerRead More »

  • Herrmann Zschoche – Karla AKA Carla (1965)

    1961-1970DramaGermanyHerrmann ZschocheRomance

    Synopsis:
    ‘When she discovers her students are hiding their true thoughts and feelings, Karla, a young and idealistic teacher at the start of her career, goes against the routine opportunism, hypocritisy and small-mindedness all around her. Her superiors view her actions with unease, however, and eventually step in to discipline her.
    This film, written by renowned author Ulrich Plenzdorf, was considered nihilistic, skeptical and hostile by officials. It became one of the dozen East German films banned in 1965-66. Only in 1990, after the fall of the Wall, was Karla finally screened in cinemas.’
    – DEFA Film LibraryRead More »

  • Richard Oswald – Die Blume von Hawaii (1933)

    1931-1940ComedyGermanyMusicalRichard OswaldWeimar Republic cinema

    Suzanne, aspiring artist working in a Parisian night club, is hired by two foreigners to be partnerin for the main singer, on the condition that they must travel to Hawaii. When they arrive, the American governor is aware that the islanders, headed by Prince Lilo Taro, might become rebellious.Read More »

  • Dietrich Haugk – Der Kommissar – Als die Blumen Trauer trugen (EP 39) aka The Day the Flowers were mourning (1971)

    1971-1980CrimeDietrich HaugkGermanyTV

    Dr. Trotta is shot at night in his garden. He was a fan of the odd band “Joker Five” among which Keller suspects the perpetrator. The female singer of this band, a friend of Trottas son Peter, died a few weeks earlier of complications of an abortion. A direct guilt can be proved, but who bears the moral responsibility for the tragic event?Read More »

  • Konrad Wolf – Der kleine Prinz (1966)

    1961-1970FantasyGermanyKonrad Wolf

    Quote:
    Der kleine Prinz (1966/1972) has been even more thoroughly buried by history than the rest of Wolf’s work, or the corpus of DEFA production in general. The reasons for this neglect are multiple on the one hand, the film got caught in the crossfire of the Eleventh Plenum, which took place during the shooting of the film. Although the project had been conceived of as a vehicle for the eventual launch of color TV in the GDR (an undertaking that was repeatedly started and stopped), Heinz Adamock (1921-2010), Intendant of the DFF from 1954 to 1989, sought to get out of his commitment to fund the film, until Albert Wilkening insisted he honor it.Read More »

  • Robert Wiene – Raskolnikow AKA Crime and Punishment [Italian] (1923)

    1921-1930CrimeGermanyRobert WieneSilentWeimar Republic cinema

    Synopsis:
    Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg, driven to utter desperation by grinding poverty and near-starvation, formulates a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money, afterward falling prey to the torment of his own conscience.Read More »

  • Arthur Maria Rabenalt – Martina (1949)

    1941-1950Arthur Maria RabenaltClassicsDramaGermany

    Plot (A little bumpy because google translator):
    The young Martina gets towards the end of the war of World War II to a pimp and so she goes first to the juvenile court and then in the care. Here she meets her older sister Irene, who stretches out his friend Volker. First, they want to avoid the conflict and flees, then she comes back to reconciliation in the care. Her resolutions does not keep a long time and she goes back to prostitution. She becomes witness of a murder and gets to escape in an accident. Finally, Martina believes she has carried out the murder …Read More »

  • Veit Harlan – Jud Süß AKA Jew Seuss (1940)

    1931-1940DramaGermanyPoliticsThird Reich CinemaVeit Harlan

    In this notorious Nazi propaganda historical costume melodrama, a conniving, ambitious Jewish businessman, Süß Oppenheimer, snares a post as treasurer to the Duke of Wurttemburg by showering the corrupt duke with treasure and promises of even greater riches. As the Jew’s schemes grow more elaborate and his actions more brazen, the dukedom nearly erupts into civil war. Persuaded by the Jew, the Duke all but scuttles the constitution and alienates the assembly by lifting the local ban on Jews in Stuttgart. In a final outrage, the Jew rapes a wholesome German girl and tortures her father and fiancée. When the Duke succumbs to a sudden heart attack, the assembly of Elders try the Jew and sentence him to death for having “carnal knowledge of a Christian woman”.Read More »

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