Synopsis
This is the tale of a young woman, growing up in the age of the internet and turning the search for oneself into a public spectacle, allowing kids from all over the world to live their life through hers. Through her fragmented personalities you see the emergence of a new generation, in which the concept of a fixed identity has grown old.Read More »
Germany
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Pia Hellenthal – Searching Eva (2019)
2011-2020DocumentaryGermanyPia Hellenthal -
Oskar Fischinger – Studie Nr. 7 AKA Study No. 7 (1931)
1931-1940AnimationExperimentalGermanyOskar FischingerQuote:
Animated to the lively accompaniment of Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5, and created using thousands of handmade black & white charcoal drawings, Fischinger’s delightfully dynamic short film sees dozens of white shapes dance, glide, shoot, and pop across a stark black background, leaving us transfixed in their wake.Read More » -
Oskar Fischinger – Studie Nr. 6 AKA Study No. 6 (1930)
1921-1930AnimationExperimentalGermanyOskar Fischinger
Quote.
The first Studies were synchronized with records (Fischinger made a total of 13 Studies all without sound). It was only with the introduction of sound, beginning with Study No 6 that the films did full justice to this musical principle. The play of the white lines, the arcs, and the upside-down U’s running hither and thither like ballet dancers was brought into perfect synchronization with the music, and thus the films offered an abstract illustration of the melodies. Study No 6 is certainly the best of his films in terms of forms. – Hans Scheugl and Ernst Schmidt, Jr.Read More » -
Robert Wiene – Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari AKA The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Germany1911-1920HorrorRobert WieneSilentWeimar Republic cinemaFrancis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. It is the annual fair in Holstenwall. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep. When Alan asks Cesare about his future, Cesare answers that he will die before dawn. The next morning Alan is found dead. Francis suspects Cesare of being the murderer, and starts spying on him and Dr. Caligari. The following night Cesare is going to stab Jane in her bed, but softens when he sees the beautiful woman, and instead of committing another murder, he abducts her. Read More »
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Manfred Blank – Wie will ich lustig lachen: Danièle Huillet und Jean-Marie Straub und ihr Film Klassenverhältnisse AKA How Merrily I Shall Laugh: Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub on Their Film Class Relations (1984)
1981-1990DocumentaryGermanyManfred BlankFilmmaker Manfred Blank (director of the excellent Pharos of Chaos) interviews Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub at some length about their then-current production, Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations), in which he, himself, performed as an actor.Read More »
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Harun Farocki – Jean-Marie Straub und Daniéle Huillet bei der Arbeit an einem Film nach Franz Kafkas Romanfragment Amerika AKA Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at Work on a Film Based on Franz Kafka’s Amerika (1983)
1981-1990DocumentaryGermanyHarun FarockiQuote:
Harun Farocki films Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at work during the shooting of Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations), a film based on Kafka’s unfinished novel, Amerika, in which Farocki himself plays the character, Delamarche. The film is both a tribute to the work of the two filmmakers, who define themselves as “artisans” in reaction against the film industry, and as he says, a self-portrait: at work, directed by the couple, he endlessly repeats his gestures and lines, like a worker up to the point of exhaustion.Read More » -
Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – Klassenverhältnisse AKA Class Relations [+Extra] (1984)
1981-1990ArthouseDanièle Huillet and Jean-Marie StraubGermanyThe Lincoln Center wrote:
Straub and Huillet were frequently drawn to unfinished texts—Hölderlin’s The Death of Empedocles, Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron—and for Class Relations, one of their supreme accomplishments, they turned to Kafka’s never-completed Amerika. “Kafka, for us,” Straub declared, “is the only major poet of industrial civilization, I mean, a civilization where people depend on their work to survive.” Kafka never did visit the America of his novel, so perhaps it’s fitting that the saga of Karl Rossmann, a teenage immigrant from Europe who arrives to a strange new land rife with swindlers and hypocrites, was largely shot in Hamburg. The style of Straub-Huillet, with their Brechtian performances, long takes, and static framing, is often characterized as “austere,” yet such a description belies the extraordinary richness of their images, the palpable weight of their direct-sound, and the invigorating clarity of their political commitment.Read More » -
Eduard Tisse – Frauennot – Frauenglück AKA Women’s Misery – Women’s Happiness (1976 edition) (1930)
1921-1930DocumentaryEduard TisseGermanyQuote:
First feature produced in Switzerland. Film deals with abortion, in two parts: first, fictional part addresses the social aspects; second, documentary part addresses the dangers of clandestine abortions. Film concludes with a eulogy to maternity.Read More » -
Ramon Zürcher – Reinhardtstraße (2009)
2001-2010ArthouseGermanyRamon ZürcherShort Film“Janine and Nadine have a close and symbiotic friendship. They share a flat together with their friends Mark and Andreas. The flat share is a universe with its own rules, languages, manners and relationships. A stimulating place, where chaos is floating through corridors and rooms. Pending over everything is the approaching breakup of the community, which becomes more and more perceptible within short moments of silence. One of the flat mates, Janine, is going to leave. Janine’s farewell party affects each of her friends in a different way. A precise description of a fragile structure breaking apart.”Read More »