Ben Becker

  • Juraj Herz – Habermann (2010)

    A mill owner in the Sudetenland and his family’s lives are changed as Europe heats up in 1938.

    Habermann (Czech: Habermannův mlýn) is a 2010 Czech-German-Austrian drama film directed by Juraj Herz. In the story, a German mill owner in the Sudetenland and his family’s lives are changed as Europe heats up in 1938.

    Quote:
    The German-Czech-Austrian production “Habermann” is being marketed — with the tagline “War is over; vengeance has begun” — as a look at a corner of history that is little known in America: the expulsion of millions of ethnic German civilians from parts of Europe after World War II. It’s a tricky tale to tell; the film’s opening and closing scenes of Germans in Czechoslovakia being rounded up and loaded onto trains consciously echo the familiar imagery of Jews being sent to Nazi concentration camps.Read More »

  • Rosa von Praunheim – Der Einstein des Sex AKA The Einstein of Sex: Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld (1999)

    The Einstein of Sex: Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld (German: Der Einstein des Sex) is a 1999 German film directed by Rosa von Praunheim. The plot follows the life of the Jewish doctor Magnus Hirschfeld who was a sexologist and gay socialist. In 1897, Hirschfeld founded the first political gay group in history.

    In the film three of Hirschfeld’s closest friends are portrayed: Baron Hermann von Teschenberg, Karl Giese and Dorchen (a transsexual). They establish the first Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin in 1919. They try to keep the institute open during the rise of the Third Reich in the early 1930s.Read More »

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