German

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“24 Realities per Second” portrays Michael Haneke’s work and his view of cinema.

Nina Kusturica and Eva Testor accompanied and observed Michael Haneke over a period of two and a half years during his work. Location scouts, film premieres, public appearances, discussions with audiences, radio interviews, on set, editing rooms. The rare conversations occur almost incidentally in cars, trains and planes. The objective of the film is the precise observation in different situations, out of which emerges an obsessed filmmaker. The thoughts of a man become apparent through his actions and the nature of his activity.

“24 Realities per Second” sketches with many little episodes and a few conversations the working universe of Michael Haneke. In contrast to the numerous interviews that Haneke gave in the course of his career, the film does not focus on his eloquence but concentrates on his craftsmanship.Read More »

Synopsis:
A four man US fireteam on patrol seizes a passing young vietnamnese girl and continue to torture, rape and kill her. Only one soldier refuses to take part in it and reports this incident to his superior, who dismisses it as simple wartime incident. As a consequence for his report, the soldier has to fear for his life. Later, the perpetrators are convicted, although subsequent appeals reduce their sentences significantly.
The plot takes place in a bavarian forest and reenacts a real war crime that happened in the vietnam war. The soldiers wear US uniforms, have authentic names but speak with a pronounced bavarian accent – a conscious directing decision known as Brechtian distancing effect.Read More »

Synopsis

Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide wrote:
Historian, author, and movie critic Lotte H. Eisner is the subject of this documentary. She recalls her early childhood in Germany and her association with such legendary directors as F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. Leaving Germany for Paris in 1933, her anticipation of WW II saw her relocating to the South of France. Eisner gives her considerable and insightful opinions on classic German Expressionist Films, as several of her admirers drop by during the interview conducted by director Sohrab Shadid-Saless.Read More »

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Made for Bavarian TV in 1983, this documentary traces the life and films of the most popular female star of the late Weimar cinema, Lilian Harvey. From the very beginnings in some films by Richard Eichberg to her eminent stardom together with Willy Fritsch in classics like “Der Kongress tanzt”, her subsequent time in Hollywood and her return to Germany because of her love for director Paul Martin, to her escape from the nazis and her later life, the film gives a fine portrait of the actress and the big changes in the German film industry of the 20s and 30s.Read More »

In a strict Prussian boarding school for girls, sensitive student Manuela von Meinhardis develops a forbidden love to one of her teachers, the compassionate Elisabeth von Bernburg.Read More »

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If you are moved by the death of a parakeet at the beginning of The Elementary Particles (Elementarteilchen), you are in for a bumpy ride, as all of humanity as we know it will be wiped out by the film’s end in a brief written epilogue. Of course, those who have read the novel (Les particules élémentaires in its original French, Atomised in its UK version) saw this coming, but for those who are unfamiliar with Michel Houellebecq’s cult hit that explosively mixes sex, death and science to annihilate mankind – and blames the flower power generation for it in the process – this might come as something of a shock.Read More »

Sometime during the 19th century in Switzerland: After a delirious night of drinking, three herdsmen who are all alone in the alps with their kettle, create a female doll from cloth and a strangely formed wooden root. When their creation comes to life in form of an evil and beautiful female demon, they have to fear for their lives…Read More »

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The most remarkable discovery in recent German-language cinema: Gerhard Friedl’s first feature is a hypnotic visual puzzle at the interface of documentary, essay film and pulp fiction. On the soundtrack: an unflinchingly ‘objective’ account of the labyrinthine genealogies, criminal involvements and afflictions of Germany’s economic leaders in the 20th century. On the screen: pans and tracking shots through European financial centres, production sites and landscapes. The sheer depth and crispness of these images is a treat in itself; a transformation into cinégénie of what artists like Candida Höfer or Jeff Wall have done by means of still photography. At times, image and sound are aligned, at others they just miss each other. They invariably suggest correlations. Paranoia? Irony? Can the prosaic, criminal state of affairs of a modern economy be depicted at all? Pierre Rissient, the French film historian, puts the film where it belongs: “Fritz Lang would have loved it!”Read More »

“A husband and wife have separated and while in that semi-marital state, the wife begins an affair with a Turkish architect. In the meantime, the once revolutionary-minded husband now prefers his more comfortable lifestyle in his villa with his children and he is the one who writes letters to his wife seeking a reconciliation, but she herself is thrown into a turmoil because choosing between her estranged husband and the Turkish architect is very difficult, if not impossible. —allmovie guide”Read More »