Margit Carstensen

Schlingensief’s most personal work about his disease, lung cancer, diagnosed in 2008.Read More »

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A journey through a surreal Germany: A police officer in a bear costume. A female documentary filmmaker who is unable to find an interesting story. A pedicurist who carefully sets aside the hard skin removed from the feet of his aged female patient. A rich couple that refuses to sit in a German-built car. A history student uninterested in a class visit to a concentration camp. A wild man training a raven in the woods.Read More »

Bettina Böhler creates a memorial to the director Christoph Schlingensief on the 10th anniversary of his death, a portrait of the filmmaker’s work and influence.Read More »

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Fritz Haarmann, aka the Butcher of Hanover and the Vampire of Hanover, was a German serial killer responsible for the murders of two dozen boys and young men during the so-called ‘years of crisis’ between the wars. His case would partly inspire Fritz Lang’s M, and its central character portrayed by Peter Lorre, as well as this forgotten gem from 1973.

Tenderness of the Wolves treats the viewer to a few weeks in the company of a killer. Baby-faced and shaven-headed, in a manner that recalls both M and F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, Haarmann is a fascinating, repulsive figure. Using his status as a police informant to procure his victims, he dismembers their bodies after death and sells the flesh to restaurants, dumping the remainder out of sight. This isn’t an easy film to watch, but it certainly gets under the skin…Read More »

A single woman in her early thirties, Martha (Margit Carstensen) is on vacation with her father in Rome when he has a heart attack and falls down dead. She reacts rather indifferently and returns home to her highly-strung mother and begins to new era of her life taking care of a completely ungrateful and insulting mother (declining an offer of marriage from her boss). After a barrage of verbal abuse and offensive remarks from her mother who see’s her as an ‘ugly old spinster’ she accepts a proposal of marriage from an equally insulting and disrespectful man, Helmuth. They honeymoon in Italy. Read More »

In the 15th century, Hans Bohm, a shepherd, claimed to have been visited by the Virgin Mary. He began preaching and gathered around him thousands of disciples who believed him to be the New Messiah. He was arrested and burned at the stake by the church. Fassbinder uses this true story to reflect the sexual and political upheaval in Germany, showing how and why revolution fails.Read More »

This satire of post re-unification Germany follows a couple investigating the disappearance of a German social worker and the Polish family in his care. Their search takes them to the town of Rassau, where the remaining hostage takers are living undercover as a priest and a furniture wholesaler.Read More »

The survivors of the old Fassbinder crew gather one last time to shoot a remake of Pasolini’s Salò. Meanwhile, the producer sends an agent to Hollywood to meet Udo Kier, Kitten Natividad and others on a mission to raise money and get ex-Visconti superstar Helmut Berger to appear in the film.Read More »

KAFFEEHAUS, DAS
(nach Carlo Goldoni)

“In Ridolfo’s coffeehouse, citizens meet to talk about money, friendship, love, and honor. This is a modernistic staging for television of a play by Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793), the Venetian playwright whose many works preserve in scripted form the improvisational productions of the Italian commedia dell’arte.”Read More »