Quote: A film about the time of the blast furnances – 1917-1933 – about the development of an industry, about a perfect machinery which had to run itself to the point of its own destruction.
The essay from the Berlin filmmaker, Harun Farocki, on heavy industry and the gas of the blast furnace, convinces through the author’s cool abstraction and manic obsession and through the utilization of a single example of the self-destructive character of capitalistic production: “The image of the blust furnace gas is real and metaphoric; an energy blows away uselessly into the air. Guided through a system of pipes, the pressure increases. Hence, a valve is needed. That valve is the production of war material.”
Between Two Wars is also a film about the strains of filmmaking and a reflection on craft and creation. Farocki distances himself radically from the thoughtless sloppiness of average television work. The clarity and the precise ordering of his black and white images, which do not illustrate thoughts but are themselves thoughts, are reminiscent of the late Godard. The poverty of this film – its production took six years – is at the same time its strength.
Quote: In 1966, a former gymnast returns to his hometown Danzig, which is now a part of Poland. He begins to reflect on one of his classmates, Joachim Mahlke, who disappeared during World War II. Mahlke was initially marked as an outsider due to his oversized Adam’s apple, but when he turned out to be a great diver, the in-crowd embraced him. Then he steals a Knight’s Cross from a soldier and is expelled from school. Volunteering for war service, he earns a medal himself and hopes his reputation will be rehabilitated. But the school principal refuses and Mahlke deserts from the army … Almost no other film of the “young German cinema” era was as controversial as this loose adaptation of a novella by Günter Grass. The political right alleged “desecration” of the Knight’s Cross and it was the subject of a parliamentary inquiry and ministerial attempts to censure it. The scandal was exacerbated by the fact that two of Willy Brandt’s sons acted in the film and, undeservedly, the contretemps drew far more attention than the film’s innovative “nouvelle vague” aspects, which included an ironic attitude and modern creative techniques such as the narrative interweave of past and present.
Quote: Based on the novel of the same title by Heinrich Böll.
The young electrician Walter Fendrich has started a promising career. Everything seems to be on the right track. As the future husband of his employer’s daughter Walter even can hope to once succeed him as head of the company. All of a sudden, the visit of a girl from his home town, whom he last saw seven years ago, changes his entire life. Walter realizes that his entire life so far has been all wrong. He breaks out of his former “reasonable“ life and gives up and the wonderful security of the affluent society. He simply disapperas without a farewell or explanation… The Bread of those Early Years expresses the concepts of concern to German intellectuals in the early sixties: criticism of the petrified conditions in the society of the economic miracle and the search for new forms of expression, life and thought. Vesely’s film is an attempt not only to describe such a search as Walter Fendrich gradually becomes conscious of his life, but it is a search in itself.
One of the first feature-length films of the “New German Cinema”, Herbert Vesely’s Das Brot der frühen Jahre, made in 1961, was envisioned to be a German variation on Alain Resnais’ ast Year at Marienbad, complete with disorienting visual imagery and an open story structure that refused narrative closure and left many questions unanswered. In contrast to films produced in a studio system, like the classic Hollywood or Ufa films that were made under the control of studio executives, New German Cinema was entirely director-driven. New German directors saw themselves as “authors” who should have complete creative control over their projects.
Synopsis: The American filmmaker James Benning has been one of the outstanding exponents of the structural film since the mid-1970s. Bennings artistic position has been strongly influenced by mathematics and by the creativity of mathematical thinking. With his new project 13 Lakes, James Benning goes one step further towards reducing things to a minimum. The film focuses on thirteen large American lakes (including Salton Sea, Lake Powell, and Lake Michigan) along with their geographical and historical relationship to the landscape. This documentary film was occasioned by 13 Lakes, and was shot in California, Arizona, and Utah. It accompanies the artist for a week as he searches for locations and as he films the first two shots for his own film.
Based on the story by Edgar Wallace, this engrossing suspenser follows a Scotland Yard detective as he investigates a string of drug-related murders involving several women and gangsters. Searching for a mysterious man with a glass eye who may hold the answers to the killings, he encounters backstabbing thugs and plenty of excitement.
Heinz Emigholz-Loos Ornamental / Photography and Beyond – Part 13 (2008)
The film shows 27 still-existing buildings and interiors by Austrian architect Adolf Loos (1870–1933) in order of their construction. Adolf Loos was one of the pioneers of European Modernist architecture. His vehement turn against ornamentation on buildings triggered a controversy in architectural theory. The development of his “spatial plan” launched a new way of thinking about spaces to be built. His houses, furniture for shops and apartments, facades, and monuments were built between 1899 and 1931. They were filmed in 2006 in Vienna, Lower Austria, Prague, Brno, Pilsen, Nachod, and Paris in their present surroundings. * The much-anticipated follow-up to Schindler’s Houses, Heinz Emigholz’s international festival hit and a quick sellout in TIFF’s 2007 Wavelengths programme, Loos Ornamental is the latest and thirteenth installment in this leading German avant-garde filmmaker’s critically lauded Photography and Beyond series. Begun in 1984, this singular undertaking, which will ultimately amount to twenty-five films on art and design, has won Emigholz a solid place among the world’s pre-eminent artists. Meditations on the beauty of man-made works of art, his films employ a rigorous taxonomic approach to buildings –“architecture as autobiography,” as the filmmaker calls it. Loos Ornamental comprises twenty-seven buildings and interiors designed by Adolf Loos (1870-1933), one of the most important and contentious pioneers of Modernist architecture. The façades, shops, houses, apartments and monuments, built between 1899 and 1931, are all presented in their present states, shot in their natural surroundings, from Vienna, lower Austria, Prague, Brno, Pilsen, Nachod, and Paris. The film thus provides a fascinating comparative study of Loos’s work which, to some degree, both surprisingly and pleasantly deviates from the austere tenets he put forth in his 1908 manifesto, Ornament and Crime – a turning point in architectural theory, much discussed and debated to this present day. Formal asceticism meets luscious materials (i.e., the innate “ornamentation” of striated marble, of rich and undulating wood grains, of sumptuous wall paneling), like in Vienna’s famous Kärtner Bar (1908), also known as “The American Bar,” or simply, the “Loos Bar,” a shimmering jewel-box of a snug, romantic boîte. (– Andréa Picard) * Adolf Loos helped define Modernist Architecture with his 1908 essay proclaiming ornament to be a crime. This chronological look at 28 of his surviving buildings, without extraneous commentary, now defines him. The movie plays like a game, encouraging viewers to make connections, judge design choices, and chart the growth of this amazing artist. * “Be not afraid of being called un-fashionable.” – Adolf Loos
“Architecture projects space into this world. Cinemaphotography translates that space into pictures projected in time. Cinema then is used in a completely new way: as a space to meditate on buildungs.” Heinz Emigholz * The film shows the following buildings and interiors by Adolf Loos in order of their construction: Café Museum (1899), Kärtner Bar (1908), and the house on Michaelerplatz (1909–11) in Vienna I; the Steiner (1910), Scheu (1912/13), and Horner (1912) houses in Vienna XIII; the Manz bookstore (1912) in Vienna I, the Rosenfeld apartment (1912) in Vienna XIII, the Kníze tailor shop (1910–13), and the Boskovits apartment (1913) in Vienna I; the façade of the Anglo-Austrian Bank (1913) in Vienna VI, the Duschnitz house (1915/16) in Vienna XIX, the Rohrbacher sugar refinery, a factory, and Villa Bauer (1916/17) in Hrusovany, Czech Republic; the Peter Altenberg grave (1919) in the Central Cemetery in Vienna, the Lainz settlement house, Friedensstadt foundation stone monument (1921), and Rufer house (1922) in Vienna XIII; the Spanner country house (1924) in Gumpoldskirchen, Lower Austria, the foundation stone monument of the Laaerberg settlement (1924) in Vienna X, the reconstructed Ritter castle (1925) and Brünn trade fair grounds in Brno, Czech Republic; the Tristan Tzara house (1925/26) in Paris XVIII, the Moller house (1928) in Vienna XVIII, the Brummel house (1929) in Pilsen, Czech Republic, the Khuner country house (1929/30) in Payerbach, Lower Austria, Villa Müller (1928–30) in Prague, Czech Republic, duplexes in the Werkbund Settlement (1930–32) in Vienna XIII, the workers’ settlement Babí (1931) in Nachod, Czech Republic, the Mitzi Schnabl house (1931) in Vienna XXII, and the Adolf Loos grave in the Central Cemetery in Vienna. * Heinz Emigholz was born in 1948 outside of Bremen. Since 1973, he has worked in Germany and the United States as a freelance filmmaker, artist, writer, cameraman, producer and journalist. He looks back on numerous exhibitions, retrospectives, lectures and publications. In 1974 he started his encyclopedic drawing series Die Basis des Make-Up , currently the subject of a major solo exhibition at Berlin‘s Hamburger Bahnhof museum. In 1978 he founded his own film production company, Pym Films. In 1984, he began a film series called Photographie und jenseits (Photography and Beyond). He has held a professorship in experimental filmmaking at the Berlin University of the Arts since 1993.
Synopsis: The film PERRET IN FRANCE AND ALGERIA presents thirty buildings and architectural ensembles of the French architects and construction engineers Auguste and Gustave Perret. Auguste Perret has masterfully refined concrete construction in the implementation of his projects and instilled in them a classical expression. Working in parallel to the execution of numerous construction projects in France, Perret was building under conditions of colonialism in North Africa. The film traces this division chronologically. The buildings erected in Algeria from 1912 until 1952 are for the first time the subject of a film, as are the ones built in France. The edifices of Perret in France and their continued existence in the present are thus juxtaposed to his projects realized in North Africa. A differentiated interaction with the “architectural heritage” in diverging cultures thereby becomes visible. The fate of Western architectural modernism along with its symbolic value and sustainability in the everyday interaction with its resulting products in varying social conditions and landscapes comes into view.
Quote: Maria is in her mid-20s and lives with her father, a widowed small greengrocer, in Haidhausen. Her friend Bärbel is madly in love with the charming Italian Pietro. His father is a vegetable wholesaler at the Munich wholesale market. Except Maria, who can’t stand him at first, all the girls are interested in the heartbreaker. When Pietro leaves Bärbel, Maria decides to take revenge on him. She makes him fall in love with her, which also makes her friend Franz, a Bundeswehr soldier, very jealous.
The soldier Hansli Gyr returns 1523 to the “Zürcher Oberland”. The he reencounters the love of his youth Ursula, who is now part of a world renouncing sect, the Anabaptists…
Quote: Das TV-Historiendrama nach Gottfried Kellers Novelle galt 1978 als Skandalfilm
Zur Zeit der Refomationskriege: Der Soldat Hansli Gyr (Jörg Riechlin) kehrt 1523 ins Zürcher Oberland zurück. Dort trifft er seine Jugendliebe Ursula (Su-zanne Stoll) wieder. Sie gehört jetzt zu den Wiedertäufern, einer von der Welt abgewandten Sekte…Die Schweiz-DDR-Co-Produktion sorgte für Aufregung: bei den Eidgenossen wegen der Nacktszenen, bei der SED wegen systemkritischer Untertöne.
This is a wonderful documentary movie about Butoh-dancer-legend Kazuo Ohno. It’s a German movie, so there will be some introductory talk and some voiceovers in German, but the other parts of the movies mostly consist of talks in English or in Japanese with an English interpreter sitting next to the people talking in Japanese – so you will be able to understand pretty much without knowing any German. And even if you dont understand anything, the film is just worth it for the wonderful material showing Kazuo Ohno.
Synopsis: The film presents 17 extant buildings by Italian master-builder Pier Luigi Nervi in Italy and France and 10 examples of Ancient Roman architecture made of Opus caementitium.
Director’s statement: “PARABETON starts with the first still exstant dome built of concrete by the Romans in the 1st century BC in Baiae near Naples. Followed in chronological sequence by seventeen buildings of Italian civil-engineer Pier Luigi Nervi (1891-1979) – inventor, grandmaster of concrete structures and the architect’s architect of the 20th century: among others the Pirelli-skysraper in Milano, the Headquarters of Unesco in Paris, the Palazzo del Lavoro in Turin, the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome and the Papal Audience Hall at Vatican City. This succession is from time to time halted by cinematic studies of large Roman structures, among others the Pantheon and the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli. In doing so the film relates Nervi’s path-breaking constructions with the pioneering Roman inventions in his field 2000 years ago. The 100 minutes long film is the first of two parts of the project Decampment of Modernism with which I will conclude my series Architecture as Autobiography about the origins, fate, glory and decline of modern architecture. In a way, PARABETON will be the “grand finale” of the series by going back to the Roman origins of the constructional core of Modernism.”
About the film: Imagine an airspace into which a bomb has been dropped. The bomb has not reached the site of its detonation, but there is no way to stop its speedy approach. The time between the bomb’s release and its explosion is neither the future (for the ineluctable destruction has not yet happened) nor the past (which is unavoidably about to be extinguished). The flight time of the bomb thus describes absolute nothingness, the zero hour, consisting of all the possibilities that in just a moment will no longer exist. Thus, this story will end before it has begun; here it is told in defiance: an architectural journey from Berlin through Arromanches, Rome, Wrocław, Görlitz, Paris, Bologna, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Atlántida, Montevideo, Mexico City, Brasilia, Tokyo, Saipan, Tinian, Tokyo, San Francisco, Dallas, Binz and Mexico City back to Berlin – into the abyss.
Buildings and sculptures: The film The Airstrip was shot from March 2011 to June 2012 in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, the Northern Mariana Islands and Japan. It shows the following buildings and sculptures: Prometheus Bound (1899) by Reinhold Begas in Berlin, Germany Mulberry Harbour (1944) by Winston S. Churchill in Arromanches, France Pantheon (2nd century AD) in Rome, Italy Hala Ludowa (1913) by Max Berg in Wrocław, Poland Department Store (1913) by Carl Schmanns in Görlitz, Germany La Vache Noir Shopping Centre (2000s) in Arceuil, France Gustave Eiffel Monument (1928) by Auguste Perret in Paris, France Market Hall (1953) by Renato Bernadi in Bologna, Italy Madrid Airport Mercado de Abasto Shopping Centre (1934) by Viktor Sulčič in Buenos Aires, Argentina La Bombonera Stadium (1940) by Viktor Sulčič and José Luis Delpini in Buenos Aires, Argentina Three Mausoleums (1930s and ’40s) by Viktor Sulčič on the Recoletta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina Parochial Church (1960) by Eladio Dieste in Atlántida, Uruguay Warehouse (1979) by Eladio Dieste in Montevideo, Uruguay Montevideo Airport Las Arboledas (1958-63) by Luis Barragán in Mexico City, Mexico Double House (1937) by Luis Barragán in Mexico City, Mexico Towers on the Queretaro Highway (1958) by Luis Barragán and Mathias Goeritz in Mexico City, Mexico The End of a Highway (2012) in Mexico City, Mexico Mexico City Airport Italian Embassy (1959) by Pier Luigi and Antonio Nervi in Brasilia, Brazil Brasilia Airport Tokyo Airport Japanese Prison (1930s) in Garapan on Saipan, Northern Marianas La Fiesta Shopping Centre (1990s) on Saipan, Northern Marianas Monument on the Banzai Suicide Cliffs (1953) on Saipan, Northern Marianas Saipan Airport Northfield Memorial (1985) on Tinian, Northern Marianas Tokyo Airport Saint Mary’s Cathedral (1971) by Pier Luigi Nervi in San Francisco, California Dallas Airport Bus Stop (1967) by Ulrich Müther in Binz, Germany Cathedral (1573-1813) in Mexico City, Mexico Neptune Fountain (1891) by Reinhold Begas in Berlin, Germany
Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. At the time, he was working for the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf gallery on a musical piece entitled ‘Schönheit der Schatten’ (The Beauty of Shadows) based on the works of Robert Schumann and Heinrich Heine. For Schroeter, oscillating between hope and trepidation, it marked the beginning of a race against time. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life. MONDO LUX portrays Schroeter’s full of creative energy and enthusiasm for the cinema, theatre and photography. We observe him at rehearsals for ‘Antigone/Elektra’; preparing the photographic exhibition ‘Autrefois & Toujours’ and working intensively on the dubbed version of his last film, DIESE NACHT, which was shot in Portugal in 2008. Copious excerpts from Schroeter’s films, ranging from EIKA KATAPPA (1969) to DIESE NACHT (2009), reflect the colourful spectrum of his oeuvre, inscribed in a retrospective view that is pervaded by music. The film also illuminates biographical connections and enshrines the passionate bond that Schroeter felt towards film, opera and theatre, but also towards his friends, the people with whom he lived and worked. Schroeter was an artist propelled by Eros and by passion, a man who felt the proximity of both beauty and death. MONDO LUX constitutes an intimate space – a space in which, in view of the time the protagonist has left to live, every day becomes quite unlike any other. Werner Schroeter died on 12 April, 2010.
Decoder, an underground film from the early 80’s has developed to a somehow prophetic cult movie. With an unique engagement of exceptional players, who for the most part play themselves (FM Einheit of Einstürzende Neubauten, the true Christiane F. of the infamous Bahnhof Zoo, Genesis P-Orridge of Psychic TV and the American writer William S. Burroughs) and extraordinary music of the time, such as Soft Cell, Einstürzende Neubauten, The The, the film dramatizes the transcending innovation which punk brought to the fields of communication, like a perfect precursor for the cyberpunk genre.
The Story: Muzak, the artificial music product created by scientists and marketing experts to increase efficiency and enhance wellbeing, irrigates men everywhere. A young punk and hobby sound mechanic decodes this music and creates an antidote to provoke disturbances not only in the burger joints where he found this music. By recruiting street pirates to spread his twisted sounds via tapes (an idea directly taken from Burroughs’ cut up manuals) the tumults turn into violent streetfighting (with real footage from Berlin’s infamous Anti Reagan riots). The big corporations can not tolerate this and engage a shady agent to stop the antimuzak movement.
Muzak, by its very nature, has undoubted political significance. With this in mind, the authors of Decoder have achieved a blend of reality and fiction. Surreal, metaphorical imagery interwoven with music, words, and sound effects make this a musical action movie with a very physical impact and an exciting insight view in the subcultural ideas and aesthetics of the early 80’s.
“Information is like a bank. Our job is to rob that bank.” (Genesis P-Orridge in Decoder)
Synopsis: The unemployed electrician Juergen Potzkothen (Helge Schneider) lives with his mother (Andreas Kunze) and dreams of happiness as a pop singer. When he presents a demo tape to the artist agent Terrence Toi (also Andreas Kunze), he is -rather coincidentally- dedicated and gets the artist’s name Johnny Flash. But the music editor Cornelia Dom wants him for her music broadcast commitment too. Naive Juergen now stands inbetween the emerging rivalry of both music agents and their commercial interests. Ultimately, however, he gives the vocal performance in Tois broadcast and hits the big breakthrough to a large overnight star.
Quote: From maverick director Bruce La Bruce comes the horrific and subversive smash of the Berlin and Sundance film festivals – Otto. A young zombie named Otto appears on a remote highway. He has no idea where he came from or where he is going. He hitches a ride to Berlin where he is discovered by underground filmmaker Medea Yarn. Fascinated, Medea decides to film a documentary with Otto as her subject. When Otto discovers that there is a wallet in his back pocket that contains information about his past, before he was dead, he begins to remember a few details, including memories of his ex-boyfriend, Rudolf. Otto arranges to meet him with devastating results. Savagely sexual and overtly gruesome Otto is a true original.
Jean-Marie Straub’s 1967 film of the marriage between the widower Bach and Anna Magdalena. The film has a musical structure that is very much like Bach’s own St. Matthew Passion; and Straub uses the format of Bach’s music to etch a minimalist love story of enormous richness. ” Also, includes live performances
It is the peformances that connect the film and are the key focus. To give an idea to any reader, if you’ve seen Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse you may remember the amount of seens of the actual painting being done; though the sound of the painting being done is far, far from being as pleasant as Bach (I thought I was going to go craaazzy watching Rivette’s film — scratch,scratch,dab,dab -ugh) it will give you an idea of the level of ‘action’
Quote: Herzog takes a film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that the volcano on the island is going to erupt. Everyone has left, except for one old man who refuses to leave. Herzog catches the eeriness of an abandoned city, with stop lights cycling over an empty intersection.
Karl Valentin plays a journeyman in a barber shop who prefers to stay in bed than to take care of his (already heavily bearded) customers. When he’s at work, he removes boils with hammer, chisel and pincers, turns long-haired men into skin-heads and chops off people’s heads.
Quote: Two sisters both fight for women’s rights. Juliane is a journalist and Marianne a terrorist. When Marianne is jailed, Juliane feels obligated to help her despite their differing views on how to live.
