West Germany
In search of a better life, a German girl named Willi joins an American carnival passing through Munich. While traveling from town to town, she is torn between two suitors: cruel carnival barker Joe and kindhearted high-dive artist Frank. Frank gets the upper hand when he asks Willi to join his act. The partners soon become the most popular attraction at the carnival. But tragedy is only a slip away.
Berlin, 1923. Following the suicide of his brother, American circus acrobat Abel Rosenberg attempts to survive while facing unemployment, depression, alcoholism and the social decay of Germany during the Weimar Republic.
Born into a well-off family, Franz Blum had led a carefree youth until, some time after graduating from high school, he was arrested by the police. For, involved by a gang of bad boys, the young man had taken part in a bank robbery. A “heroic deed” which earned him six years in prison. Once behind bars, he was treated with ruthless inhumanity by the guards. And little by little – but inexorably – Franz turned into an insurgent…
Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro is a comedy whose dark undertones explore the blurred boundaries between dying feudalism and emerging Enlightenment. Herman Prey’s Figaro is admirably sung in a firm baritone and aptly characterized. So too, is his antagonist, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the Count perpetually frustrated by the scheming wiles of Figaro and Susanna, here the perky Mirella Freni, who sings and acts like a dream. The Countess is creamy-voiced Kiri Te Kanawa, and the Cherubino, Maria Ewing, looks just like the horny, teenaged page she’s supposed to be. The all-star leads are complemented by worthy supporting singers, the Vienna Philharmonic at the top of its form, and the experienced Mozartian, Karl Böhm conducting a stylishly fleet performance.
Paris is a monstrously inhuman cityscape, in which cars, buses, crowds, and unceasing noise combine to smother any decent and delicate human activity. People and flowers attempt to survive in a city that seems ready to explode from an over-heated mixture of traffic and noise.
Following the defeat of France by Germany during WWII, two French soldiers are taken to a German farm as forced laborers.
As Germany’s fortunes in the latter part of World War II wane, several young boys, in their enthusiasm to do something “for the fatherland”, volunteer to fight with the German army in the East. Horrified at the news that their children left for the Russian front, the boys’ mothers begin a desperate effort to get their sons back.
Teenage Julien loves his teenage cousin Julia among flowers in summer of ’39 France.
A documentary about women in the punk rock scene in Europe.
It’s Friday evening. The lift repairman leaves the building and wants to finish his work on Monday. But he doesn’t know there are four men in the building. They use the lift but stay in it about 100 meters from the floor. They have little oxygen and must survive…
Extensive dialogue and the tight focus of a single apartment setting marks this romantic and politically symbolic drama about Malgorzata, a Polish photographer (Krystyna Janda) and her married French lover Paul (Sami Frey). The two rendezvous in West Berlin to spend some time together before Malgorzata has to go back to Warsaw and Paul returns to his wife and daughter.
An investment planner, bored with his job and his girlfriend, is given the opportunity to help open a new firm in South America. Once in the new country, he finds himself dealing with dictators and revolutionaries during a time of intense political upheaval, and to complicate his life further, he begins an affair with his new employer’s wife.
German boarding school student Pauli hopes to lose his virginity while visiting his father in Italy.
Greece 1974 – during the brutal era of the military government, and innocent tourist manager (Ugo Tognazzi) is accused of being a member of the illegal resistance movement. Two secret agents (Michel Piccoli and Mario Adorf) are bringing the innocent victim to Athens. During their trip, their car breaks down, and they’re stopping in a small village. From now on, everybody is fighting against each other, and a psychological cat-and mouse-play is starting…
Story of four people in Sopot in 1933, mysteriously brought together to an old villa to reenact a murder ritual that took place 36 years earlier.
Auguste Maroilleur, an elderly farmer, exploits 400 hectares of crop land with the help of his family, over which he rules with an iron hand. Things go awry the day he discovers one of his grandsons is involved in drug traffic. To make matters worse, the reckless youth has hidden the white powder in the Maroilleur farm. Without a moment’s hesitation, Auguste gets rid of the toxic substance but, of course, the mob has different views…
Greece, 1936. An aristocratic woman engages in a series of loveless affairs before finding herself falling for a political activist.
A young woman becomes entangled with a successful businessman, but her ex tries to win her back, provoking intense jealousy that leads her to reconsider her choice. Ultimately, one man’s actions force a resolution to her dilemma.
Robert Lamoureux plays a General in the Resistance. With an unlikely team of French patriots, he easily outwits the buffoonish Germans and steals the master copy of their plans to invade England. By doing so, he prevents the invasion and makes it more likely that the Allies will win the war.
An oft-naked male reporter decides to do an expose on “sexual widows”, housewives who are neglected by their busy husbands. – This cheaper sex film is disguised as a report about green widows.
A young girl becomes Alice in dreamland. Wild dreams and nightmares about vampirism, death, obsessions and other bizarre things.
Refusing an arranged marriage, young aristocrat Carmela is sent to a convent. Her arrival intensifies the power struggle between the debauched nun Elizabeth, and the stern but evil Mother Superior, as both are smitten by Carmela’s beauty.
Enrique Chacon kills Oscar Romero, a Catholic archbishop in San Salvador. The CIA calls a special agent, Malko Linge, a ruined prince who lives with an expensive woman – Countess Alexandra – to get rid of this nuisance of a man. He does, with many encounters with sweet girls, and macho villains.
Priest Don Camillo blackmails his friendly rival Peppone into letting him join a Communist delegation visiting the Soviet Union.
This movie is about the liberation by the Sandinistas of the Anastasio Somoza regime in NIcaragua. The movie covers some of te key points in the fight for León, a city close to the capital Managua, and the first liberated territory. Many of the inhabitants of León who participated in the guerrilla and members of the sandinista army participated in the film.
An officer and a count who live in opposite ends of the same castle bet each other who will be the first to bed their respective new ‘virgin’ maid. The winner will get ownership of the castle. In order to attain his goal, the officer ignores his lusty fiancee but she soon finds a luitenant to turn her attention to. Eventually a whole stable of local prostitutes gets in on the act.
Michel and Guenther, working in dead-end jobs, are obsessed with going to Peru to find buried treasure, using a map of the Rio das Mortes. Michel’s girlfriend, Hanna, humors their plan, but really just wants to get married.
After having her second child, a German housewife suffers from post-partum depression before inexplicably falling into a continually misdiagnosed mental state, befuddling her relatives.
Jayne takes us on a review of her last world tour. She takes us through Rome, shares a fantasy about Roman athletes, and then is off to Cannes. She takes a trip to the nudist colony on the Isle of Levant, where she almost kind of joins in. Then it’s off to Paris, where she gets a beauty treatment from Fernand Aubrey, and attends some racy dance revues. In New York and Los Angeles, she visits some topless clubs and listens to a topless all-girl pop band. The film wraps up with some posthumous footage of her family in mourning.
An American filmmaker travels to modern day Berlin to make a film based on a real-life incident from 1942 in which 13 Jewish prisoners from a concentration camp were promised freedom if they appeared in a German propaganda film. Unfortunately, the Germans lied. The psychological process undergone by the modern filmmaker while shooting the story provides the basis of this arty and challenging film.
The subject of this historical drama is a splintering Berlin in the years of 1948 and 1949. Played against the backdrop of social upheaval, the characters in the drama come to epitomize the best and worst of each pole of the political sphere. A 17-year-old hoodlum by the name of Gladow works hand-in-glove with a local white-collar criminal to rob and pillage every day and night, defying capture. While he and his gang of thugs are terrorizing the people of Berlin, the Soviets are trying to make the blockade of their region of control impermeable. The future casts long shadows over the drama, as Berlin’s problems take the shape of times to come.
Marseilles, 1919. Georges Sarret is a distinguished and respected lawyer, recently honoured for his services in the First World War. He takes as his lover Philomène Schmidt, a young German woman, who has just lost her job and home. To enable Philomène to remain in France, Georges finds her a husband – who dies conveniently of natural causes a month after the wedding. Georges repeats the trick with Philomène’s sister, Catherine – marrying her off to an old man who dies suddenly so that the scheming trio can profit from his life insurance. When an accomplice in the scheme, Marcel Chambon, threatens to blackmail them, Georges and his two lovers have no option but to kill him and his mistress…
Melodrama on ice
Thomas, the son of a prison warden, falls for Martin, one of the prison inmates. After Martin is released, they try to build a relationship and a life together but, no one will leave them alone.
The notorious pirate ruler Madame X places a print ad, calling on women to escape their boring lives and promising “gold, love and adventure” to all who come aboard her ship, the Orlando. A motley crew including a housewife, diva and artist (played by Yvonne Rainer) embark on a quest for self-transformation, which quickly heads towards destruction as they are subjected to Madame X’s sadistic, erotic escapades.
The story of the great Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) and his life and career during the rule of Stalin.
A portrait of a family in Berlin in the late 1970s, this film focuses on the mother.
portrays the Bruder working class family, whom she met during her time as a social worker in the Märkisches Viertel. Equipped with a Super-8 camera by Helga Reidemeister, the family had already begun filming their everyday life independently in the fall of 1969. However, when, together with Reidemeister, they looked through the four-hour material at the editing table in the summer of 1974, they realized that it depicted the family’s problems only superficially and left the social context out of the picture. Reidemeister, who had not yet intervened in the film shooting, then spent a lot of time with the family and documented everyday life together with them. The result was a multi-layered mixture of family self-testimony and reflection on social relationships.
Night after night, not long before dawn, two young adults, Patricia and Emile, meet on a sound stage to discuss learning, discourse, and the path to revolution. Scenes of Paris’s student revolt, the Vietnam War, and other events of the late 1960s, along with posters, photographs, and cartoons, are backdrops to their words. Words themselves are often Patricia and Emile’s subject, as are images, sounds, and juxtapositions.
Szaffi is a full-length animated feature based on Jokai Mor’s books Gypsy Baron (Cyganibaro) and Szaffi. It has adventure, and treasure, and love, and a little black cat, and a war, and picturesque villains – a governor with a pressure release valve in his skull and a fat pig-loving baron, and of course, the good gypsies.
