Vlado Kristl

Interview film with the protagonists of the New German Cinema in 1966.

Poor and unhappy, Rafael leaves Pauline and tries his luck at the roulette, but loses his last coin. Fate gifts him with the miraculous "Shagreen leather" that fulfills all wishes. In his new, luxurious life he wins the heart of wonderful Foedora. But with the power of the leather comes a rule: for every fulfilled wish it becomes shorter, and so does the life of its owner. Using the leather abundantly, Rafael soon spends his time.

T. finds a letter. Instead of just dropping it in a mailbox, he decides, conscientious as he is, to deliver it personally. He wanders the entire world, discovers astounding forms of existence, but cannot be hindered from his duty and keeps looking until he finally finds the address. There, he finds out that he has delivered his own judgment.

Documentary about the current state of German cinema. Produced for German television.

Confusion results when a young man walking through a park joins in a game of tennis.

"Don Kihot" is a satirical, Klee-esque meditation about Don Quijote in the contemporary militaristic and regimentistic world.

In The Dam, although it is an experimental film, Kristl eschews the necessary earnestness in addressing his subject. The manufactured, unambiguously humorless profundity proffered up by other German contemporaries is absent here. Laughter is allowed. Kristl takes the dreadful liberty of tomfoolery, sending up himself, the characters, the action, "tragedy," and everything else, including the audience, that might be held sacred. Within the framework of the action, we recognize a love triangle, one of the simplest of dramatic configurations. Not only the basic idea, but also numerous particulars, both in subject and style, are reminiscent of the films of Roman Polanski, which Kristl doubtless saw and holds in esteem. We meet two men: one is meant to embody the outsider, the artistic, intellectual, individualist. The other looks like the embodiment of the well-to-do man, the burgher, the functionary, the capitalist. The two battle for the favor of an indecisive and domineering girl.

The friends of humanity: the painter, the musician, the poet and the prima ballerina - and all others are the enemies of humanity. -Vlado Kristl

Allegory of a man who leads the people to destruction and then is reborn to recommence the cycle.

Anything that complies with standards is a wasted effort to Vlado Kristl: 'I believe in only doing those things that decompose and tear conventional systems apart.' Kristl's métier are borderlines. His paintings and animated films are interspersed with clear dividing lines, only for him to blur and mess them up. His graphics are scribbled over and over again until the whole surface becomes black. His oil paintings, unless someone buys them in time, are painted over and over again. He destroys any form that begins to grow. -Thomas Brandlmeier

Postmodernism also has to be seen as a system, one that is acknowledged, one with which one can create houses, locomotives, films, everything... That has nothing to do with art. That is just a parlour game. - Vlado Kristl

Observations of a man and a dog in a Hamburg street. Mass society did not arise because there are many people today, but because the media turned them into a mass. Death to the spectator would actually mean cutting off the water supply to this mill. Whoever destroys the masses, whoever removes this sense of humanity, has ended the media era.

Delegations of the homeless from all over the world march in. This is a film in which there is nothing to see. - Vlado Kristl

Short film about car racing.

An idyll, "for GAL": a pond, a desk, a farm, a kitchen—and storks, lots of them. Colored, which brings to mind "coloratura." An idyll? Isn't something missing?

Vlado Kristl rejected the word anarchy. Nor did he like the word utopia, nor the term experimental film. As a matter of fact, he didn't like any words if they weren't freed from the conventional ways of thinking. Following the shooting of "Kunst ist nur ausserhalb der Menschengesellschaft" he was only pleased when hardly anything he expressed in his poems performed, thrown and hurled against any hostile and alien environment by Carola Regnier was understood. - Markus Nechleba

Kristl was a member of the prestigious Zagreb Studio of Animation and his early works as painter and filmmaker had brought him instant acclaim and instant censorship. He fled Croatia and lived in Germany; he died there in 2004. Poor People, a “collective scream” of Cold War fear, was produced just after he left his country.

Allegory of men's use of fire to kill, when it was given by Prometheus to help them.

A group of men, women and Kristl with his camera debate how to resist authority in all its forms. All cinematic professionalism is avoided as Kristl explores how to live and make films politically.

Cartoon showing the "Utopes" - talented, unconventional, double-faced creatures. They are split by a uniformed man with a sabre - individually forced into submission by totalitarian ideology.