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This is the story of a handful of people who had long quit believing in real existing socialism. They decided to do something about it. In a climate of continuous repression they were able to express artistic freedom in ways which no one would have deemed possible. Clandestine exhibitions, illegal rock-concerts and excessive partying was part of the programme. A clique around singer Jan Sputnik formed a punk-rock band called Democratic Consumption, as a way to earn money. They toured around Germany, performing shows and partied each day like it was their last.
Spoonie, the spoon-billed sandpiper, would have long since gone extinct without Dr. Christoph Zöckler and a tight-knit group of international ornithologists. As if that weren’t bad enough, the migration route of this sparrow-sized wading bird—with its peculiar spoon-shaped bill—runs from Russia through North Korea and China all the way to Myanmar, passing through several of the world’s crisis regions of the past decade. The work of the task force is therefore also a political challenge. It requires diplomatic sensitivity in coordinating with the countries along the flyway. In the tragicomic story of Spoonie’s fate, the struggle for threatened biodiversity in an increasingly fragile world is reflected.
The dance performance “Kontakthof” bears the unmistakable signature of Pina Bausch: it deals with forms of human contact, encounters between the sexes, and the search for love and tenderness, with all its attendant anxieties, yearnings and doubts. It is a dance about feelings, which always pose a big challenge – particularly for young people. Teenagers from more than eleven schools in Wuppertal went on an emotional journey that lasted almost a year. Every Saturday, forty students aged between fourteen and eighteen years of age took part in rehearsals that were led by Bausch-dancers Jo-Ann Endicott and Bénédicte Billiet and intensely supervised by Pina Bausch herself.
The story of Isabelle Caro, Oliviero Toscani's NO-Anorexia model who rose to fame after his campaign. Diving through different passages of time, with the aid of family photos as well as video diaries left behind, we see a kaleidoscope of Isabelle's life and the world that surrounded her.
Die Palette was a legendary basement bar at 55 ABC Street, where a colorful crowd of dockworkers, vagrants, students and runaways, artists and petty criminals gathered in the 1950s and early 1960s. With his novel Die Palette, published in 1968 – four years after the bar closed – Hubert Fichte created a literary monument to this venue. Conversations with former Palette regulars, pictures, and documents bring the scene of that time back to life: What did the Palette look like? What music blared from the jukebox? What about sex? And what about hitchhiking? Who, pray tell, was the sheriff? And what did that actually mean—subculture in Hamburg in the 1950s?
If 18-year-old Sonita had a say, Michael Jackson and Rihanna would be her parents and she'd be a rapper who tells the story of Afghan women and their fate as child brides. She finds out that her family plans to sell her to an unknown husband for $9,000.
A portrait of five people who were important to the filmmaker when he was a child. Apart from a few childhood photos, he himself remains out of the picture. He visits a teacher who used to take care of him, and a gay childhood friend. Their combined stories—about exclusion and terror, but also love—paint a portrait of a small, somewhat oppressive community and a boy who lost his sense of security within it, despite the help he was offered. In his wistful look at the past, Barreto transcends his personal experiences; anyone can identify with his bittersweet journey.
Pixel (Ben Gageik) is a 22-year-old small-town blogger: Everyone can read about him and his friends online. His blog "Pixelschatten" used to be the hippest thing in town, but now the local fame has faded away. His friends go to college, have new friends and interests, and his girlfriend Suse (Zora Klostermann) is irritated by the private issues revealed on the blog. When Pixel realizes that everyone but him is moving on, he changes all their lives with just one post...
Almost ten years ago, while filming in the high-security Rahova prison in Romania, the filmmaker met Gavriel Hrieb, a prisoner sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a prosecutor. On the day of his release on parole after 21 years, Schwartz stands by him as a friend – but is also interested in Gavriel's story as a director. His team accompanied Gavriel for over two years. At first, he was full of hope for a new life, but he found it difficult to find his place. Romania is now part of the EU. The country has changed, and returning to society is difficult. He can't find a job or a place to live that he likes. His mother's inability to cope and still smoldering conflicts weigh heavily on him. The director eventually suspects that his protagonist has not told him the whole truth about his crime and requests access to the murder file.
On his documentary journey along the Black Sea coast, documentary filmmaker Stanislaw Mucha paints an idiosyncratic picture of the interface between Europe and Asia.
Documentary feature film about the life and work of renowned philosopher Hans Blumenberg (1920-1996). Christoph Rüter gives the word to three of Blumenberg's former students, who today work in very different sectors: As a taxi driver, an ad writer and a philosopher. They give a very personal account of how Blumenberg's thoughts and ideas have informed and inspired them.
‘Tangerine Dream is science fiction!’ declares band leader Edgar Froese who died in January, 2015 aged 70. For almost fifty years he and his band ‘Tangerine Dream’ explored sound and its effect on our emotions. This film about one of Germany’s first electronic bands kicks off with the young Berlin musicians who were as inspired by the space age of the 1960s, with its rocket launchings and visions of the future, as they were by their own heartbeat, on which Froese also based compositions. Aided by the Moog and other synthesisers Froese (and various band members) revolutionised popular music. His explorations took him into the worlds of classical, new and film music. He preferred to visualise moods rather than create clearly structured songs. A blend of amateur footage, interviews with band members, relatives, friends and colleagues such as Jean-Michel Jarre that creates a comprehensive portrait of an artistic pioneer.
Salman Schocken was the King of department stores in Germany. Before WWII, he owned 22 department stores with 6,000 employees. He possessed a unique collection of 60,000 rare books in German and Hebrew and founded a modern, Jewish publishing house. He was the lifelong supporter of Shmuel Yosef Agnon and he owned the Haaretz newspaper which still survives on the border of consensus. He supported secular, Jewish culture and identified with humanist, liberal Judaism, a relic of 19th century Europe. Today, in an age of unscrupulous market economy and militant Judaism, Salman Schocken’s ways point to an alternative, perhaps not entirely lost.
Documentary about a hospital ward for children with leukemia in Lithuania.
Gisela is a young wife and mother, living in a working class German Housing Scheme. She is a supermarket cashier, her husband a delivery driver. The marriage is stale but together they are working their way up into the middle class. George and Gisela evidently knew each other as teenagers. They live on the same scheme and George introduces her to his friend Paul. There is instant mutual attraction. Gisela spontaneously goes to a party that they invite her to that evening, where she and Paul begin a sexual relationship.
A biographical study of legendary actress Charlotte Rampling, told through her own conversations with artist friends and collaborators, including Peter Lindbergh, Paul Auster, and Juergen Teller. Intercut with footage from some of Rampling's most famous films, this "self-portrait through others" is a revealing look at one of our most iconic screen stars.
In Europe, road junctions have become public art galleries. A road trip across France, Switzerland, the Canary Islands, Greece and Germany exploring the glorious world of roundabout art.
