Klaus Wildenhahn

Annual awarding of the Grimme Awards.

Documentary by Jan Sebening and Daniel Sponsel.

HARLEM, USA: in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s murder, German filmmaker Klaus Wildenhahn turned his 16mm camera on the New Lafayette Theatre as its players rehearsed scenes, ran public workshops and conducted exercises in uptown Manhattan. New Lafayette (or NLT) had been founded by actor-director Robert Macbeth the previous year, with the aim of producing theater for black people, by black people, to reflect the experiences and vernacular of the Harlem community. Within the Black Arts Movement, NLT would become a significant institution: it published the journal Black Theatre, and employed a host of talents – including the Black Panthers’ Minister of Culture, Ed Bullins, and the great pianist Junior Mance, both of whom appear in Wildenhahn’s film as resident collaborators.

The two-part documentary introduced people in the villages and less populated areas of the Federal Republic. The prevailing structures, worries, hardships and hopes were shown - a portrait of the 1970s.

Using one of the Lumière Brothers' first films of workers leaving the Factory as his starting point, Farocki provides an insight to changes in industrial production, workers' strikes and motion pictures-- via images of workers leaving factories throughout the years.

Impressions of a party congress of the German social democrat party (SPD) in 1964, featuring politicians Max Brauer, Fritz Erler and Willy Brandt.

A documentary about the 'critical mass', the Film Coop, a group of young filmmakers in Hamburg during the 1960s - a small group far from the Mainstream or the New German Cinema.

Wuppertal is a drizzly, industrial city on the Rhine and one immediately wonders why Pina Bausch and her avant-garde dance troupe have settled there. A socially engaged documentarian, Wildenhahn is also perplexed by this issue and spends considerable time trying to place Bausch in a context outside of the aesthetic. Still, the dance company's daily life and the excruciating rehearsal and performance schedule is solidly captured. The film begins cleverly: a dance critic offers sagacious comments on ballet dancers finishing their careers at mid-thirty just when, according to Bausch, the "aspects of misery, suffering and fear of death should become an integral part of a dancer's spiritual and psychological make-up." Wildenhahn's camera glides over the dancers' bodies as Bausch leads them through their paces, a consummate teacher. Leaving behind rehearsals of "Bandoneón" and "Walzer," Wildenhahn then ventures out into the streets of Wuppertal searching for the dance of the common people.

Second bandoneon film by Klaus Wildenhahn.

Jazz and its milieu. Klaus Wildenhahn films the Jimmy Smith Trio in New York. With the addition of a white guitarist, Kenny Burrell, the band is in the studio recording the Rolling Stones current hit “Satisfaction”, as a tribute to the successful British Beat musicians, who were themselves inspired by blues and jazz.

Documentary about a steelworker strike on New Year's Eve 1978/79.

A paean to alcohol as a means of survival to this world, and to the ephemeral communities created by our need not to be alone. On Christmas Eve, between six in the evening and four at night, Klaus Wildenhahn films people who are excluded from this "must be" celebration, and land up in a bar in St. Pauli, Hamburg: truck drivers and prostitutes, regular or casual customers, a coach and an amateur boxer... all desperately in search of happiness, tenderness and sex.

A portrait of St. Pauli and its people.

An account of the first European tour of American jazz organist Jimmy Smith and his trio in 1965, replete with backstage footage and music.

Behind the scenes look at the preparations for the last two editions of Dietmar Schönherr's Talkshow.

Experimental composer John Cage tours Europe with The Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1966.

The two-part documentary introduced people in the villages and less populated areas of the Federal Republic. The prevailing structures, worries, hardships and hopes were shown - a portrait of the 1970s.

A church congregation in Hamburg-Harburg: Klaus Wildenhahn observes the work of a pastor. What is his job? What is expected of him? What does he himself want?

Workers in the northern German province build a silo.

A documentary about the 1892 cholera outbreak in Hamburg.