Werner Herzog once again turns his eye on the beautiful and dangerous wilds of the Amazon in this documentary. Dr. Graham Dorrington is a scientist who specializes in designing experimental aircraft, and in 1992 he invented a unique man-powered airship intended to travel into the Amazon canopy of Guyana, with the goal studying the medicinal herbs said to grow there. However, Dorrington's aircraft proved to be flawed, and an accident on its first voyage into the Amazon claimed the life of Dieter Plage, a filmmaker and close friend of Dorrington who had tagged along to document the journey. Ten years later, Herzog joined Dorrington as he returned to the Amazon canopy and explored the beautiful but forbidding rivers and forests, visited the people who live there, and recalled the accident that claimed his friend's life. The White Diamond was the opening night attraction at the 2004 Taiwan Documentary Film Festival.
Synopsis
Documentary film on the memories of four children from Eisenhüttenstadt who were all born at the same time the Berlin wall was built.
Quote:
1991 stellte der DEFA-Autor Thomas Heise seinen Dokumentarfilm ‘Eisenzeit’ vor, der vier Jugendliche aus Eisenhüttenstadt porträtiert. Der Film zeigt quälend und schmerzlich, wie sie an den Schwierigkeiten mit Staat, Gesellschaft und Familie zerbrachen. Schon 1981 wurde die Idee zum Film geboren, konnte aber aus politischen Gründen nicht umgesetzt werden. Erst zehn Jahre später zeigte der Film die selbstzerstörerische Flucht dieser selbstdenkenden Jugendlichen in Drogen und Selbstmord.
Austere, fragmented, and minimalist, Katzelmacher captures the inert lives of a group of aimless, financially struggling apartment dwellers on an anonymous residential city street. The film opens to an implicit shot of one of the residents, Erich (Hans Hirschmüller), parked alongside a grocery store, biding idle time in his car as his lover Marie (Hanna Schygulla) closes shop for the evening. It is an insightful glimpse of interminable silence and existential waiting that defines the lives of the residents as they attempt to escape from the inertia of their daily existence through anonymous sexual encounters, alcohol consumption, rumor mongering and, on occasion, lapses of domestic violence.
Based on Daniel F. Galouye's novel "Simulacron Three" Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 2 part TV production is a science-fiction classic that explores the notion of a computer-generated other world, pre-dating The Matrix by 26 years. Since its original broadcast in 1973 it has rarely been seen and following increasing demand the Fassbinder Foundation have restored this remarkable film.
The most famed and well-regarded collaboration between New German Cinema director Werner Herzog and his frequent leading man, Klaus Kinski, this epic historical drama was legendary for the arduousness of its on-location filming and the convincing zealous obsession employed by Kinski in playing the title role. Exhausted and near to admitting failure in its quest for riches, the 1650-51 expedition of Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repulles) bogs down in the impenetrable jungles of Peru. As a last-ditch effort to locate treasure, Pizarro orders a party to scout ahead for signs of El Dorado, the fabled seven cities of gold. In command are a trio of nobles, Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra), Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling), and Lope de Aguirre (Kinski). Traveling by river raft, the explorers are besieged by hostile natives, disease, starvation and treacherous waters.
Car salesman Phillip Wagner is driving along an asphalted dirt track used by the locals as a short cut to Wolfsburg. He is having an argument on the telephone with his fiancée when, suddenly, he runs over a child. He sees the child’s body in his rear-view mirror, hesitates, brakes, but does not get out.
Equal parts documentary, children's story, and narrative drama, Cave of the Yellow Dog is a beautifully filmed adventure that the entire family will enjoy. It's unique on many levels, the most notable being that the charismatic family portrayed in the film are an actual family, and none of them are professional actors. The eldest daughter (played by adorable Nansal Batchuluun) appears to be about 6 or 7 years old. Her life is nothing like that of an American first grader. She goes away to school, returning home during the summers.
Wunder der Schöpfung is an extraordinary, fascinating Kulturfilm trying to explain the whole human knowledge of the 1920s about the world and the universe. 15 special effects experts and 9 cameramen were involved in the production of this film which combines documentary scenes, historical documents, fiction elements, animation scenes and educational impact. It its beautifully colored, using tinting and toning in a very elaborated way. Some visual ideas in the sequences with a space shuttle visiting different planets in the universe seem to have to be the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Set in the boarding school milieu, the film depicts the meeting of shy Gregor and mysterious Billie. Billie has a son, her husband is in jail. Arthur, Gregor's friend, is a serial Lothario, forever unfaithful to his girlfriend Pia. Both Arthur and Billie have had a similar mystical experience related to someone's death. While Gregor believes that an elective affinity between two people preordains their lives, Arthur does not even subscribe to romantic feelings between the sexes.
Arthur is a failure at school and becomes mixed up with criminal elements, Gregor goes on to attend university, and remains in pursuit of Billie who passes in and out of his life on several occasions.
IMDB Review: Author: lazar_x from Montreal, Canada
"Don't let anyone tell you horror stories about the camera work, they probably never had an ounce of imagination anywhere in their bodies!
For those of us who are bored blind with standard Hollywood-ian movies, this kind of camera work is very refreshing. The constant motion puts us right into the characters' world and helps foster an instant connection with them. Not that one wouldn't connect with them without the fancy directing! On the contrary, Jan, Jule, and Peter will reawaken the idealist in anyone.
A mix of dreams, nightmares, fears and sexuality, filtered through a mordant Belgian sensibility, "Black Night" envelops rather than illuminates the viewer. First feature by writer-academic Olivier Smolders, whose occasional shorts the past 20 years have been in a similarly Expressionist vein, is perfectly tailored for fantasy festivals and other specialist events but, despite its visual merits, won't travel far beyond Euro arthouse niches.
Love is Colder Than Death was Rainer Werner Fassbinder's first feature-length film (he had directed two shorts three years earlier: The Little Tramp and The Little Chaos), the story of a small-time pimp, Franz (Fassbinder), and his complicated relationship with his prostitute girlfriend, Joanna (Hanna Schygulla), and a criminal associate, Bruno (Ulli Lommel), who mysteriously and erotically enters their lives. Had the film been made at a later point in Fassbinder's all-too brief but remarkably illustrious and prolific career, the film's static aesthetic could have been read as a deliberate attempt on the director's part to show his critics that his camera need not move on inch to convey the same rapturous feeling of his greater films. Except Love is Colder Than Death is not a great Fassbinder film. Narratively and experimentally, it's neither exciting nor groundbreaking; since Fassbinder was still obviously trying to hone his signature Brechtian aesthetic, it may come as a surprise that the film echoes the French New Wave (namely Jean-Luc Godard's lyrical, postmodern masterpiece Band of Outsiders) than it does the cinema of Douglas Sirk.
In West Berlin in 1978, the computer magnate P. J. Lurz seeks to increase sales by secretly promoting terrorism. He hires August, who recruits a “third generation” of terrorists, middle-class people for whom terrorism has become a lifestyle. The film is dedicated to “Someone who is a true lover, and that is probably no one.” However, when asked about this dedication, Juliane Lorenz, the film’s editor, said that she misread Fassbinder’s notes, and what he wrote was that the film was to be dedicated to “Someone who is a true liberal...” Fassbinder, who saw the film and read the dedication on screen, never mentioned the error to Lorenz.
"Buebchen" is the german word for "Little Boy". The film was also released under the title "Little Vampire" which doesn't make any sense at all.
A strange case baffles the police and the citizens of a German small town. A two-year old girl has disappeared. There are suspects, innocents, guilty ones and a web of lies.
A legendary propaganda/documentary of the Third Reich's 1934 Nuremberg Party Rally. Featuring a cast of thousands as well as, of course, Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Hess, Goering and other top party officials.
Designed by Nazis, for Nazis, and about Nazis. Triumph of the Will was filmed by the German Propaganda Ministry in 1934 and covers the events of the Sixth Nuremburg Party Congress. The original intention was to document the early days of the NSDAP, so as future generations could look back and see how the Third Reich began. In reality, Triump des Willens shows historians how the Nazi state drew in the masses through propaganda and also how Adolf Hitler had a unique and terrifying ability to entice crowds to his beliefs by the very power of his words.
Dust is everywhere and ever-present. A conglomeration of the smallest particles, dust nestles in carpets and in attics. It invades laboratories and settles on artworks. It is blown into the air from factory smokestacks and resides in every raindrop. It is fought and cleared away, but in this Sisyphean task, dust is set in motion and returns even as it is being removed.
DUST examines the myriad forms and pathways of dust. It pursues dust to the places where it settles and meets the people who contend with it. Armies of cleaning men and women, manufacturers of vacuum cleaners and air cleansing products, housewives, toxic waste disposal workers, and museum custodians.In examining the many types of dust, including microscopic particulates invisible to the naked eye, DUST hears from a variety of scientists—botanists, biologists, meteorologists, and astronomers — who investigate the environmental and health consequences of dust, from Sahara sandstorms and the Oklahoma dust bowl of the Thirties to the toxic dust generated by the 9/11 demolition of the WTC towers.
Obscure alpine sexploitationary horror with delicious camp instincts. This was never released on dvd.
A Swiss legend tells of three shepherds and their privations, "weiberlosen" time in the mountains. And as her wicked doings will be severely punished - by a bare Wurzelhexe ...
REVIEW:
A former classmate, let's call him Fred, looks at the happy Sepp Forcher - with sound turned off. Namely Fred loves the beauty of the local mountains. But not the accompanying volksdümmliche Gedudel.
Succubus - the devil in him would also be a film for Fred. For the beauty of the Alpine mountains is captured very atmospheric. And instead of folk music here sounds very consistent, Spaghetti Western-inspired score.
Dominik Graf makes movies for TV that are bigger than TV, but in his case this might be not a problem at all. It seems that his films work best as movies made for TV, TV as movies. This is because of the hackneyed stories he and his writers certainly twist and turn - without the intention, however, of turning them into art. Or rather, it is an art that turns its back to TV. This movement of turning its back remains important, though, as a gesture, a gesture that works best at the place it turns away from: TV. Dominik Graf's art is an art of transcending TV by means of using it, of reproducing it in a radically transformed way. It remains recognizable in the stories, the motives - not the emotions, though. Where TV usually likes to be comforting Graf's films are cruel and alienating. He has made movies for the big screen, to be sure, but in the last ten years (and these are the years in which he has become a truly unique director) his two attempts - Die Sieger and A map of the Human Heart - were terrible flops, not with critics but commercially. Which is a pity mostly for foreign audiences, as for them it is virtually impossible to get hold of the films of one of German's finest directors.
Karl and Hans couldn’t be more different. Karl is a young mathematician with a promising career at an insurance company, whereas the man-about-town Hans only takes up the odd job to get by. When they meet, Hans asks Karl whether he is happy. Karl doesn’t know what to reply until Hans shows him what makes him happy: girls, airplanes, the fastest backwards driving car in the world, and driving a Porsche at night in the nude along the Autobahn for example.
The heroes of Andreas Dresen’s metropolitan elegy become dreamers when confronted by harsh reality. A farmer dreams of romantic love in a red light district; a homeless man and woman dream of finding a room for the night; and an aging businessman dreams of a big career, unaware that it is too late. All this happens on the night when the Pope arrives in Berlin! The film was shot in 47 night shifts and countless winter outdoor shoots, yet improvisation was always part of the action, such as the scene with actor Oliver Bassler, who was not forewarned he would be entering a sleazy hotel room.
