German films

High on Work: We have left a heroic and post-heroic industrial age behind us. Farewell to an era when work was still abundant. Yet the adage still holds: Only work makes life real (Marx). The turbulent zones of globalization, in the cafeteria of Brecht's Theater, Helge Schneider as an unemployed woman in Spain, "working to pieces" in the concentration camps. Farewell to the safe side of life: Experiences with core activities of our time, for example skyscrapers or Chernobyl. Experts from the fire department and paramedics, engineers, and scientists tell their stories. With Durs Grünbein, Peter Berling, Igor Kostin, Victor Popov, Nikolai Tarakanov, Igor Jassenjawski, Rosemarie Tietze, and Oxana Pentak.

In Danger and Deep Distress, the Middleway Spells Certain Death: A female prostitute and thief makes her way through the city with a female GDR spy. Frankfurt, 1974. It's Carnival time. At the same time police forcibly evict students from occupied buildings). Strong-Man Ferdinand: A fundamentalist of the security forces. The chief of plant security Rieche (played by Heinz Schubert) has more proficiency in his job than his superiors permit. He needs to somehow demonstrate that his position is valuable. "The most dangerous opponents of a system are its protectors." The 2-disc DVD also offers short films, texts and short stories by Alexander Kluge.

The film is based on Kafka's unfinished novel "Der Verschollene". It doesn't deal with the real United States but it is rather a kind of allegory taking place at no specific time in history. Straub and Huillet's version is about class relations and about the society that is created by capitalism, which is utterly cruel, capricious and ludicrous. This 2-disc DVD offers a film transfer supervised by the filmmakers themselves as well as two rare documentaries about the shooting, different versions of the screenplay by Straub and Huillet, unpublished rushes and photos from the shooting.

There are 80,000 operas. All these operas constitue a single great score which has faithfully accompanied the errors and achievements of bourgeois society for 400 years. The consistent application of cinematic methods the "moving details" of opera leads to surprises. In the opera house, for example, no one sees the great finales of Verdi side-by-side in one evening. No one necessarily discovers that the Grand Inquisitor in "Don Carlos" is given the same music as the murderer in "Rigoletto". Is it possible that a new genre could be born out of the encounter of opera and film? A street map of music?

War and Peace: At the peak of the Cold War, the short-range missile crisis, neutron bombs could have potentially annihilated Central Europe. 300,000 protesters in Bonn. German Chancellor Schmidt resigns. Why make a film collage about war? "Nothing is more discouraging than not being able to see through a game on which your life hinges." The Candidate: Another film collage motivated by the election campaign for the German Bundestag in 1981, where Franz Josef Strauss sought the office of the chancellor. An institution in politics falters time and again because of the reality of the Federal Republic. "Getting to a place in the sun is not easy because once you are there, it has already set." The 2-disc DVD also offers two short films by Alexander Kluge, texts by Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt and the unpublished screenplay "Eyes from a Different Country" which was never filmed.

War Is the End Of All Plans: War is characterized by the fact that it breaches all barriers. In his book, "On War", Carl von Clausewitz describes how war dreams of its own "omnipotence". Actually, it can never be omnipotent because it is full of all the probabilities we find in real life which continually disrupt its almighty power. In the end, it is just those probabilities which devour the power of war itself but which are as ill-suited to put an end to war as a peace agreement. Where We Come From, Where We Go To: Mankind has not been wiped out by wars and disasters ("against all odds") thanks to its ancient roots. It can be assumed that, without their knowing, human beings bear a treasure endowed upon them by evolution which protects them from demise (as a guardian angel would). Evolution, which begins in outer space, is too diverse to be sabotaged by the whims of the present.

"Love and hate, how easily they break". Love stories are fundamental stories. In this realm of experience, we can test our own power of judgment. It is possible to judge political matters, which are not similarly open to intimate examination, through our knowledge of love stories. The death of Lucretia toppled the Roman monarchy. When a father is unable to protect his daughter Virgilia from a corrupt judge, he kills her. The secretive kiss of death is an instrument of power, a means to an end, for every Eastern network of agents. To be a laborer of love is the concern of a "grunt", a skillful prostitute, who provides an orderly erotic system on the oil rigs in the North Sea.

Ludwig II, the king of Bavaria, his famous castles and the mysterious circumstances of his death, have inspired a lot of filmmakers throudhout all times. This DVD set contains in newly restored versions the two surviving silents about Ludwig II. Rolf Raffé's Das Schweigen am Starnbergersee focusses on the conflict between the king and his family while Wilhelm Dieterles Ludwig der Zweite describes how the king turned in becoming a madman - consequently the film was severly censored and forbidden for screenings in Bavaria. Christian Rischert's documentary Im Ozean der Sehnsucht enlightens the historical background and traces the thoughts of Ludwig II by visiting his galleries, castles and artificial grottos.

In his pictures, films, collages and installations, the painter and filmmakerLutz Dammbeck seeks a synthesis of expressive means from the genres of film and fine art. His work to date identifies him as one of the key representatives of independent film and media art in the former GDR and as a unique, outstanding phenomenon within modern contemporary art. The 2-disc DVD presents for the first time all his animation films and media works, including an extensive booklet with essays about Lutz Dammbeck's filmic work and a lot of documents about his fight with state authorities as ROM features.

2-disc DVD: The Power of Emotion explains that emotion isn't to be confused with sentimentality. Emotion is ancient and more powerful than any art form. The film looks at young couples who run into difficulties as they try to translate their experiences of love into clear decision-making. A woman who has shot her husband provides a judge with a puzzle. Those who love can bring the dead back to life by means of co-operation. That's the focus of the opera, "The Power Plant of Emotions" and the "Opera of the 20th Century" cinema. The Serpentine Gallery Program is a treasure trove of TV films. "He who hopes, dies singing" and other true stories.