German films

Georg Kaiser decribes in his Expressionist theater play the attempt of a bank cashier to escape his middle class daily life. Director Karlheinz Martin's adaptation transfers Kaiser's play into an Expressionist film of radical stylization. The German film industry was so irritated by the result that the film never found a distribution and was never shown in German cinemas. The only existing print of this classic survived in Japan where the film received a cinema release and was preserved by the National Film Center. The Munich Filmmuseum restored the film and added two scores transferring the visual avantgarde concept of the film into a musical structure: An improvised performance for three percussionists by the SchlagEnsemble H/F/M and a modern score for seven musicians composed and condacted by Yati Durant.

In the grand tradition of great comedians such as Chaplin or Keaton, German directors Markus Mischkowski and Kai Maria Steinkühler are also sharing the major roles in their feature film debut Westend, a laconic comedy about two unemployed friends and their unsuccessful attempts to set foot in the modern working world. The film is an inventive black and white comedy, independently produced and filmed in a suburb of Cologne. The DVD offers two more adventures of Mike and Alfred in the short films Westend (1997) and Wolga (2003).

The American minimalist poet Robert Lax (1915-2000) was a companion of the painter Ad Reinhardt and the religious philosopher and monk Thomas Merton, who had a strong influence on the poets of the beat generation. After decades of a nomadic life between America and Europe he has lived withdrawn for 30 years on the Greek island of Patmos. The present film published on this DVD is the outcome of a long-standing friendship between Robert Lax and the filmmakers Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel: A visual poem with beautiful black-and-white photography, added by a short film showing Lax reading his poems and by photos shot by Nicolas Humbert in 1993-1999.

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special effects experts and 9 cameramen were involved in the production of this film which combines documentary scenes, historical documents, fiction elements, animation scenes and educational impact.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.