German films

A sanatory in the south of Germany, a room with a view to the Bavarian Alpes. Talking to the camera: Thomas Harlan, author and filmmaker, adventurer, Nazi hunter. He talks, tells stories, reflects, interrupts himself. An imaginated film: a trip through Moscow, a meeting with Hitler, " language as a cathedrale", West-Germany's rehabilitation of war criminals, protest actions, the conflicts with his father Veit Harlan, the director of the notorious antisemitic propaganda film Jud Suess. The 2-disc DVD offers the 96 minute documentary Thomas Harlan - Wandersplitter plus 160 minutes with additional interviews with Thomas Harlan and clips from his films.

The construction of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961, was a pivotal break in German history and had to be justified in movies produced by East Germany's DEFA studio. The 2-disc DVD set presents for the first time films by reknowned directors that tried to address topical events. Two of the films even include documentary footage shot in the summer of 1961.

This double-DVD presents two feature films by Gerhard Lamprecht which reproduce Heinrich Zille's view of the Berlin milieu ("Milljöh"). In Die Verrufenen (1925) the engineer Robert Kramer, released from prison, cannot find his way back to civilian life. He wants to end his life, but is held back by the streetwalker Emma. In Die Unehelichen (1926) three working-class children suffer under their violent foster parents, till a dramatic incident changes their lives.

This 2-disc DVD set shows the versatility of silent diva Asta Nielsen: She fights for Women's rights in DIE SUFFRAGETTE, speculates successfully at the stock market in DIE BÖRSENKÖNIGIN, and shows off as an adolescant woman in male attire and as an Eskimo woman in the comedies DAS LIEBES-ABC and DAS ESKIMOBABY. Four rare films in newly restored and reconstructed versions for the first time available on DVD.

Vom Reiche der sechs Punkte is an unusual silent film, produced far away from the film studios in Berlin and Munich. The story deals with a steel worker who looses the sight of his eyes and has to accept his fate. The film shows in unique documentary pictures the work and life in the homes for the blind in Cologne, Neuwied and Düren. The Filmmuseum Muenchen has restored the only surviving tinted and toned print of the film which was found in the collection of the Finnish Film Archive.

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.

The 2-disc DVD set presents new restored versions of two rare classics by Werner Schroeter: Willow Springs was shot in a village in the Moravi desert and describes a house run by three man-eaters. In Tag der Idioten a woman experiences psychic disintegration and ends up in a mental institution. Rare short films by and about Werner Schroeter as well as stills from the shooting of Tag der Idioten are added as bonus features.