Filmed literature

Yesterday Girl is about Anita G., a young girl, whose parents are picked up one morning during the time of the Third Reich. She comes from the East and now freezes her way through the West. Three times Germany. In Parttime Work of a Domestic Slave, Roswitha Bronski is a married mother of three at the centre of the protest movement. She finds her plans for social change are easier to realize outside family life. Two films by Alexander Kluge, both starring his sister Alexandra Kluge. Pictures, stories, quotes, documents and scenes which mark the beginning pof the New German Cinema and reflect the West German society of the 60s and early 70s. The 2-disc DVD also offers texts and short films by Alexander Kluge related to the two feature films.

Die freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street) is not only one of the most important films of the Weimar Republic, it is also one of the most spectacular censorship cases of the era. The story from the inflationary period in Vienna in the years immediately after World War I was considered too much of a provocation: nouveau riches currency and stock market speculators who wallow in Babylonian luxury, homeless and unemployed Lumpenproletariat living in barns, women who sell their souls for a bit of fresh meat at the butcher's, sexual orgies, bordellos and murders. This unique 2-disc DVD set offers the improved most complete restored version of the film as well as a lot of additional material including an excellent documentary about the life and work of G.W. Pabst.

A silent film about the youth of the leading German 18th century dramatist, poet, and literary theorist Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). In 1773 he had to leave home and spent miserable years under strict discipline at the military academy of The Duke Karl Eugen, which only strengthened his longing for freedom. His first play "The Robbers" (1781) spoke of the ideas of liberty and became a landmark in German theatrical. The Filmmuseum München has now carefully restored a film that for a long time was believed to be lost. Following the conventions of the silent movie era, the positive was tinted and furnished with two new piano scores.

Asta Nielsen, born in Denmark in 1881, was the first diva of European silent film. As early as 1913, in Die Filmprimadonna, Asta Nielsen acts the role of a star fighting for increased influence on the entire production process. To realize her artistic vision she founds her own company Art-Film in 1920. Hamlet, produced that same year, survived only in a b&w US export version. In 2005 a coloured vintage print of the lost German original version of 1921 was discovered. The restored film had its premiere at the Berlinale in 2007, with new musical accompaniment composed by Michael Riessler. The 2-disc DVD set also includes documentation of the production history of Hamlet, the restoration process and rare an Asta Nielsen home movie compilation.

The 2-disc DVD presents for the first time an unjustly forgotten classic epic of the German silent cinema in a newly reconstructed and meticulously restored version. Shooting in Munich and its surroundings with an international cast, director Manfred Noa told the story of Helen of Troy and the decade-long war between the Greeks and the Trojans. The additional features of this DVD include the contemporary souvenir programs and stills as well as alternate scenes, rushes, foreign intertitles and outtakes.

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.

This adaptation of Günter Grass's novel "Cat and Mouse" was one of the first films of the "Young German Cinema" and subject of a controversial political debate. The DVD puts Katz und Maus in the historical context with rare documents in the booklet and in the ROM section. Also included are two short films by Hansjürgen Pohland and Michael Klier, a selection of photos from the set and the original recordings of Attila Zoller's famous score.

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.

The 2-disc DVD presents the two most beautiful films shot in Germany by Max Ophüls in restored versions: The wonderful adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's famous play Liebelei was the last film before Ophüls was forced to emigrate. The German version of the international co-production Lola Montez, shot in color and CinemaScope, remained his last movie. Additionally the DVD set features Martina Müller's highly praised documentary Max Ophüls - Den schönen guten Waren and never before published documents and out-of-print books in the extensive ROM section.

Manfred Noa's adaptation of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's stage play is one of the completely forgotten classics of German silent cinema. It is an appeal to peace and tolerance that was violently attacked by the Nazis. The story which takes place againsr the backdrop of religious wars between Christians, Islamists and Jews in 12th-century Jerusalem shows Werner Krauss (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari) in one of his best roles. The Filmmuseum München has restored the only surviving elements of this silent masterpiece and researched the film's production and reception.