Films about film

Artists in the Big Top: Perplexed: Like her father before her, the circus director Leni Peickert wants to show off high-class artistic performances. Yet she still feels naturalness to be her ideal. Her innovations cause the business to declare bankruptcy. Circus and revolution are radical forms of self-realization. Leni Peickert and her elephants try hard. "Utopia gets better and better as we wait for it." The Indomitable Leni Peickert: The circus director continues to pursue her activities. Circus in winter. Bitter times. "The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us." (T.W. Adorno). The 2-disc DVD also offers a 1970 TV discussion with Alexander Kluge, screenplay drafts and stories about elephants.

Four documentary filmmakers, four talks, four key players of the German documentary film movement since the 60s: Hans-Dieter Grabe, Elfi Mikesch, Harun Farocki und Thomas Heise. Each of them has developed an own approach to filmmaking and a personal style. Christoph Hübner, a documentary filmmaker himself, succeeds in portraying four very different personalities, their works and their theories. Illustrated with excerpts from their films.

Four documentary filmmaker, four talks, four key players of the German documentary film movement since the 60s: Jürgen Böttcher, Volker Koepp, Peter Nestler und Klaus Wildenhahn. Each of them has developed an own approach and a personal style. Christoph Hübner, a documentary filmmaker himself, succeeds in portraying four very different personalities, their works and their theories. The intimate talks with the filmmakers are illustrated with clips of their films.

This epic documentary subtly introduces the complex world view of iconic filmmaker and theoretician Peter Kubelka (born 1934, Vienna). While Kubelka's radical and pioneering body of films is a highly condensed work of about an hour focussing on the essence of cinema, his legendary lectures often unfold over many hours. These lectures on "what is cinema" and "cooking as an art form" are frequently illuminated by the presentation of archaeological objects from Kubelka's eclectic collection. He considers his ongoing collecting to be an expanded film practice which explores the evolution of humanity. Martina Kudláček has carefully woven an open-ended portrait which goes beyond the biographical to reveal fresh insights into the phenomenon of film.

MGM-tycoon Louis B. Mayer called Hedy Lamarr "the most beautiful girl of the century." A psychological portrait of glamour star Hedy Lamarr who became scandalously famous in 1933 as the first nude on the screen with her appearance in the Austrian/Czech film Ecstasy. She then had an extraordinary career in more than 25 Hollywood films. Don't forget her historic patent for a torpedo guided system from 1942 which serves today as the basis for mobile phones. The documentary contains interviews with Mickey Rooney, Lupita Kohner, Kenneth Anger and many other personal friends of Hedy. Besides, the 2-disc DVD offers Hedy Lamarr's legendary scandal film Ekstase in an uncut version.

With Jahrgang 45, Jürgen Böttcher wanted to establish a culture of film making within the DEFA which "developed authentically, straight from reality". Yet like his earlier works, Drei von vielen and Barfuß und ohne Hut, whose youthful, anti-dogmatic vitality and spirit was not 'representative' enough for the GDR culture functionaries, the film was banned. This double DVD traces its history from the censored version to its final restoration.

John Cook (1935-2001) was, in his own words, "Viennese by choice". Between 1972 and 1982 the Canadian photographer directed four films (three features and a documentary) which hold a unique position in Austrian Cinema: independently produced, featuring a cast and crew of friends and shot on modest budgets. This 2-disc set presents restored versions of Cooks three landmark films produced in the 1970s, as well as extra materials.

"Film should not be misused for non-filmic messages": Wilhelm and Birgit Hein examine in their films theprocess of reproduction and the film material itself. Rohfilm shows the destruction of the common "film image" and was described by Stephen Dwoskin as a "visual bombing" of shreds, fragments, dirt and leftovers of film editing. Reproductions dissolves photos in greys, 625 films a negative "snow" TV image with different speeds, in Portraits photos are changed by the development and reproduction processes. Materialfilme consists of film starting and ending leaders, the elements of every film that normally are not seen on the screen. W+B Hein's underground film classics deal with the unexplored potentials of the film material which starts to disappear in the digital world.

Die Parallelstraße is one of the most mysterious pioneer films of the New German Cinema. It was produced by GBF, a production company for innovative industrial and promotional films and received awards in inter national film festivals. French critic Robert Benayoun called it "a philosophical thriller, a western of meditation which compensates for a whole year of inevitable manifestations of stupidity," Jacques Rivette put it on his list of the most important films of 1968. The DVD presents for the very first time this "unjustly forgotten masterpiece of the New German Cinema" (Martin Brady) as well as several rare shorts by Ferdinand Khittl (1924-1976) which show his talent for innovative film experiments.

The Poetic Power of Theory: Aristotle, Heidegger, Spinoza, Marx, Nietzsche, Kant ("What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?"). Seven examples taken from 200 television reportage programmes. "One must take that which is of significance outside of television and introduce it into this medium without compromise." This is particularly true of the gentle violence of theory. The Gentle Cosmetics of Light: Eight one-minute films in large 65mm format. Somewhere between the 65mm film format and the tiny yet robust images of a laptop computer lies the future of film. In addition, a feature film from 2008, The Magic of the Darkened Soul, a film installation for 5 projectors and a documentary film about Alexander Kluge by Angelika Wittlich: All Emotions Believe in a Happy Ending.

A film editor's work is as essential as it is invisible. Its outcome, the finished film, is the result of weeks of concentrated labor. Frequently, in documentary filmmaking, the work's narrative structure is mainly shaped in the editing process. The editor functions as co-author, juggling and organizing the raw material at hand, and structuring the material according to principles of space and time, rhythm and composition. This extensively supplemented 2-disc DVD explores this process in a documentary feature by filmmaker Gabriele Voss, a film editor in her own right. Renowned editors, a brain researcher, as well as writer-director Alexander Kluge, talk about their work, oscillating between craft and art. Selected film clips illustrate the techniques and tricks that make up the magic of film montage.

This beautiful 2-disc DVD set illustrates in seven chapters how the Social Question was negotiated in magic lantern slide sets and early films. The forgotten medium of the magic lantern arises anew on the electronic screen: the "ensemble illuminago" presents Victorian magic lantern shows in live musical performance. As was customary a century ago, the films are accompanied with music: piano and violin underscore the moods that find visual expression in the 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.

An old man is kidnapped. His interrogation uncovers the biography of a mass muderer: The 80 years old man was a SS leader and responsible for the killing of thousands of people in Russia. He also "invented" an evil technique of eliminating political prisoners: the manipulated suicide. Thomas Harlan reconstructs the history of a burocratic muderer, he also develops a direct connection between the Nationalsocialism and the treatment of prisoners of the RAF terrorists in the Stuttgart isolation prison. Robert Kramer filmed the shooting of Harlan's Wundkanal: Notre Nazi documents a social experiment in which the children of Nazis and of victims meet a real culprit. The reality seems to be stronger that the fiction in Harlan's film.