Edition Filmmuseum

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.

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as well as two rare documentaries about the shooting, different versions of the screenplay by Straub and Huillet, unpublished rushes and photos from the shooting.

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.

Since 1920 artist, photographer, and filmmaker Ella Bergmann-Michel lived and worked at the "Schmelz", an old paint mill near Frankfurt on Main. With guests such as Kurt Schwitters and László Moholy-Nagy the house became an important locale for modern artists. Between 1931 and 1933 she made five documentary films that constitute a rare example of socially involved and equally artistic film. The DVD contains these five films, a documentary film about the artist and a comprehensive booklet with essays on Ella Bergmann-Michel's films.

Two German silent classics dealing with soccer: Die elf Teufel (The Eleven Devils) starring Gustav Fröhlich (Metropolis) and König der Mittelstürmer (King of the Centre Forwards) starring Paul Richter (Die Nibelungen) which survived only in one print with some severe nitrate deteriotation. Both films are supplied with new music accompaniments and with subtitles in different languages. An early film document showing the 1924 soccer game Germany-Italy is added as a special feature to this 2-disc edition.

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.

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).

It was Veit Harlan, the protégé of Joseph Goebbels and the director of the anti-Semitic propaganda film Jew Suess, who dared to do a film about a controversial taboo in 1957: the German penal code's Paragraph 175 which sentenced German homosexual men to jail terms for "unnatural vice between men." Anders als du und ich (Different from You and Me) is not only a film about homosexuality, it also deals with the rebellion of young people against the restorative Germany after the Second World War and with the problems of a mother who broke the law to do "the right thing". The DVD contains the censored version as well as a comparison with the original version Das dritte Geschlecht (The Third Sex), a cut scene and production stills.

One of the first gay-themed films in the history of cinema, Anders als die Andern / Different from the Others was banned at the time of its release, later burned by the Nazis and was believed lost for more than forty years. Using recently discovered film segments, still photos and censorship documents from different archives, Filmmuseum Muenchen has resurrected this truly groundbreaking silent film . Also included is the restoration of a short version of the film which Magnus Hirschfeld used for his anthology Gefahren der Liebe / Laws of Love as well as a documentation of the disputes with the German censorship. Additionly the second edition of this DVD offers for the first time original documents by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and an unpublished letter exchange by Richard Orswald and Veit Harlan, the director of Anders als du und ich, as ROM features (only in German).

Erich von Stroheim's directorial debut is set in the alpine scenery of South Tyrol. It still baffles its audiences through its precise visual language and its moral ambiguity. This edition presents the film in its gorgeous tinted Austrian release version, Die Rache der Berge (Blinde Ehemänner) / The Revenge of the Mountains (Blind Husbands), featuring German language intertitles. This print of the film is the longest and oldest version available today. Extras include additional materials from the Austrian Film Museum's Stroheim collection.