♦♦ Amos Vogel’s “Film as a Subversive Art” ♦♦
Sentenced to life imprisonment for illegal activities, Italian International member Giulio Manieri holds on to his political ideals while struggling against madness in the loneliness of his prison cell.
Category: Arthouse
After a series of events, Georg Hauser, an established middle-class man, is at odds with the world, in which he himself used to work so well. He wants out. He wants to live. In a moment of his very own clarity, he destroys his car, but whoever destroys his property is an enemy of the state.
In this end-of-the-life scenario, which is designed as an expressive silent film with subtitles, a group of adolescents and scattered loners move through a destroyed landscape. One of the leaders is poisoned by his girlfriend, who now takes his place and demonstrates her power to a newcomer. However, he in turn passes the test of courage, puts himself in the place of the head of the group and leads the ever-growing community into an uncertain future.
Petra Going is a migrant cyborg, an agent of the Global Nomad Project: an international “Experience Data Agency” which sends hundreds of “receivers” like her to wander the globe and record a succession of random encounters. Periodically, they return to agency headquarters where they deposit their accumulated memories into an archive. This archive is available to users who then vicariously and virtually inhabit the ready-made landscapes of touristic consciousness. The motto of the GNP: “Nostalgia For Rent.”
Comedy shot without a script on Super-8mm as a silent film, with intertitles later inserted between scenes. What unfolds is a familiar Achternbusch tale in which the protagonist (here his alter-ego, Hick) is driven by a mad longing and becomes irretrievably lost. Unable to meet the demands of the workaday world, Hick wanders alone through the city and, as in many of Achternbusch’s films, enters an intermediate realm in which the dead interact with the living: he encounters and falls in love with a mummy, searches for an Egyptian queen, and stalks the inner regions of the hereafter, which lie in the middle of Munich.
An ageing writer Paul is determined to make a film but he cannot decide on the subject or location. Instead, he chooses to concentrate his efforts on finding the actress who will star in the film, believing that she will define the lead character and content of the film. He recruits a young man, Jean, to try to find an Italian actress, Dara, whom he has lost sight of. Jean finds Dara in a small Italian town, serving in a modest restaurant, but she refuses to return to acting…
A film noirish atmosphere is created to show detective Angel Powers plow her way through the plans of a corporate businessman who seeks government defense contracts through real “corporate wars” and the manipulation of politicians.
Evening. Two contemporary teenage girls, Blanca and Pauline, living in an old manor house, are watching a television programme about the sexual life of people and of animals. Surprised by Bianca’s father who returns late at night they quickly change channels. The film they then see is composed of old archive material and forms the start of their journey into the past.