Film adaptation of the short Büchner story of the same name, which tells of the stay of the psychotic Sturm und Drang poet Lenz in the home of the Alsatian priest and philanthropist Oberlin. The poet, whose pathological hallucinations are becoming increasingly unbearable, hopes for help from the gentle clergyman. But Oberlin, too, knows no advice; he regards his friend’s illness as God-given.
Tag: WEST GERMANY
A middle-aged TV reporter goes to the inn of a small Swiss village to do a programme with a reclusive scientist, an expert on world food shortages. During this time, a local worker is killed in a road crash and the reporter becomes involved in uncovering the truth about his death.
Yaaba unfolds in the spectacular landscapes of rural Burkina Faso in a mythical time when peasant life was still unspoiled by colonialism. It is the story of a friendship between Bila, Nopoko and an old woman shunned as a witch by the rest of the community. Unafraid of her, twelve-year old Bila calls her “Yaaba” (grandmother) and learns the value of intolerance and his own worth as a human being. Ouédraogo, who shot the film in his own village, said that it was “based on tales of my childhood and on that kind of bedtime storytelling we hear just before falling asleep.”
A former French combat pilot is hired without knowing that he will carry a large amount of contraband diamonds, so he decides to steal them. The owner of the diamonds hires another former German combat pilot to retrieve them.
A film about black women in South Africa filmed secretly with the help of two black women journalists. Through interviews with five typical women, and comments from four women activists, including Winnie Mandela, the film clearly shows the devastating impact of apartheid on black women and their families. Narration by Peggy Phango.
On a dirty grey street in Berlin, a crowd gathers round an eccentric old woman who is performing a strip-tease. Dragged off to a psychiatric hospital, she demands cocaine instead of thorazine, tries to seduce everyone in sight, and insists that she is the legendary dancer Anita Berber, darling of the decadent ’20s. Suddenly, in true Wizard of Oz style, the film departs from monochrome reality into the colour-drenched world of the woman’s fantasies, a wildly exaggerated evocation of Weimar Berlin filmed in full-blown expressionist style.
Jess Franco regular Adrian Hoven directs, and future ‘Blade Runner’ star Rutger Hauer plays a disaffected sailor turned hard drinking womaniser. Quite a few lovelies appear alongside Hauer (most of whom he beds), including the foxy Dagmar Lassander (‘Forbidden Photos Of A Lady Above Suspicion’) and Shirley Corrigan (‘The Devil’s Nightmare’). Rutger returns home from six months at sea to find his wife, whom he was deeply in love, has unexpectedly left him and is now a junkie whore. Devastated, he tries to ease his pain with booze and cheap thrills.
Three sequences are linked together in this short film by Jean-Marie Straub; the first sequence is a long tracking shot from a car of prostitutes plying their trade on the night-time streets of Germany; the second is a staged play, cut down to 10 minutes by Straub and photographed in a single take; the final sequence covers the marriage of James and Lilith, and Lilith’s subsequent execution of her pimp, played by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.