Lumière and Company is a documentary film that showcases short films made by 41 directors from various countries. Each director was given a Lumière camera and asked to make a short film using it, with the only requirement being that the film should last no longer than 52 seconds. The resulting compilation of films offers a unique and diverse perspective on the world of cinema.
The life and struggles of the German writer Heinrich von Kleist.
Emily, a child, stays with her bourgeois grandparents during frequent periods when her mother makes films. Isabelle wraps a picture, flies to her childhood home to pick up Emily, and plans to leave for her place in France. Old wounds between Isabelle and her parents open around Isabelle's life style. It's also apparent that Isabelle's mother, Paula, is unhappy - with her husband and with her youthful hopes dashed when she became pregnant with Isabelle. Unbeknownst to Isabelle, the co-star of the film she's just made has followed her, checked into a nearby hotel, and wants to begin an affair, even though he's married. Can Isabelle sort it out? What's best for Emily?
Germany Pale Mother is a drama set in Germany during and after World War II. It follows the story of a German woman, her experiences of motherhood, marriage, and war trauma. The film explores themes of love, loss, and the impact of the Nazi regime on the lives of ordinary people.
A look at the lives of 19th-century composers Clara and Robert Schumann.
Extensive dialogue and the tight focus of a single apartment setting marks this romantic and politically symbolic drama about Malgorzata, a Polish photographer (Krystyna Janda) and her married French lover Paul (Sami Frey). The two rendezvous in West Berlin to spend some time together before Malgorzata has to go back to Warsaw and Paul returns to his wife and daughter.
Tutor Jeronimo and heiress Josephe fall in love but are quickly torn from one another by execution and jail. However, when fate intervenes in the form of a massive earthquake, the two lovers have no idea what is in store for them.
Helma Sanders-Brahms directs this inventive film that uses the verse of Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler and Nazi poet Gottfried Benn to dramatize the passionate, real-life affair between the two unlikely lovers. Forced out of Germany, Lasker-Schüler makes her way to Jerusalem even as Benn discovers the true nature of the Nazi ideology he had once championed. Lena Stolze and Cornelius Obonya star.
West Berlin, 1974. The revolution didn't happen like it was supposed. Grischa, a 30-year-old actress dissatisfied with standard left-wing politics, interviews working women to find out how they deal with being both mothers and members of society.
Within four episodes ("Er am Ende", "Muss ich aufpassen", "Eva" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" ) are being told adventures of love sick Felix. On Sylt he meets two nymphomaniac women, in Hamburg he meets Eva, a girl who is even more love sick and later he meets Luci who gives him an indecent proposal. Thus he flees again...
When East Germany ceases to be separate from its western half, one would think that things would be better for the couple in this movie who have been plagued by sexual and political harassment of the most virulent kind, but , they are completely unprepared to cope with the swift changes that are transforming their familiar yet desperately unhappy world. In the story, Heinz is a laborer in the cooperative apple orchards of an East German village and has married his sweetheart Lena. She works to take care of the sickly wife of the co-op's manager and also must cope with the sexual attentions of the perfidious man. One day, after discovering this state of affairs, Heinz blows up and assaults his wife's harasser, which only serves to land him in jail. While in prison, the state secret police (the Stasi) get him to help them entrap the co-op manager, whom they believe is going to try to defect.
Germany in the 50ies: A love story between an eastern spy and a western secretary who detects him (and her love) ...
Her only foray into science fiction—about the havoc wrought on society by a television that satisfies every human craving—The Last Days of Gomorrah was a favorite of Sanders-Brahms, who brought feminist politics to the New German Cinema movement of the 1970s. It is a forceful piece of capitalist realism, critiquing working-class alienation and commodity culture.
In order to be reunited with Mahmood (Ören), a man she was promised to as a young girl, 20-year-old Shirin (Erten) leaves the life she had in a small village in Turkey in search of him.
TV short film by Helma Sanders-Brahms.
Documentary about the everyday routine of the sales assistant Angelika Urban.
Doctors say that Veronika, a woman in her 20s, is schizophrenic. She is compliant, which makes her an easy target for men. She's religious, believing she is God's favorite child; she searches for Jesus. She has sent a letter to a filmmaker suggesting her life as the subject for a movie. We see her raped then take up with a series of men she believes are Jesus, each willing or insistent on sex. A young man with his own crisis of faith invites her to join a cult. We see her involuntarily committed to an asylum from time to time where medication and constraints await. Her wealthy parents are helpless. Will a medical professional ever talk to her? If one did, would it help?
No folkore, no rituals, no klezmer, no political statements, no twee Berlin Jewish quarters. This film is an attempt to make an imageless film; a plea for a religion of imagelessness, of words, of thoughts.
"Hermann mein Vater" is a companion piece by director Helma Sanders-Brahms to her 1980 film "Germany Pale Mother". The latter work was focused on the impact of war on a German family. This made-for-tv documentary follows Sanders-Brahms and her father Hermann on a trip to Normandy, where he was stationed as a soldier in 1940-41.