An African-American GI retires from the US Army in West Berlin to live with his (white) girlfriend, who already has a baby with another black man. After an argument with her family, she deserts him as well. Despite finding a job and a new place to live, he keeps running into racism, which also manifests itself in sexual intimidation.
Eva Ebner is a Berliner who gives the appearance of being rather eccentric. She knows the film business inside out – regardless of whether she’s work- ing behind the camera as an assistant director or in front of it as an actor. Her name is closely associated with a series of now-legendary adaptations of Edgar Wallace’s crime novels which were made in Germany during the 1960s. Upcoming young directors from local film schools have also profited from Ms. Ebner’s unbroken enthusiasm and passion for film. However, this eighty-year-old has a more than broken relationship to the events of her childhood and youth in Gdansk – a time when her life was characterised by an anti-Semitic step-mother and the dangers posed by the Nazi regime. This film portrait does not eschew any of the long dark shadows of that era, nor does it sidestep any friction between portrayer and his subject. (Lothar Lambert)
A simple tax collector suffers from a deep depression. He flies from his dominant mother to a dangerous company in violent left-wing circles. And discovers a cure for his impotence.
A Berlin woman in her early thirties is trying to handle her psychological problems and childhood trauma with the help of her psychiatrist. She is ashamed and overwhelmed by her masochistic sex fantasies.
Anyone who is keen to capture Berlin’s most original characters on film is bound to end up at Sylvia Heidemann’s door. Sylvia has saved up every penny of her reparation money to appear just once in her life on the silver screen like Greta Garbo. It just so happens that the Viennese filmmaker Andersch and Madame Heidemann are staying at the same hotel and it’s not long before the two strike a bargain.
Berlin Underground-star Ulrike S. went to the Toronto-Filmfestival and then to New York - to find out something about the film business and also about her own desires, daydreams and nightmares.
In his film, Lothar Lambert has chosen to portray eleven women over forty in Berlin, interweaving accounts of their experiences, their current lives and their expectations for the future. The line-up includes a number of well-known Berliners such as Irene Schweitzer, who runs the shop “Kaufhaus Schrill” in Bleibtreustrasse, photographer Erika Rabau and painter Evelyn Sommerhoff. The women talk about their chaotic family backgrounds, dramatic twists and turns, courageous decisions, failed relationships, breakdowns and new beginnings, as well as the art of gritting your teeth in spite of all of life’s blows. In no uncertain terms the women tell the filmmaker how they came to be the people they are; they also chat unabashedly about their sexual antics and reflect en passant on the social climate in Germany.
A man tries to liberate himself from a puritan-minded sister, mother, and girlfriend. The movies are his way out -- and at one late show he sees himself on the screen and begins to mix fantasy with reality.
A film by Lothar Lambert.
A mousey, mild-mannered, mid-thirties bank clerk visits a cabaret and discovers his taste for drag and for the club's techie.
The edgy, quirky, nearly disposable life of marginal Berliners. Four mediocre existences are on an increasingly desperate quest for love and sexual satisfaction in the urban jungle of West Berlin.
The outrageous and popular underground filmmaker Lothar Lambert has been called the "poor man's Fassbinder" (or Berlin's Andy Warhol) for films like Fucking City that go beyond and beneath the melodrama to the gutter side of family life. With Paso Doble, Lambert graduates from the "no budget" to the low budget commercial film. But he maintains his wacky comi-pathos in a relatively straight narrative about a middle class couple who, after managing to ruin an idyllic vacation in Spain, embark on an extravaganza of sordid love affairs. Their teenage kids watch with raised eyebrows as Mom and Pop--played by underground stars Ulrike S. and Albert Heins--poignantly grope their way back to each other.
A Turkish woman with a Marilyn Monroe obsession hooks up with her new neighbor, an Arab. Although the young man occasionally intones Elvis Presley songs to the guitar, as requested by her, the relationship soon falls into crisis, especially since the fun-loving single mother also begins an affair with a blonde who bears a vague resemblance to Monroe. The love potions are watched curiously and commented on by other residents of the Kreuzberg apartment building.
The trans-star Lola is very pleased when the sh and young Turk Hasim visits her dressing room. Hasim wants to get to know the famous artist.
An elderly actress takes a young gardener as a lover and attract a lot of odd attention.
Die Liebeswüste's story centers around a director’s ruined film – most of which was inadvertently destroyed at the lab. It is a wild mosaic of startling imagery including a safe-sex foot fucking scene with toes in a condom, a woman flasher, and a woman voyeur in a wheelchair who comments on the street life near a public toilet. Desert of Love is a challenging, highly original work from one of Germany’s most exciting gay talents.
Manfred, who is fascinated by his mother's underwear, becomes the latest addition to Dr Prinz's therapeutic flat-share for transvestites and sexual 'deviants'. During his inspection visits, to prove solidarity with his patients, Dr Prinz himself happily cross-dresses and applies abundant make-up.