Of course, you can't describe a film that isn't finished yet. However, the shooting can be sketched very well. We are guided by two women who have everything in their hands: Direction, production, camera. The sound is recorded by Garip Özdem. Now he died under tragic circumstances and so I write these lines. I cannot deal with death. I wanted to organize a concert series with Garip, we planned to clean out my parents' house and and and and... Sometimes I start crying. It just needs the wrong keyword. That's why our film will only get better! The legacy! Garip lived for FILM. Like a big child looking in wonder at the world. His world, his place of longing, that was Kurdistan. Money didn't interest him, what others think of him didn't anyway. But films were important to him! Although he had to get up early in the morning, haul furniture, dissolve apartments, he then came to the shoot. The atmosphere there is relaxed. I think Lea and Kathrin take care of that. Of course everyone always comes too late. Or the protagonists show up on Sunday morning after the after hour. Braindead. Not to be used cinematically. Like my friend Vassilis, who could only see black and white for a while. Vassilis can dance on one leg like Rumpelstiltskin on the counter and stretch out the other leg like a yogini. Unfortunately he doesn't remember it. In front of the camera he answers either "I don't remember" or "I forgot". But luckily not all protagonists appear that way. Nanghiti, Anisa and others can express these little poetic moments of life very well! Moments that happen in our bar + video store. Lea films it all. Material for hours. We have to imagine it as "Smoke" or "Blue In The Face". Regular customers philosophize about the sweet nothing. Or the high rents in Berlin. Or life after death. And Garip? He wasn't in such good hands in his home street, the Reichenberger, after he returned about six months ago. He had the idea of moving to Thessaloniki. There I also got to know him. Maybe he just didn't want to have a permanent residence at all, but wanted to hike! Now he is a living legend. A person who lived only to love! And he gets our film! Cinegeek - oder: Eine berauschende Reise in die unmögliche Rumpelkammer vollkommenen Filmglücks (Arbeitstitel)

FREE ON YOUTUBE Richard Lester - The Bed Sitting Room

FREE ON YOUTUBE (DU FINDEST DEN GANZEN FILM FREI AUF AUF YOUTUBE) Richard Lester anticipated the British intellectual slapstick humor of the 70s. Quasi invented. Nobody rewarded him for it. The Bed Sitting Room was a catastrophic failure at the box office. A typical film that you can and should rediscover in our video store! Please borrow it to everyone, because if our world hadn't been for the "Monty Pythons", Richard Lester would still have invented it! With The Bed Sitting Room he has made an After The Bomb movie like no other! In a very near future (we would have been extinct by 2019) - England will be destroyed by the nuclear war. Only a few Englishmen survive. They prefer to take the subway. The subway is always running in circles, driven by an extremely serious young man. The rest, who don't ride the subway, stagger over the rubble. Everyone tries to look as chic as possible. For example by wearing a tuxedo. You hardly notice the rags underneath, do you? There's the pregnant girl (Rita Tushingham) who lives with her parents in the subway. Or the gentleman businessman. Or the two policemen (Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) in their destroyed company car hanging from a hot balloon. Sketches of the destruction, which become darker and darker. At first you throw yourself with cake, later you maintain the typical British reserve. The world is broken, but is that a reason to lose your composure? Exactly.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

In Cinema: Carlos Reygadas - Our Time

Hard to decipher, the movies of Carlos Reygadas. Our Time is set in northern Mexico. Juan (Reygadas himself) and his wife Esther (Natalia López ) live there happily as a nuclear family. Some time ago they already agreed to have an "open" relationship. At a party Esther meets Phil (Phil Burgers). She gives him an open pitch - and Juan encourages Esther. Do "open" relationships work? I think man is not made for it. I tried it, but something came up: Jealousy. An old wisdom is that love is heaven, jealousy is hell. Juan also succumbs to jealousy. But he hadn't expected it at all! Suppressed passion and doubts lead to a downward spiral. Jealousy grows. Juan has to admit to self-doubt. What remains of his self-image now that he lives as a horned husband? Reygadas Our Time is a real rarity. A spiritual drama, a mystery. Obviously, the makers are aware of the mistakes of their human characters and try to get to the bottom of them. Again and again the protagonists try to tap the energy of Tlaxcala, this place in the north of Mexico. A romantic backdrop, but will they prove to be worthy of it? The wide panorama makes us think of things like faith and religion. Things that are not only missing in mainstream cinema. Juan tries to control his surroundings. Almost like a god. But he fails miserably, almost comically. The fatal thing is that we, the audience, feel just as lost and frustrated! Our Time is not just Juan's story. Our Time reflects us as humans how we stubbornly resist accepting our humanity. We are neither the center of the world, nor the center of anyone else! Our Time is not a profane allegory. It is a sad and miraculous reminder that we are mortal.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

FREE ON YOUTUBE Allein

FREE ON YOUTUBE  People suffering from the so-called Borderline Syndrome put on a rugged outer shell to hide their badly injured being. The great Lavinia Wilson embodies a student suffering from borderline. She tries to break her isolation with various men and yet remains alone. A very exhausting woman who only wants to be a girl. Her name is Maria and we get to know her during sex. Of course she throws out her lover (Richy Müller) the following morning. He already knows this, grabs his things resignedly. Maria is greedy for physicality, but is afraid of closeness. Finally she could be rejected. We learn how difficult her relationship with her father was, that she likes to anaesthetise herself with alcohol plus X. That she carves herself. During the day she works in the library, somewhere in a medium-sized German town. Life there is boring through and through. In the evening at the club, she takes a "guy", drops him, drinks a bottle of vodka. The film gives no explanations. That's wise, because that way we are on our own whether we can make our peace with this Mary. When I set up Alone of Thomas Durchschlag 2005 as a DVD novelty in our video store, which the film for the first time continuously lent. I was surprised! There was neither an exaggerated media hype nor any notable awards. But there was what we call "from mouth to mouth". Word got around in the neighbourhood how great the actress is and so Allein became a blockbuster in the neighbourhood.

FREE ON YOUTUBE Francis Ford Coppola - The Outsiders 

FREE ON YOUTUBE (DU FINDEST DEN GANZEN FILM FREI AUF YOUTUBE) If Francis Ford Coppola should be dejected in 1983 after the collapse of his Zoetrope Studios, you don't see it in The Outsiders. The Outsiders doesn't just look like "great cinema", but like "the greatest cinema ever"! Coppola looks back to the 50s to Nebraska, but probably not to his own youth, but to the time of the big Hollywood hams. The Outsiders starts with a banner, the movie title passes us from right to left. The colors seem like a Technicolor experiment on Acid, with Stevie Wonder singing Stay Gold. This seems to be abundantly blown away by the wind(s)... Everything over-stylized, nothing real! The outsiders are a street gang, but romantically transfigured. They're certainly not real kids, but part of Coppola's multi-layered "Storytelling". The movie is based on the well known novel by S. E. Hinton. It's about the class struggle of the rich Popper Gang and the oily Greasers from the lower class. In the car cinema Greaser wants to rip Dallas Winston (Matt Dillon) Cherry (Diane Lane) open while his two younger and insecure friends Johnny Cade and Ponyboy Curtis (Ralph Macchio and C. Thomas Howell) try to appease him. For Cherry, Ponyboy feels the shy feelings of love that one only experiences as a teenager. Outside it comes to an argument with Cherry's rich boyfriend. After Dallas separates from his friends, both don't know where to go. Johnny's father rages at home and Ponyboy lives together with his two older brothers after the death of his parents. He doesn't want to go home either. While both spend the cold night in the park, the poppers approach. It comes to a fight and Johnny stabs a popper in self-defense. Both have to flee and go into hiding. We now experience Johnny and Ponyboy in exile reading Margaret Mitchell together, talking about life and dreaming. Both seem convincing and I remembered the poetry of a friendship like the one you have at fifteen. Unfortunately, what Coppola builds around it is less convincing. In artificial poses Coppola shows the two of them in front of a kitschy sunset and does everything to resurrect the classic Hollywood time. The problem with stylizing his characters in this way is the following: They can hardly breathe and seem to be alive. That's why it's difficult for us to immerse ourselves completely in his film. The material of the novel probably only lasts for a film of 90 minutes and Coppola is forced to kill time. Many scenes seem exactly like that, too! Hardly anything in the movie is so motivated that it seems necessary, almost everything just happens out of arbitrariness. Matt Dillon's Dallas seems to be copied from old 50s rebel movies. Dallas is a victim of postmodernism, in which everything is stolen together. Coppola himself doesn't seem to be interested in his production, but only in the "look" of his film: The perfect light, the most incredible pictures, the perfect pose! His Greasers therefore sometimes seem like excerpts from a painting. In short, there is not too much life in The Outsiders. The film resembles a stylistic experiment. But: I remember how successful the film was when it was later shown again on television. Everyone in the schoolyard talked about it, the Bravo brought folding posters of the outsiders. Once it was because all the 80s stars of the Brat-Pack appeared in the film: Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe or very briefly Tom Cruise. On the other hand, we weren't used to realistic narration at that time. That came later with the indie cinema of the 90s. In the 80s everything was just a surface shine and a chic cover! Probably the Outsiders came to life in our fantasy! For me the whole film is part of my memories, my personal nostalgia. Today I'm no different than Coppola was when he shot the film...

FREE ON YOUTUBE Let The Right One In

Gothic look serves to set a mark, an understatement. That doesn't hurt. It needs black leather that can be thrown over the chair in the evening and a few tattoos that are pierced with soothing cream. But how would it feel to fall into the clutches of a real vampire? What kind of experience would it be to try yourself out as a bloodsucker? Let The Right One In is a vampire movie, but not one that follows any rules. It's not a vampire movie with garlic and wooden pegs. Vampirism is taken seriously here, extraordinarily seriously! Recently films during the German expressionist silent film seemed to believe so much in the subject! Let The Right One In is the agonizing portrait of the love of two twelve-year-olds. A kind of Coming Of Age story and definitely not for teenagers! In the first scene Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) looks out of his window and sees her. Something wistfully sad lies in his eyes. Oskar feels lonely. His parents have separated and he spends most of his time alone. Then he gets to know the girl he observed from Fesnter: Eli (Lina Leandersson). She is as old as Oskar and just as alone. Oskar has learned that life is no longer a surprise for him, so he usually reacts calmly. So too, when he realizes that Eli is as pale as a corpse. He asks her if she is a vampire. Both spend the night together, although sex is not yet interesting for Oskar. Nevertheless, he asks Eli if she wants to be his girlfriend. She gently touches him and reminds him that she is not a girl. At school Oskar is sadistically tortured by a gang and the following morning he almost drowns in the swimming pool during these "games". In such moments it is advisable to have a vampire as a friend... By the way: At this point I haven't even started to describe Let The Right One In. The horror drama was shot by the Swede Tomas Alfredson after the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Eli lives with a middle-aged man named Hakan (Per Ragnar) who is as scary as he is sad. Is he a relative? Or even a lover? We watch Hakan get dead bodies for Eli. I don't want to go into that any further, nor Oskar's bad parents. All this already seems dark enough. Nevertheless, Let The Right One In offers some humorous moments. When Oskar asks Eli about her age, she has to admit that she's been twelve for countless years. Vampire humoristic! Once you separate all vampire elements from the plot, the story of two lonely and desperate children who commit some disastrous deeds together remains. Their despair has a stronger effect than feelings of guilt or pity. I think we, the audience, care much more about them than they can. Alfredson therefore consistently denies us any light and warm tones. In his film even fresh blood is black. And the title? Remember the vampire rule that you have to ask the vampire in. Only then can he overcome your threshold. If you don't like love stories with teenagers, this is the right film for you! If you don't like vampire movies, that's the same for you!

Film List 80s Indie

The boom of indie cinema began in the '90s. The foundation, however, was laid in the 80s with the founding of the Sundance Film Festival and the decline of the New Hollywood era. The 80s was the wonderful time of the blockbusters, but also of such pearls as Stranger Than Paradise, Mala Noche and She's Gotta Have It. A journey back.

FREE ON YOUTUBE Ingmar Bergman Vargtimmen

FREE ON YOUTUBE (DU FINDEST DEN GANZEN FILM FREI AUF YOUTUBE) Vargtimmen, a very personal film by Ingmar Bergman, who still has to find his own audience today. I'm afraid that the normal moviegoer will reject the work in 2016 just as he did in 1968. Vargtimmen is difficult and not very successful. Bergman is giving us a creative act to use our own imagination. His film - we distrust him. When I last showed him at the film club, only a few were willing to do so. Most of them whispered to each other, didn't get into the work. Bergman makes use of Gothic legends. It is the story of an artist (Max von Sydow) who lives isolated from the world on an island with his wife (Liv Ullmann). On the other side of the island is the castle of the Baron and his circle of perverse friends. The artist is plagued by paranoid nightmares and insomnia at night. Vargtimmen plays mainly at dusk, the hour of the wolf. The darkest time of our soul when most people die and our most terrible dreams come true. Demons and spirits grow enormous powers during this hour. Obviously the artist is slowly going mad. Night after night he stays awake, telling of his dreams (or are they memories?). Reality, for him only a tightrope act. Where does it begin and where does it end? His dreams come true creepingly... There is this scene in which the artist fishes with a boy (is it his son?). It seems as if the child pushes him into the water. As if the child has a distorted face. The artist freaks out, kills the boy. Really? Bergman doesn't give us the answer. Finally the woman is afraid of her husband. The inhabitants of the castle crowd into the couple's lives, try to break them apart. Evil condenses during one of the baron's dinners. Something happened in the life of the artist. Some dark secret in the past. The inhabitants of the castle seem to know this and prepare a cruel joke at his expense - which Bergman presents in surrealistic pictures. The limits of logic are left behind. Bergman penetrates into the depths of consciousness. Vargtimmen could unfold into a great melodrama. But I don't want to anticipate. The best thing is to try to see the film in Bergman's sense.

FREE ON YOUTUBE The Cave Of The Yellow Dog

FREE ON YOUTUBE (DU FINDEST DEN GANZEN FILM FREI AUF YOUTUBE) Of course, you also look for wisdom in the cinema every now and then. But how far does one like this help us: "If a camel rejects its calf, send for a violinist! That was the message from "The Story of the Weeping Camel" by Byambasuren Davaa. A wisdom from Mongolia, as strange as it is enchanting, isn't it? Once I visited an entrepreneur fair in Beijing with my cinegeek partner. A German truck entrepreneur, based in Mongolia, described the country this way: "This is a men's country. If you open the door of your truck and the wind is 90 Km/h..." Of course the story is not true! The nomad family Batchuluun from Mongolia has three daughters. They are diligent, their rhythm depends on the seasons. Nansal (herself) is six and can already ride like an adult. It is she who brings the yellow dog home with her. The father protests. A dog inevitably attracts wolves and they eat its sheep! But Nansal loves her dog! Under no circumstances will she take him back to the wild! And what else happens? The family makes cheese, the children play with dried manure (they love that!) and we remember what life is all about: the simple things! There are also discussions about God and religion. One day one of the daughters is tinkering with a religious icon. But you can't play with God! A film in which it's all about a dog is so captivating!

FREE ON YOUTUBE Hans Weingartner - 303

Werner vom Nomadenkino wanted to know from me whether 303 would fit on the big cinema stage. Of course 303 feels and thinks! 303 feels and thinks like most of us do. And Hans Weingartner's Road Movie is also romantic! But for me the trip from 303 leads back to my own past... When I was still studying, I was always proud to hand in all my written work for the semester break on the last day. Then I went on vacation! Quickly studied = more free time. Also Jule (Mala Emde) and Jan (Anton Spieker) go south after finishing their semester. However, I doubt whether both enjoy this departure as much as I do. After all, Jule took a biology exam and missed Jan a scholarship. Rejected. Nevertheless it's off to the south. 303 by Hans Weingartner also offers beautiful memories for all of us who once enjoyed months of semester breaks. Weingartner himself maintained an arbour during the founding of our Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo in which his pothead buddies (who in turn helped with the renovation of our video store) met. Semester break forever! Anyway, he understands Jule and Jan, who prefer to philosophize about God and the world. He stays very close to the students. Jule sets off for Portugal to visit her boyfriend, because she is pregnant and intends to clear it up. Jan wants to visit his father, whom he never met, in Spain. Then he is transferred by his ride (of course) and decides to hitchhike. What happens? Jule picks him up and they argue about the moral responsibility of suicides. Jan believes in the egoism of people, while Jule insists that everyone is empathetic at its core. Without further ado Jule throws the passenger out, but of course they will meet again... Love probably at second glance. Jule and Jan actually only wanted to travel to Cologne together, but their conversations become deeper and more personal: trust, closeness or is everything regulated by perfumes? When Jule, disgusted, buys a piece of meat in a supermarket because Jan likes to barbecue, we also understand what it means to accept each other. They cross France together and reach Spain. It's getting harder and harder for the two of them not to fall in love... P.S. Of course one can understand the whole construction of the film of the ride to Spain as an anachronism. But Weingartner loves such outsiders who still drive a car in the time of cheap flights. The result is 145 magic minutes!

FREE ON YOUTUBE John Waters - Multiple Maniacs

FREE ON YOUTUBE (DU FINDEST DEN GANZEN FILM FREI AUF YOUTUBE) John Waters probably deeply believes that all good American movies were made in the 50s. The dirty little movies with the bad endings. He himself looks like one of the greasy B-movie producers of the 50s, with a distinctive moustache. So about ten years later in his hometown Baltimore he started to realize similar trash movies for very little money. Such as Multiple Maniacs from 1967. Even when he got the means to produce "real" Hollywood movies during the 80s, he settled these candy musicals in the 50s. With a lot of gel and hairspray! In the 80's my father took me to the cinema to watch Waters "Cry-Baby". I liked the film but didn't know any of the actors: The very young Johnny Depp, Patricia Hearst, Polly Bergen, Iggy Pop, Joe Dallesandro, Joey Heatherton, Willem Dafoe, Ricki Lake, Traci Lords(...) But my father raved that he had just seen the best cast of all time! John Waters would have agreed. Except for Dame-Elizabeth Taylor, I'm sure every wish-list candidate from former times has worked with him. Nevertheless, Waters expanded the cinema in 1981 when he laid out so-called Scratch-n-Sniff cards in the hall. Normally such cards smell like the ones you get for Christmas. Waters' cards, however, stank miserably. In any case, John Waters emulated the models of the 50s. Especially the high school rebel movies. But of course not the established classics, but the lousy little cheap films. Like every good "Auteur", Waters liked to cast the same actors. Preferably Divine, who grew up with him. Divine had outrageously thick eyebrows and outrageously tight dresses. In Waters work he even made the leap out of the midnight movies and played a faithful suffering mother. With lots of hairspray and concrete hairstyle. Years later I read an interview about the remake of his musical. Waters was very proud that his outsiders had finally arrived in the middle of society. Then the divine Divine died and Waters mourned that he would never try to replace Divine. By the way, as his successor he chose a certain Johnny-Depp... In Multiple Maniacs nobody knew Divine yet. Nobody could have imagined that she could become a movie star. In Multiple Maniacs Divine is raped by a giant lobster. I would call Multiple Maniacs a Catholic horror movie. With the atmosphere of a pompous Hollywood melodrama of the 50s. Or something like that. Not only does he NOT stand in the spirit of the hippie movement of his time, but he clearly stands against Peace & Love. Instead we experience the typical John Waters characters: armpit treats, human ash buckets, vomit eaters, junkies. And Divine, gnawing at the guts of her dead lover as the giant lobster approaches from behind. The song "America The Beautiful" is played. I think John Waters must have been very happy with his movie.

FREE ON YOUTUBE The Blue Kite

FREE ON YOUTUBE  I used to often go to East Berlin to visit our friends. My parents told me I shouldn't talk about politics. At least not openly. That would be dangerous in the GDR. It could be heard by the wrong people. The Blue Kite played about 30 years earlier in China. In a small room, it must be somewhere in one of the traditional districts of Beijing, a wedding is celebrated and a child is born. Everyone in the courtyard of the Hutong (a traditional Chinese house with a courtyard) knows each other. Together they rejoice, prepare the food. Everyone brings something. They are normal people. Then one hears a voice from the loudspeakers that transmit the public radio. "Stalin is dead". Who is this Stalin? In the following years, a wave of political hysteria will destroy everything they dreamed of and planned for the long term. This is what The Blue Kite is about: How does it live in times of ideological madness? The boy's name is Tietou. If you translate that, it would mean as much as "iron head". With him we experience family celebrations and the uncanny uncle who sometimes comes. The uncle will join the army. With his girlfriend. Tietou remembers most vividly his blue dragon, which got caught in a tree. The father promised him to buy a new one. In the background of life in China. The country was still in a capitalist system. Slowly, however, there are signs of change. Once the Neighbourhood Committee meets. Who owns the courtyard anyway? The state, they are soothed. The landlady would have just lowered the rent. The good people understand that they have to change something after the revolution in the new China. They are doing their best! But there is one thing they cannot understand: A rational plan is missing. The so-called political turn serves only the purpose to frighten and frighten the citizens. In this way the whole country can be controlled. Then Tietou's father Shalong (Pu Quanxin) disappears. He is a librarian. Once a committee on "right-wing" tendencies meets in his library. The father has to go to the toilet. When he comes back, all eyes are on him. He must have left the room at the wrong moment. At this point we learn what it means not to have reached a quota. Tietou and his mother Shujuan (Lu Liping) are told that their father is far, far away. We experience: He was deported to a labour camp. There he died. Then the "big leap forward" takes place in China. The "Cultural Revolution". It causes poverty and famine. Two more marriages will lead the mother in the hope of ending this misery somehow... Director Tian Zhuangzhuang belongs to the legendary "fifth generation" of directors in China. They brought Chinese films back to the festivals of the world in the late 80s. That a work like The Blue Kite exists at all is probably a miracle! A film that draws its strength from simply showing normal life. We don't see bad guys. Not the great party leader. Sometimes mobs roam the streets and shout slogans. But when you take a closer look they are just neighbours trying to do the right thing. Once the teacher's hair is cut. Fröhlich tells his mother that they have fought the teacher and cut her hair. She is a bad person. Anyone can spit on her. Tietou learns this and believes it. And the husbands of the mother? The first is a friend of the family. But one night he dies. His liver has failed. Malnourished. The second man is a small party official. But one day he proposes a divorce. It would be better if the mother would no longer be seen with him. He would have been denounced during work. The saddest scene is the one when he looks at Tietou. He would have always loved the boy - but the boy would not. But children are like that. Then he is carried out of the house by the mob. Is there anything like "right" or "wrong" at all? No. Only something like immunity against the mob. Not to be discovered. In The Blue Kite we only experience life in the neighbourhood of the Hutongs. The metropolis must be somewhere out there. The capital. Inside you ride your bike and share everything. Everything seems graceful. The faces of these people are beautiful. They are simple. Is that supposed to be the "reactionary bourgeois" life? Just to get the family through? They are universal hopes that people share in The Blue Kite. They want to work well. They want to do the right thing. An old woman explains that she has nothing to do with politics; she is too old for that. But The Blue Kite is a thoroughly political film! It's not primarily about China. It is about the nature of man.