South America 10s

A customer of our video store from Colombia recently said that basically all films from South America are about the effects of European colonialism on the Amazon. This conflict is often presented in poetic images. Life, a mystery. So every bend in the Amazon river becomes a metaphor. Films that are guided by chance, by fate. They love the melodramatic, the violent, even the sensational. And yet they seem much more modern than the Hollywood films of our time! Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Northern European Movies 10s

When farce and tragedy are so close together, how do I react? When a short stifled laugh is immediately stifled again, because you realize that this scene isn't funny after all? That's about how you could look at the best films from Northern Europe.

FREE ON YOUTUBE Tom Tykwer - Babylon Berlin Season 1 

FREE ON YOUTUBE  But watch out; the second episode is missing and is summarized here at the end. - A train races through the night and is stopped by a burning tree, which crashes crosswise onto the tracks. Armed men, followers of Trotsky, storm out of the undergrowth. They take the uniforms of the decoy leaders and couple another freight car. The contents? Definitely subversive. The train crew is shot down in the head and the train moves towards Berlin. And don't all roads lead to Berlin during the 1920s? During the Weimar Republic, definitely! I think our Berlin today could not exist without the longing for this Berlin of the 20s. The most depraved and glamorous city in the world! Politically, sexually, socially one may use the image of the scissors. Berlin was the city of extremes. Hyperinflation, war invalids, poverty in the streets. The populist right is gaining power. Babylon Berlin almost seems like a contemporary series, right? Next to it there is the parallel world of nightclubs. The age of jazz. "Sexing" is what they call it - everybody with everybody. Berlin seems like a ticking bomb and we all know when it should explode. In the middle of it all we meet Inspector Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch). Rath came to Berlin from Cologne. He is also a war veteran. Obviously he suffers from a post-traumatic stress disorder, which he tries to bear with small vials of morphine. There's not much we know about Rath yet. He works for Vice, delving deeper and deeper into the city's darkest secrets. Then we meet Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), who catalogues murders in the police department during the day and descends halfway around the world at night. And the scenes in the night clubs are the greatest thing about Babylon Berlin (none other than Bryan Ferry excels as a songwriter and performer!) To revive the Berlin of the 20's they obviously made a lot of money! Quite incidentally, they invested in a whole range of German stereotypes - probably also in order to make the reference to the here & now clear again and again. The really big feelings I expect in such an epic are not given enough attention. But who knows; maybe I'm just not really hooked yet? Like Gereon Rath. - The first episode of the first season runs in good quality free on YouTube, only the second episode is missing! That's why I want to summarize it briefly: Gereon Rath interrogates the arrested porn producer. He collapses in the presidium in rehab. Charlotte Ritter rescues him by chance. In the evening Charlotte climbs into "Moka Efti". There Nikoros appears as a singer. But he doesn't appear to be who he says he is...

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FREE ON YOUTUBE Wayne Wang - Chan Is Missing

FREE ON YOUTUBE A small, bizarre insider tip, which I would like to buy for our video store for some time now! Until then I was unsuccessful, but at least this indie pearl runs free on YouTube. In good (at least adequate) quality with English subtitles. If you watch Chan Is Missing, first of all you notice how little he knows about Chinatown. This is a warm, reserved look at the so-called ABCs - the American Born Chinese. The plot is simple. The heroes of the film are two taxi drivers who are looking for Chan. He has disappeared. But why did he disappear without paying? The two are familiar with the customs in Chinatown, knock on different doors and almost imperceptibly, we are already in the everyday life of the people there. So in Chinatown, San Francisco. Chan Is Missing lives from his casual, loving humor. The film is both cheerful and cynical. There are appearances: A philosophical cook or a political activist. And we learn a lot about linguistics, since Chan recently said "no" to a policeman and meant "yes". Did Chan answer A) referring to the truth of his action? Or B) to the meaning of the question? Sounds complicated and therefore even more funny! If you read a little bit about the making of the movie, you will immediately get the desire to shoot something, too. Director Wayne Wang (also co-writer, producer, editor) shoots with borrowed money from friends. Less than 30.000 Dollars! The plot reminds of film noir classics. A man disappears and his life is much more complex than we knew. But it's not a thriller. More like a trip to Chinatown, a road movie to seedy bars and the offices of social workers. New Wave style. And the end of the Odyssey? Well, there may not be a Chan, at least he's untraceable. But everyone has a different idea of Chan. And that in turn says a lot about one's own consciousness. And this is how WE see the American Born Chinese: as if through a filter. We have a certain idea. Just like the idea of Turks or Arabs here in Berlin. But actually we don't know them at all! Chan Is Missing does. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

FREE ON YOUTUBE Frozen Land

Frozen Land begins with a dismissal and ends with a shooting. In between we experience a fateful chain of coincidences. A chain reaction of mishaps. The protagonists are: Alcoholics, losers and depressives whose paths cross in Helsinki. It's strange, but we feel with them and laugh at their misfortune at the same time. And they are all doomed! That is how it works: We think; these poor pigs! We want to embrace them. But then our sympathy begins to dwindle. And in the end I think that they can only be as good as they can be. I find it fascinating that I must never be sure whether I should cry or laugh with these guys. Life in Helsinki is bleak, grim and sad. These figures are not tragic, but very stupid, unsuspecting, even mentally ill. Of course, they look into the world just as motionlessly as passively. After all, Frozen Land is a Finnish film! And in Finnish movies little people are usually crushed by an inexorable system. They never smile, smoke a lot and always expect the worst. Like the drug-addicted hustler who starts the chain reaction with a 500 Euro bill. Or the vacuum cleaner salesman who struggles with alcohol problems. Or the criminal computer nerd. The paradox of human existence.

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Auerhaus + German 80s Retro Movies

Neele Leana Vollmars Auerhaus is about a life in winter. A life somewhere in the Swabian province during the 80s: pedestrian zone, ice cream parlour, pizzeria and the grammar school on the outskirts of the city. Höppner and his WG grow up there. They live together, one of them is suicidal. They talk about death and listen to New Wave. At some point they will claim that it was the best time of their lives.

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FREE ON YOUTUBE Fatih Akin - Crossing The Bridge

FREE ON YOUTUBE The bridge from west to east is Istanbul itself. The linchpin from west to east. THE place for the meeting of cultures! and Istanbul is constantly developing; this shows Fatih Akin's documentary from 2005. Akin was born in Germany. He grew up in Hamburg. His view of Istanbul is that of a stranger. The perspective of the discoverer! Tour guide Alex Hacke from Einstürzende Neubauten from Berlin is allowed to play. Another stranger. (Why only Alex Hacke remains Fatih Akin's secret, the West Berliner doesn't offer so much insight). It becomes more interesting after about 20 minutes, when Akin penetrates deeper into the city: Jams in Roma bars, Turkish film stars or the virtuoso Orhan Gencebay - and then the highlight: The great Sezen Aksu. She is and remains THE Turkish star par excellence! In any case, Akin loves Istanbul and idealizes his place of longing.

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The Lighthouse + Modern Surreal Comedies

Do you love movies beyond your imagination? Movies that don't play in every multiplex? Rather in such locations for obscure films as the cinema of my old partner Skulli in Gärtner Str. am Boxhagener Platz (B-Ware). Where a bottle of beer costs 2.50 and everything seems a bit cranky. With lots of decoration elements and old couches. And of course you can smoke during the show. In addition films of Guy Maddin, Delepine & Kerchern or Wenzel Storch? Or The Lighthouse, the new film by Robert Eggers.

Filmlist Invisible Life + Arthouse Brasil

Who remembers Four Days In September or Central Station? These were the two films that heralded a kind of renaissance of Brazilian cinema during the 90s. And it's worth noting: These were real audience films in Brazil and also with us! Brazilian customers brought me a stack of import DVDs in the early 00s, some of which became real Kiez blockbusters in the video store. The themes of these films are explicitly Brazilian. And they look great and are filled with real (Brazilian) stars! Since the Cinema Nuvo of the 60s there exists something like a deep longing for "Brasilidade" - the deeply Brazilian one. We know this from Cinema Nuvo, which tried to depict and explain reality. The new cinema does not explain. It observes. We see individual stories like Invisible Life, the great new colorful melodrama by Karim Aïnouz. If you love deep emotions and epic stories, you can run straight to the cinema! It tells the story of two sisters who live in the same city but never meet. Prevented by the mother. You can imagine that there are moments when they meet FAST. Monstrously captivating! Just like the other films from the short list that collects Brazilian Arthaus titles.