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I watched the first film by Christopher Nolan, the British no-budget production Follwing and was amazed: His debut is the core of all his films! In Following, we notice Nolan's penchant for a nested narrative structure with a twist at the end - in which ultimately all pieces appear as a whole. In a different context of meaning, of course! Sometimes you might wonder how necessary individual passages may have been for the big picture - but in any case they contribute to the fact that Following is simply fun! When we opened the Videothek Filmkunst (or today Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo) ten years ago, we didn't have many titles yet. Still, people came to borrow the stuff that didn't exist in other video stores. One of these "neighbourhood blockbusters" was Following. Constantly lent, always in circulation! Rightly so: the thriller is intelligent, aesthetic and very entertaining! Bill (Jeremy Theobald) is a lonely and neglected writer. He follows people on the street, in search of material for his (possibly never appearing?) book. In truth, Bill is obsessively searching for what he lacks: his own identity. One of his subjects, Cobb, confronts him. Cobb (Alex Haw) is a burglar who is less interested in prey than in the privacy of his victims. Cobb now teaches Bill and commits burglaries with him. In an apartment they find photos of a beautiful blonde (Lucy Russel) - again Bill reacts passionately and falls in love with the unknown. His teacher Cobb spies on Bill on his own and finally speaks to her in a bar. She tells him that she is being blackmailed. Bill decides to help her... On the surface Following is told more or less linearly. A second level of action seems to take place in the narrator's consciousness, as if his story is taken over... The moment he puts the individual parts together, we see what really happened. The big twist, it doesn't develop many of the narrative strands any further, nor does it enlighten them. Still, it's a nice ending point. By the way, Nolan himself was in charge of the camera and is responsible for the dirty, grainy black-and-white photography that makes up so much of the film's effect. Let's remember the scene in the bar, which is so dark that we basically have to think about most of it. With Following we see a 28-year-old filmmaker, already in full possession of his powers - without a budget, but with ideas! And what is the thriller about now? From a would-be writer who gets a lesson about human nature? Just about picking anyone out of the crowd and constructing a story around them? A story that works quite differently than it seems? A film about the process of storytelling itself? Or what do you think?

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You can recognise Tinder dates by the way they sit in secluded corners of pubs and have strangely detached conversations. The precursor to this, the personals, abbreviate complex human relationships with abbreviations like "SWM". This is exactly how Desperately Seeking Susan begins. Susan is desperately wanted by ad using this abbreviation. Roberta (Rosanna Arquette), a bored housewife, sees the ad and becomes curious: who is Susan and who is looking for her and why? So she simply turns up at the meeting place and meets Susan (Madonna), who draws her into her world. So begins an almost forgotten American indie film from 1984 that reminds us what a great filmmaker Susan Seidelman is and what Madonna looked like before her surgeries and how a whole generation was into Rosanna Arquette (that's actually the one from Toto's song of the same name). Anyway, Roberta gets so drawn into Susan's world that she even becomes Susan for a while. Complicated? Exactly! This comedy is extraordinarily complicated! Because Desperately Seeking Susan is a comedy of mistaken identity based on several instances of mistaken identity. 

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*Bad Boys*, starring a very young Sean Penn, tells the story of a couple of street lads from Chicago who get into a lot of trouble, end up in a youth detention centre and get into even more trouble there. Unfortunately, cinema always demands that films like this reach a moral resolution at a certain point: when the bad boys become good boys. That’s a shame, but up until then, *Bad Boys* is a really good film with a great feel for its setting! Sean Penn plays Mick O’Brien, a teenager of Irish descent from the Bridgeport neighbourhood, and Esai Morales plays Paco from the Latino district of Pilsen. Both are tough, mean and anti-social. Their paths cross over a drug deal. A shootout ensues in which Paco’s younger brother is killed. Mick killed him. Paco takes his revenge, rapes Mick’s girlfriend (Ally Sheedy), is caught and sent to the same prison as Mick. Mick already knows his way around prison, and Paco’s a quick learner. Only the strongest survive, and everyone in prison knows that Mick and Paco will have to fight each other to the death for their honour... The first hour is so good it’s actually a bit scary! Incidentally, *Bad Boys* is the first film about street gangs in which they aren’t glorified (*The Warriors*) or romanticised (*The Wanderers*). That was back in 1983. Unfortunately, though, the film becomes a bit predictable in the second half, even though the day-to-day life in prison is portrayed in great detail and feels authentic. But the absolute best thing about *Bad Boys* is, of course, the young Sean Penn!

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It’s not so much about the content – quite the opposite, in fact. When directors like Wim Wenders make a thriller, they take great pleasure in cutting out the key elements of the crime story. In doing so, he challenges us, because we don’t watch thrillers just for the plot, but at least as much for the atmosphere. New German Cinema of the 1970s and late 1960s thrives precisely on this: an atmosphere in which we are immersed. New German Cinema always came across as affected and strange (in which respect it resembled German Expressionism of the 1920s). The directors relied on garish lighting and colour effects and pushed their characters to the very limits of human behaviour. There is always a deliberately artificial dimension to it. Realism was of no interest to New German Cinema. Was that the reason why the audience always reacted so reservedly? Directors such as Fassbinder or Herzog made films that forced you to form an opinion. You couldn’t just sit back in your cinema seat.

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Wim Wenders made two films in 2023 and here comes another beautiful feature film by the soon-to-be 85-year-old auteur filmmaker! Perfect Days was shot in Tokyo, using an almost SENSATIONALLY beautiful colour palette, almost entirely in Japanese. But not much is spoken. Koji Yakusho plays Hirayama, a toilet attendant who hardly ever speaks. Essentially, Wenders' film is about how we follow Hirayama through Tokyo, how he cleans toilets and plays tic-tac-toe with a mysterious guest who leaves leaves for him in the toilets. There's also a real Wim Wenders soundtrack: Lou Reed, who of course provides the title, Nina Simone or The Animals are playing and when Hirayama's niece (Arisa Nakano) turns up at his door, something like a plot develops. But: Perfect days is not a plot film, but a Wenders mood picture. Yes, a picture, because Wenders prefers to use paintings as models for his cinema pictures. This may sound a little weak to some, but Perfect Days is also a nice way to let your mind wander and immerse yourself in Wenders' transcendence. And if you liked Perfect Days, then try the complete catalogue of Yasurijo Ozu, the declared role model of this film!

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Summer Of Sam was the first "Spike Lee Joint" without African-American actors. But Lee works on a theme that is familiar to "blacks" and other minorities: the scapegoat. It's the summer of 1977 in New York. The serial killer SAM is up to no good. All of New York is seized by the paranoid fear of the serial killer. In the Bronx, where the Italo Americans live, everyone who is different from the others is suspicious of being SAM. Summer Of Sam vibrates with guilt and fear and lust. And also with comedy! For once it's not about the murderer, but about his victims. SAM kills young brunette women - and the neighbourhood has formed into a kind of mob, ready to lynch the beast. One of the ugliest sides of man: To find someone guilty and to accuse someone who is different. 

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What traps are there if you want to make a political film? First, the tendency to self-satisfaction. A very little liberal and therefore unsympathetic way of thinking. Secondly. The emphasis on the historical context, because that would quickly make your film forget. And who should remember the specific context in the future? Who knows, perhaps there are so few political films because of these two traps? Let's think back to the time of the Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha. To the time around 1968, when film scholars in particular demanded that FILM be the image of society. FILM should draw attention to social and political grievances. Particularly important at that time in Brazil (and in South America as a whole) was the rejection of American cinema! What alternative did you have to produce as your own films? That's how Cinema Nuvo was born. Representation of the social reality of Brazil. Filmed on the streets, in the slums with amateur actors. Cinema Nuvo sees itself as Anti Hollywood with its genre stencils. Cinema Nuvo is REVOLUTIONARY!