FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Fernando Meirelles - Domesticas (engl. subt.) 

I was recommended Domesticas by a customer of our video store. He said he was having a great time and a little more. He was deeply moved! Domesticas is the debut of Fernando Meirelles (yes, the one who did "City Of God" afterwards). The film is an experimental documentary about maidservants in Brazil. Domesticas. An area of starvation wages and exploitation - and domesticas now brings a human dimension to this area. When the domesticas themselves give information about their lives, the jovial always shifts to the tragic. That must be what our customer meant by "splendidly amused", but also "deeply moved"! We experience the portrait of seven domesticas and their families. One works for a Jewish family. At first she hates their food. But she has to prepare it! Then the relationship between the children of rich parents and their "nanny" is examined. The child loves the "nanny" and she loves the child. More than the mother? The maid as part of the family, but also separated from her (Imagine, friends come to visit...). Sometimes we experience the Domesticas also in unobserved moments. At least you get the impression; they felt unobserved. When they dance alone or cry in front of the television while playing football. The film asks more questions than it can answer. Is it a coincidence that a teenager sings "Blowin In The Wind", the song of social reforms, at the end? Domesticas, in any case, offers much more than just a portrait of a maid. It goes back to the roots of society and goes as far as colonial times...

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Lina Wertmüller - Love & Anarchy 

The feminists never liked her: Lina Wertmüller, whose film Love And Anarchy mutated into a hate object at the time. That's what my father explained to me. Performance Tunin (Giancarlo Giannini), a farmer and anarchist full of ideals. He plans an assassination attempt on Mussolini. At his side the loudmouthed whore Salome (Mariangela Melato, whose headquarters is a lewd brothel in Rome. The harem of prostitutes got director Wertmüller into trouble at the time, as she approaches them in a mixture of slapstick and voyeurism. She was accused of presenting women as sex objects. In a 1973 interview, Wertmüller dismissed this as silly and described herself as a feminist. And indeed, Wertmueller's whores are always one step ahead of all the others in the film. Do they know more? Isn't Tripolina (Lina Polito) the true heroine of the film? Above all, Love And Anarchy is about the inability of man to change anything in his world. Love And Anarchy sounds absurd and hilarious, but it masks all the frustration about human nature itself. And doesn't Tunin's brutality prove all the hopelessness of the lower class? Giannini plays him like a silent movie character with a wiggly walk and staring, uncomprehending eyes. A sad clown, noble and just as silly. Melato, with her booming voice, provides a successful contrast. Take the test and invite a few people to the video evening. Will feminists still feel offended today? Or perhaps even more so? When we once performed Wertmüller in our open air cinema, there were strong reactions.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Roland Klick - White Star 

It was our colleague Thomas Groh who watched a Roland Klick exhibition here in Berlin in the presence of the original Roland Klick! And he asked for absolute silence during the screening, and also personally helped a naughty cinema guest. That was in the 00s. But White Star from 1983 can already be considered the farewell of this great German director. It is the darkest film from the darkest hour of Dennis Hopper's life. Klick, which had been marginalized in German auteur cinema of the 70s, is probably almost unknown in the USA as well. So how did this collaboration come about? After all, because of his raw aesthetics, Klick could also be considered an attack on the system of German film funding. It is possible that Klick and Hopper were two outsiders who were both on the verge of losing their careers. White Star is Klick's worst film. It seems unfinished. But I love White Star all the more for that very reason! It tells the story of the synthie popper Moody (Terrance Robay), who is managed by the fraudulent sinister Kenneth Barlow (Hopper). If you wonder why large parts of the story are carried by radio presenters and not by the main character Barlow alias Dennis Hopper, the following explanation is owed (which Thomas Groh taught me): Hopper was unpredictable and consistently on coke. Seen in this light, Hopper is responsible for Klick's early retirement after White Star. But in the distance, it is Hopper's condition on the brink that makes his game all the more fascinating. In later works he plays the madman. Here he IS. Hopper acts like an undertow that destroys the entire film. And when has anyone ever seen anything comparable? 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Terrence Malick - The Tree Of Life 

To make sure nobody gets depressed during the second lockdown there will be a daily free youtube stream on our webpage cinegeek.de, which we maintain especially for our video store and our customers.

Terrence Malick's The Tree Of Life is a film of tremendous ambition and deep humanity. Nothing less than the image of all existence through the primacy of a manageable number of human lives: the O'Brien family. There is only one film I can think of that has a similar claim and that is 2001 - but that one lacks the humanity of Malick's film. Malick is the last survivor of the New Hollywood generation who can still be credited with such a masterpiece over and over again! I can hardly remember the last time a film touched me so much and had so much to do with my own life. It almost seems as if the men in The Tree Of Life are myself. If I had the talent of Malick and had to make an autobiographical film, it would probably look like this. We experience childhood in a small town where life just flows. There's a father preaching discipline and a mother advocating forgiveness. We are on an island of idleness and only in this environment do questions about the meaning of life arise (because it takes time). The three boys of the O'Brien family are tanned by the sun and slightly scratched from playing. The fleeting impressions they get from the adults' secrets disturb them and increase their desire to grow up as fast as possible themselves. I myself grew up in the suburbs of West Berlin, where the mothers looked out of the kitchen window at the children and at about six everyone had to go in for dinner. The doors of the houses were open and we felt protected - I think from the innocence that such an environment radiates. Malick received the congenial support of his production designer Jack Fisk, who created the pictures of this idyllic small town (it must be in the Midwest). Like in his last films Malick manages without an obvious plot. He shows how the summer days follow each other and has his characters monologue to this. In fact, it's not so much the conversations between the characters as the soliloquies that make up The Tree Of Life. We watch everyday life. Inspired probably by Malick's own memories from his hometown in Texas, the events are limited by 1). space and time and 2) spirituality. Malick presents breathtaking images of the creation and expansion of the universe, first life and evolution. He ends up in the here and now - with all of us. Through the Big Bang we were created and today we are - you and me. But what comes after that? At the beginning the words "Nature" and "Grace" are whispered. We experience how nature gives life and takes it away again. One of the O'Brien brothers dies. We might as well watch the time: Young Jack O'Brien (Hunter McCracken) finally becomes a middle-aged man (Sean Penn). And then? I think the film promises an afterlife, an afterlife. In a lonely landscape people greet each other solemnly. I believe that there is harmony and absolute understanding. Sometimes you could read that Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt with a short haircut) is a character who is seen too one-sidedly as a kind of bulldog tax. He seems to be interested only in discipline. For me he just does what he thinks is right. Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chastain, who seems so ethereal) is more understanding and kind. Sure, we see a family of the 50's and it is not unusual for a child to get hit at the dinner table. At least Mr. O'Brien apologizes to his son Jack: "I was a little hard on you sometimes". He just replies, "It's your house." Jack defends his father against himself. That's how you grow up. In Malick's film, all this seems like a brief flash of life within the eternal realms of space and time. 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Rudolf Thome - Berlin Chamissoplatz 

If film is really nothing more than doing pretty things with pretty women, then Rudolf Thome is a master of his craft. Germany's chief critic Hans-Christoph Blumenberg praised Berlin Chamissoplatz as the first masterpiece of New German Cinema in the 80s. Berlin Chamissoplatz is a film about love and that's why it still looks as fresh today as it did then. A 24-year-old sociology student (Sabine Bach) falls in love with an architect 20 years older (Hanns Zischler). She lives in a shared flat on Chamissoplatz. The rent is not expensive, but that is supposed to change, because now is to be renovated. The student and the architect face each other on different sides, it could just as well play in today's Kreuzberg. She has to defend her love for the one she is fighting against against her student friends again and again. He denies that he is the "enemy" and seeks the conversation - in vain. What intense scenes does Thome offer in this intrinsically banal constellation: while she combs her hair in the bathroom, he sings a song at the piano in the living room. She sits down on the sofa, listens, looks at him. The intensity of her looks, the shyness of him, it is one of those scenes that tingles! We understand the political background as well today as we did then. My uncle, also an architect, told me a lot about what happened with the renovation of the old Kreuzberg building in the late 70s. It would have been best to demolish everything and rebuild it! The students, on the other hand, print flyers on matrices and discuss whether the resistance should use the same means as the aggressor. Thome does not judge, sometimes one thinks that his voice is that of the architect. It is the only moderate opinion in the "class struggle". By the way, you can also see such beautiful Berlin shots as only rarely seen in movies (this is still true now, because there is something going on at every corner in this city!). Thome began his career in Munich with the same American role models as the authors of the Nouvelle Vague. That's why his early films look so dirty - Hollywood made in Germany. They are such films in which chases take place, because the chaser sometimes chases five meters and then again 500 meters after his victim. It was called the "Munich Group". In the 70's Thome moved to Berlin and changed his style. He became a typical European narrator, who taught his realism a very own unreal note (they called him the German "Rohmer"). The most beautiful Thome Dialogues are certainly not from this world! Thome has always staged his actors like stars and he succeeds in that also in Berlin Chamissoplatz! The women are his favorite and you have to call Thome a real women director. Women are superior to men when it comes to pragmatism and decisiveness. He has his regular actresses like Sabine Bach and I think that Thome is actually a bit in love with them. Hanns Zischler became his favorite male "star" in the 80s. You can always see that there is more to it than he shows. Thome is dependent on such reflected actors, because he refuses to psychologize too much. Thome has managed to finish almost 30 movies to date without ever getting much budget. It was always important to him that the films also make their money again and since Thome is more popular abroad than with us, he succeeded. So how about a whole DVD show of Thome's work? After all, he's one of the few people to reflect the lifestyle of their time in films like Berlin Chamissoplatz! Thome demands from a film that you then come out of the cinema and stroll along the street in a lively way. I think he did it!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE My Name Is Joe 

Joe is his name and he is an alcoholic. He hasn't been drinking for ten months. Joe falls in love with the social worker Sarah. Sarah has seen many guys like Joe. But there is something special about him; something tender. Something that really touches her. Both are wounded and so the romance develops very gently. He invites her for tea and plays classical music. (When Joe was a drinker, he stole tapes which he sold. Only the one with the classical music did not sell). Once Joe (Peter Mullan) listened to the classical cassette himself. It was wonderful! Since then he loves this music! Joe is around 40, very compact, redheaded. He doesn't have a job, but he manages a football team. Joe wears a windbreaker. He is always in a hurry. That he is dry now is very important for him. Right at the beginning he tells his story to the anonymous alcoholics. Joe lives in Glasgow, where drugs and crime are part of everyday life. One of his friends, Liam (David McKay), was in prison for drugs. While he was inside, Liam's wife was dealing. Since then the local drug baron McGowan has been after Liam and threatened to break his legs. Now we know Joe's story and his background. He will have to choose. Will he go the way the anonymous alcoholics show him or will he follow the call of the road? Ken Loach's films are set in the working class. They always speak with a broad accent. That means; you need subtitles, which are available on our DVD. The most beautiful is the romance of two forty-year-olds who no longer have any great illusions, but the thriller parts are also well integrated into the story. Loach manages it all as if it were nothing. You may have gotten the impression that My Name Is Joe is a depressing social study? It's not like that! On the contrary; this is a lively movie with a lot of humor! And if you're tired of all those movies whose end is predictable... Here is an amazing and yet logical ending!

Filmlist Beanpole 

She turns and turns and turns; the woman in the green dress. One hears her giggling, but that is not frolic. It is a compulsive act. How much longer can she deny all her experiences in order to keep some hope?