Film List: Agnes Varda

Is there an icon of cinema that was as popular as the Belgian-French director? Check out the interviews, Agnes Varda with her crazy charm! She only directed eight "feature films" - depending on what you mean by "narration". The last one was called "Kung Fu Master" (1987), in which her own son experiences a love story with Jane Birkin. Fortunately, Varda wasn't a filmmaker for our parents. She was very provocative! What was it like in "Le Bonheur" (1965)? Romantic happiness is promiscuous? Or "Vagabond" (1985)? A film about a young nihilist who rebels against everything and everyone. Until her time is up. Whoever readsardas biography will notice that she comes from the working class. She did study, but didn't like it. Then she began as a photographer at weddings. Her first movie "La Pointe Courte" allegedly cost only 14,000 Francs at the end of the 50s. State cinema looks different! It's the work of a filmmaker who works against conventions - simply because she doesn't even know conventions. And Varda lived "normally" quite soon. She met Jacques Demy and became a mother. Varda and Demy are certainly the greatest romantics of French cinema! Or are they not? Demys "Lola" (1960), "Bay of Angels" (1962) and "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964) - all wonderful! Varda filmed differently. In "Cleo von 5 bis 7" (1962), a pop star waits for a decisive medical diagnosis. A superficial blond person. Does she become a deeper person while waiting? Probably not. And who saw "Les Creatures" (1966)? Catherine Deneuve plays a pregnant woman who can withstand the pressure of her husband, the pressure of life. Varda was of course also a leftist. A whole series of political short films from the late 60s and the feminist "One Sings, the Other Doesn't" (1977) bear witness to this. Finally, Vagabond is considered Vardas' masterpiece. That was in 1985. A merciless film about how to fall without support and security. Extinct. Vardas late work covers the last 30 years. Above all she staged personal essay films - about herself and Jacques Demy. I think she was a free woman. So free that we don't even know much about her. None of her films are commercial! You can feel that they were all made out of love for cinema! And although Varda herself appeared so disarmingly cheerful, she made deadly films like Vagabond and Le Bonheur. To find out who she actually was, we should march straight into the cellar of our Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo Fitzcarraldo. There are two big Varda boxes (UK Import) and a nice DVD version of Le Bonheur (my brother had brought me from Paris once). After a Varda show we definitely know more!

In Berlin Cinemas: Jean-Luc Godard - The Image Book

JLG - as he now calls himself - is 88 years old and has been making films for 60 years. Films that are bulky and with every new Godard we ask ourselves: Is he a little less stiff this time? The Image Book begins with the recording of a hand. The fingers point upwards. It lies on an old-fashioned video editing table. Then a few hands on a cutting table from the 20th century. And then some who write on paper. The rise of the image and the fall of the word. There is no more information, instead a flood of "content". Amen. Connections are made between the colonial period and the Holocaust. And of course there are many film excerpts (are these "trains of thought"?). Footnote: JLG is one who romanticizes the Arab world as much as my father's generation during the 60s: "Let's go to Kabul! That's a beautiful aspect, isn't it? But now the question I ask myself with every Godard film that appeared after 1980. Oh what, after 1970! Nonsense, after 1965! What is it all about? Of course, JLG is a luminary. A man with connections. While he was honoured in Cannes, he simply put an actor on his stage chair. He enthroned himself in the audience. And he conducted a press conference via iPhone. JLG is quite a modern grandpa! And The Image Book? The film loves simplification. A free meditation on language and images and the extinction of certain cultural techniques. Or? And the exotic promised land (the Arab world). It seems to me that The Image Book keeps falling apart. Maybe JLG is trying to keep his material together. But he fails. There are filmmakers who work with similar techniques and hit the bull's eye. But Godard's essay film leaves me cold. Often cleverly done, but opaque. Actors don't appear at all. The Image Book is about monuments stacked on monuments and thoughts packed on thoughts. None of it is completed. This should not deter the Godard disciples of our video store. Those who borrow his early work with shining eyes. After all, nothing in The Image Book looks like old age or routine! Sometimes he even seems to have used coarse-grained YouTube clips. Who knows, maybe this is the future? The YouTube movie? And if everything is "content" and "data", it doesn't matter! And JLG? I did a test once: I watched old movies of him and directly afterwards movies of the hated "Rene Clement" from the same time. I liked Godard's specially chosen ore enemy at least as much. Ätsch!
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

Film List Stand By Me

a video store recommends good movies. That's why we exist. The big Internet players can do that with algorithms and we with people. And since we have 2019, we also offer it on the Internet. Therefore I write on our page cinegeek film lists to recommend films. Films that fit together. Question: Which films fit Stand By Me?

In Cinemas: Harmony Korine - The Beach Bum

What happened in America in 2016? It was the same: The Americans elected a German president. Correctly, a president of German descent - but these are only secondary facts. Like every good German, this president loves fences and walls. Surely the Americans didn't know that even in Kreuzberg there are miles of fences. Even around street trees. Germans like the US president eat a lot of meat and then look like a meat loaf (and explode in front of testosterone). And above all they suffer from "German Angst". Just like all of America with the German president since 2016. They are afraid of their neighbors - above all. Short and sweet; in 2016 America's backbone broke. And the reaction of Harmony Korine's The Beach Bum? Everything MUST be in order! If you need to, you have to look for a few happy moments. Outside the world collapses, but before that we smoke one with Snoop Dogg and Jimmy Buffett. Everything that counts, that is exclusively what counts for YOU. Mannomann! "He may be a jerk, but he's a great man"; that's what the daughter says about her father. Is it about the German president again? No. That's how Heather (Stefania LaVie Owen) describes her father Moondog (Matthew McConaughey). A carefree pothead poet who runs around half-naked most of the time. The poet sleeps on the beach or in the villa of his wife Minnie (Isla Fisher). Of course they have an open relationship. That's an understatement. But their sex is great (when Moondog and Minnie are together). And what happens next? Well, Moondog is torn from his comfortable world and travels. And his daughter is right; Moondog is an idiot. He's only ready for a party on Saturday night, but otherwise socially incompetent. Nevertheless he has a big heart and cares. The Beach Bum looks like a movie party in the house of Snoop Dog. But in some moments Korine transcends the events. What's behind it? Above all, however, The Beach Bum is a cute movie with great songs that always start at the right moment (like when Minnie and Moondog dance together). Fortunately no angry film about the state of America 2019. A sweet and funny film!

FREE ON YOUTUBE Werner Herzog - Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle

FREE ON YOUTUBE (DU FINDEST DEN GANZEN FILM FREI AUF YOUTUBE) I have the following theory about Werner Herzog, that in none of his films does the acting matter. Better still, it's not PLAYED. Herzog finds actors who embody the essence of his characters. He studies this essence in film with the greatest possible intensity. Take Bruno S., the "star" of the early Herzog films. The son of a prostitute was locked away for over twenty years in a closed institution (according to Wikipedia). Although he was never crazy, as Herzog believes. Bruno is a stubborn man. A simple one with the charisma of a child. One who can move us. He IS Kaspar Hauser. He does not look at us. He looks through us. Can Bruno S. play other roles than Bruno S.? Probably not. Look at the bonus materials. Herzog pretends to have been criticized in Germany for exploiting Bruno S.. Is that true? Certainly. The story of Kaspar Hauser is real. He was found in 1928. He clasped the Bible and a letter. For twenty years a kidnapper held him prisoner in the cellar. Does that look familiar? A nice couple adopts him and he learns to read and write. And even playing the piano (the real Bruno plays - as we see in "Stroszek" - accordion). For Kaspar every day is a secret. "It dreamt me..." Herzog hardly distinguishes between reality and fiction. Faithfulness to facts does not interest him, only effect. No linear story is told. Instead we get impressions. Or insertions like the stork that picks the worm. Images that only indirectly have to do with Kaspar. It's never about solving Kaspar's secret. On the contrary; the secret is the very captivating thing about him! I still remember how my then colleague in the video store, Thomas Groh, was invited to an interview with Werner Herzog, Thomas was sooo nervous! How would Herzog react to his questions? One heard bad stories. One who imagined the inner life of the blind and dumb and dwarves. And of Kaspar. Personalities who are not the prisoners of these attributes. No, they are liberated people, thanks to these attributes! This is the world of Werner Herzog and Thomas was invited to enter it. We were all sooo nervous. Fortunately Herzog answered like a gentleman. In his nasal timbre. I myself have always understood his feature films in the same way as his documentaries. In the feature films he used actors as instruments. The way he found them. He documented her personality. In his greatest films like "Everyone for himself and God against all" the actor and figure are congruent. Duke Kaspar Hauser is a wonderfully lyrical film about man, who is probably the least lyrical himself. Kaspar enters a dream world (= our world). He escaped his reality, that of the cellar. Kaspar had never dreamed in the cellar. Of what? "Everyone for himself and God against everyone" summarizes Kaspar's thinking. A poor worm that dreams to fly. Just like all of us, don't we?

FREE ON YOUTUBE Berlin Calling

How much Berlin does a Berlin film actually need? Hannes Stöhr offers locations like the Eastside Gallery, the Oberbaumbrücke and the Alex. He also shoots in two clubs: Bar 25 and Maria am Ufer. But most of the action takes place in the closed department. Although the techno movement wasn't fresh anymore in 2008, Berlin Calling delivers a nice portrait of Techno City (and punishes the lies of those who saw the sell-out back then). Berlin Calling, a swan song? More likely a misunderstanding, because a movement is shifting and meanwhile there are good clubs even in Tegel! So here comes the typical DJ, recording samples with his mobile in the S-Bahn and thus creating the soundtrack of the city. Usually musician movies are about Englishmen or Americans and play in the "good old days". Probably no genre is more conservative than the music film of all things! But Berlin Calling doesn't play in the deepest "once upon a time", but here and now! Hannes Stöhr may feel like a pioneer, because he brought techno to the screen! His big theme is genius and madness and that leads to the mental hospital. The DJ and patient is called Ickarus with ck and is played by Paul Kalkbrenner. How much Kalkbrenner is in Ickarus? I suppose, a lot! To understand the picture, you don't have to be very well versed in Greek antiquity. Let's simply exchange the sun for the mirror ball, because after all Ickarus rarely experiences the real sun. It turns night into day and that worldwide. Stöhr comes from Hechingen-Sickingen and has nevertheless made two formidable Berlin films. Here he shows the city from the inside and that's why the Bar 25 hosted parties especially for the film. The camera is allowed to slide through the dancing crowds and gets one of those rare moments that most people only remember darkly the next day. How I would like to have some such pictures from the film art bar Fitzcarraldo! Stöhr, one reads, had known Kalkbrenner for some time and finally persuaded him to play Ickarus himself. Consistently this has remained his only role so far! Ickarus calls Kalkbrenner his own demon; a guy who wants to go where Kalkbrenner is today. A guy who wants to go where every second person who lashes here through the Reichenberger also wants to go, I sometimes think.

FREE ON YOUTUBE Barfly

Charles Bukowski is the poet of the Skid Row. Almost hopeless to bring his art closer to those who do not want to understand him. Until he was 50, Bukowski moved through L.A., staying in countless bars with countless women. They were all cheap, expensive, bad or good - depending on and in any variations. Barfly invites us for the length of a feature film to take a seat in his universe. At least for a few days, which according to Bukowski's standards belong to his better ones. So here we are in a run-down bar. The same drinkers take their places every day and stay there. Nobody seems to be interested in the other and yet everyone knows everything about everyone. Regular guest is also Henry (Mickey Rourke), Bukowski's alter ego. A drinker and sometimes also a poet. The bartender hates Henry for the same reason why every bartender in such a dive hates his customers: He has to serve such a loser without the prospect of a significant tip. Herny and the bartender go out into the yard for a fistfight. Herny pockets, spits blood and takes another drink. For him everything is quite normal. One day Wanda (Faye Dunaway) is sitting at the other end of the bar. She looks like a woman with class, who belongs exactly in this bar - and yet not. A drinker with style. Herny and Wanda talk. It quickly turns out that Henry is broke. She invites him to her home. All the dialogues of Rourke and Dunaway in Barfly are pure pleasure; but the exchange of blows this night - pure poetry! She explains that she always makes the worst decisions when she's drunk. Of course. The next day a beautiful girl (Alice Krige) comes to the bar Henry is looking for. She writes for a literary magazine. Both go to her home, drink, flirt, just live side by side. When the beautiful girl visits the bar again, Wanda is already there. This time they don't live next to each other. Basically that's what Barfly is about, a film that doesn't need a plot worth mentioning. Barfly springs from the world of the drinkers, in which one step does not necessarily lead to the next. Between the hangover afterwards and before the next booze everything can happen. Barbet Schroeder made the film after one (the only one!) of Bukowski's original screenplays. For eight years Schroeder worked on it, according to Bukowski's Hollywood (not the "novel to the film", but a kind of genesis) Schroeder even walked into the office of his producer to cut off a finger with a carving knife. Or maybe even the producer? Schroeder never tries to impress us with his artistic finesse. Instead, he simply films the script - but with a lot of love for every detail! The result: A very American film, although one like no other! Barfly shows the people we never notice, with whom we never come into contact. That alone makes him a little classic!