First Reformed + Transzendenz im Kino

Paul Schrader's First Reformed, in which Ethan Hawke mimes a drinking Protestant priest in a psychological crisis, is an enchanting, breathtaking film! Definitely the crowning work of this always underestimated important director of American cinema! Schrader is no longer trying to reach a large audience. First Reformed is aimed at a limited audience. A clear demarcation from the mainstream in every respect. Our colleague Sulgi, a truly ardent Schrader follower, worked in our first address at the Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo! He gave me the former film critic's standard book on the transcendence of cinema. Schrader wrote about Ozu-Dreyer-Bresson at the age of 24! Most hip customers around twenty definitely don't borrow one of the three! As a director, Schrader has always uncompromisingly revealed his influences. There is no "stealing ideas" for him, but there is "intelligent, strategic stealing". Schrader, who grew up in a Christian Reformed church with a strict Calvinist concession, has always understood his work as a bow to his role models. Those who read something about him learn that he grew up without films. It is clear that the forbidden developed a special attraction! It is also understandable that Schrader, unlike the Neukölln hipsters, did not turn his attention to fancy popcorn goods, but to strict films. Those who first want to be cracked by us. Schrader, one reads, experienced as a teenager the bridge of his spiritual education and quite "profane" films. The crux for him: The convergence of film and church would not be expressed in the message, but in the style. Schrader, the great stylist! Who, if not him, rang in the stylized 80s with "American Gigolo"? And First Reformed? Slowly the camera advances, showing the white facade of a church in the state of New York. We see the colonial architecture before the grey sky. Images and music convey a severity that no longer exists in cinema. Schrader is now very close to his beloved role models. The angular priest in ankle-high trousers named Ernst Toller (Hawke) also seems strict. Sparse. But he is a very restless man. His church has very few members. At night Toller drinks, writes down all his misery in his diary (who doesn't think of Bresson's example of the country priest?). What is behind Toller's torments? He used to be happily married. A military pastor who encouraged his son to move to Iraq. We suspect what follows. The son fell, Toller's marriage broke up. Now he is practicing both buses and denial in his small tourist church. Then the pregnant Mary (Amanda Seyfried) turns to him, who believes her husband would demand an abortion from her. His name is Michael (Philip Ettinger), he works as an environmental activist, suffers from depression and believes in no future. We are allowed to transfer this to the whole world. Toller, on the other hand, believes that there is still hope for our planet. In the following both men seem to influence each other. For better or for worse. Finally, Mary confides to Toller that she has discovered suicide tools in her husband... Schrader's film closes. Is he aiming at an audience that wants a psychological drama? No. Or a dogmatic representation of spiritual themes? No. Schrader is concerned with spiritual consciousness. The new edition, transcendent cinemas. The creation of an alternative, transcendent film reality. First Reformed thus addresses an audience that knows and loves Schrader's role models. Once my father told me that in the 60s it was not a pure pleasure to go to the cinema. You MUST swallow the new "Bergman" or the new "Tarkovsky" - understand it, work it out. Schrader made a film of silence, of blanks. His visual language almost seems like a liturgy. A reflection of faith and its opponents. Schrader has achieved this for the first time. First Reformed no longer needs to make use of common narrative patterns. Schrader leaves all that behind. We can take a deep breath and be amazed.

FREE ON YOUTUBE Peter Weir - Picnic At Hanging Rock

FREE ON YOUTUBE  On a sleepy Valentine's Day around 1900, a class of schoolgirls from a strict Australian boarding school set off on a trip to Hanging Rock. Three of the girls and a teacher will disappear during the trip. As if they disappear into thin air. One of them is found a week later. She can't remember anything. The rest will never appear again. On this basis Peter Weir filmed his greatest film. A work about dark secrets and hidden sexual hysteria. It is also a film about the gap between the European settlers of Australia and their new home. And a film about the devil himself? When I founded the Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo, Picnic At Hanging Rock came out uncut on DVD after it had not been available for a long time. Yes, disappeared, like the girls. Unusual: Weir's "Director's Cut" takes out material instead of adding some! A work free of plot and explanation. It's the same for us as for the participants of the trip. The girls just disappear. Point. The story is based on facts. Or is it not? Did the girls disappear from our time line? Or did they just fall into a column? And the girl you picked up a week later? She had lost her shoes - but her feet were intact. There are several theories, but of course we are talking about the fact that there is NO explanation. Hanging Rock swallows its visitors. And watch Weir film the trip: Isn't it as if the group of outsiders were being watched? Are there no faces recognizable in the rock? There were such stories before in film history. The woman who simply disappears during a trip to a Mediterranean island. Or the corpse, which can be seen enlarged on photos - but was never found in the place. Theoretically analysed for the first time: There are things in the Victorian age, disturbing secrets that the spirit of modern life cannot translate or process. This is the message of Picnic At Hanging Rock. It all starts at Am Appleyard College in Woodend, Victoria. There, discipline and ladylike behavior replace real learning. The teacher Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) herself seems to have unfulfilled needs and punishes a rebellious girl with exclusion from the hike. The other students set off in the carriage for Hanging Rock. Their parasols shine in front of the dark rock. We hear girls laughing - in contrast to the inhospitable landscape. The sun breeds. Insects kill and eat themselves. Underlaid with disturbing music. Everything seems like a hallucination. Does the repressed sexuality have anything to do with the disappearance of the girls? Somehow their most secret desires seem to intertwine with the dark rock. A girl, Edith, runs screaming back to the group. The others would have disappeared! Later she remembers seeing the missing teacher in her underwear. Remnants of lace underwear are found. We remember Mrs. Appleyard's unspoken sexual feelings... The director Peter Weir, in any case, should then stage films more often about outsiders who are in places to which they do not belong. It seems as if Weir is afraid of these places. Wouldn't it be better to stay at home? You'll be fine at home, but in strange places like Hanging Rock you might just disappear. Worse still, that you will be haunted...

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?