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Retrospective on the career of enigmatic screen diva Marlene Dietrich.

Franz West (1909-85) remembers his youth in Vienna: the variety of the Jewish population of the so called Matzah-Island, his commitment to the worker’s movement of the Red Vienna and the rise of Austro-fascism and National Socialism. West’s masterly narration combined with impressing archive footage illustrate and elucidate the complex Austrian history between WW1 and WW2.

“Cantons Aztecas” are provocative and mystical poems written by an Aztec prince more than 900 years ago. Set to music composed and conducted by Lalo Schifrin, it features Placido Domingo as principal soloist, a 100-piece orchestra, a 120-piece choir and four soloist. Recorded live at the Pyramid of the Moon of Teotihuacan and sung in the original languages of the Aztecs nahuatl, Cantos Aztecas is a thrilling experience. Personnel includes: Placido Domingo (vocals); Lalo Schifrin (conductor); Marsha Felix, Conchita Julian, Nikita Storojev (vocals); Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra & Chorus.

This Oscar nominated documentary serves not only as a remembrance but a lesson and a warning for the future. It follows the plight of Europe's Jews during the terrifying period from 1933 until the final defeat of the Third Reich in 1945. Never before had the world seen such contempt for human life on such a grand scale, the murder of an estimated 6 million Jews, with countless others persecuted. During the 1930s a wave of national fervor swept through a tumultuous Germany; people looked for answers, and the politicians were all too willing to point the finger of blame towards the Jewish population. Few, if any, could have foreseen how the views of one man would unfold…that man was Adolf Hitler.

Experimental documentary film about the behavior and culture of the Indians in the American southwest and about the situation of the white artist in (Austrian) society.

Reverend Huie Rogers is a preacher at the Bible Way Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Brooklyn. He is the topic of this short film, during which launches into an epic call-and-response denunciation of human hubris, greed, corruption and failure. The use of lengthy shots present it less like a sermon and more a performance, and induce an almost trance-like state.

One year before the Berlin Wall fell, this silent black&white documentary from 1988 is a profile of West-Berlin: places and people, moods and locations; you eventually see "Checkpoint Charlie" still in function.

German director Wim Wenders tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu and finds a very different city.

A lone scholar researches the visual and textual worlds of National Socialism. The film approaches a critical understanding of "German identity" from a multimedia perspective - off-screen commentary is superimposed over shots of paintings, literary quotations over feature film sequences and at the center of the film is a television debate on the subject of nature. The focus is on the German concept of "Heimat" and its connection to romantic notions of nature.

A documentary about the life of Andrei Tarkovsky in exile in Western Europe including Italy, Sweden, Germany and France until his sad demise to a fatal cancer.

Documentary focusing on the thrash metal band Kreator but also exploring the economic and social situation of Essen at the time.

In Our Nazi, we are plunged into a situation we barely, and only slowly, understand: the filming of Thomas Harlan’s experimental feature Wundkanal (1984), in which true-life ex-SS officer Alfred Filbert, now very old, is ‘put on trial’ for the camera, without him suspecting what is to come or why he is really there. Kramer’s confronting film is an essay about the sticky complicity of everyone present at this event, each bringing their own history, their own political ideology, their own desires to take revenge, to seek redemption or compassion, or just to put their heads down and ‘get the job done’ professionally, or (in the case of Filbert) to be a star, a part of the magnificent, magical, seductive world of cinema, even if it kills him.

A documentary about German director Konrad Wolf (1925–1982).

The third episodic film, after Deutschland im Herbst and Der Kandidat, in which notable German filmmakers reflect on the state of their country. A collage of documentary and dramatised sequences dealing with such topics as overkill, peace demonstrations, NATO arms policy, and life after the next war.

An autobiographical short film by Werner Herzog made in 1986. Herzog tells stories about his life and career. The film contains excerpts and commentary on several Herzog films, including Signs of Life, Heart of Glass, Fata Morgana, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, Fitzcarraldo, and the Les Blank documentary Burden of Dreams. Notable is footage of a conversation between Herzog and his mentor Lotte Eisner, a photographer. In another section, he talks with mountaineer Reinhold Messner, in which they discuss a potential film project in the Himalayas to star Klaus Kinski.

Werner Herzog follows mountaineers Hans Kammerlander and Reinhold Messner during their expedition into climbing the Gasherbrum mountains, which has some of the most difficult peaks to be conquered, and they'll do it without the use of oxygen tanks. Herzog also takes some time to hear about their past experiences with other mountains, their personal tragedies and the reasons why they are so involved with such activity.

Documentary about Anton Chekhov and his descendants in Moscow. Vera Tschechowa, who is the great-grandniece of the poet and writer, meets with family members, writers, and theater professionals. Past and present merge into a poetic journey of discovery into a country that, until then, had been little known in the realm of artistic sensibilities.

In 1988, Tilda Swinton toured round the Berlin Wall on a bicycle - starting and ending at the Brandenburg Gate - accompanied by filmmaker Cynthia Beatt. As Swinton travels through fields and historic neighborhoods, past lakes and massive concrete apartment buildings, the Wall is a constant presence.

Documentary film for german TV about rock music in Soviet Union. Featuring: "Мистер Твистер", "Ва-Банкъ", "Чудо-Юдо", "Женская Болезнь", "Ночной Проспект", "Аквариум", "Ноль", "Аукцыон", "Телевизор", "АВИА", "Звуки Му". In 1989 an album with recorded soundtrack was released.

A group of Miskito Indians use Nicaraguan child soldiers in their resistance against the Sandinistas.

The documentary follows Gene Scott, famous televangelist involved with constant fights against FCC, who tried to shut down his TV show during the 1970s and '80s, and even argues with his viewers, complaining about their lack of support by not sending enough money to keep going with the show.

The German artist Joseph Beuys is reflecting on his theory of art, being filmed as a kinetic sculpture. In 1981, the film has won the German film critic's award for “Best short film in Germany”.

Educational short film about praying

Short-documentary about the squat at Amandastraße 73 in Hamburg.

An issue of the magazine Kino 81, designed for the film department of WDR by staff of FILMKRITIK

A documentary about a proposed military training area in Rothenthurm, Central Switzerland, and the village's resistance to those plans.

"Deutschland privat" is a special project by Robert van Ackeren, who in 1979 asked people to send him their 8mm home movies by placing ads in several magazines in Berlin, Germany. In the ads he announced that he was planning to blow up and mount the best of those movies into a feature documentary to be released in German cinemas. He was surprised how many home movies he received and how generously people allowed him to use them for his feature. Part 1 of "Deutschland privat" gives us typical German home movies of the 1970s, i.e. private holidays, family parties, etc. Part 2 consists of what is now called "amateur porn"; home made 8mm movies featuring real porn action.

Morbidly beautiful images show the unreasonable working conditions at a rusty factory.

An intimate portrait of director Mai Zetterling that includes interviews with Zetterling, David Hughes (Zetterling’s ex-husband and the cowriter of LOVING COUPLES, NIGHT GAMES, and THE GIRLS), and actors Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, and Bibi Andersson.

Pina Bausch created and performed Café Müller for her dance company Tanztheater Wuppertal. The dance was inspired by and based on her childhood memories of watching her father work at his café in Germany during and immediately following World War II. In this silent style featurette, Bausch shows a restaurant after closing, in which the ghosts of the departed customers stumble blindly into walls and onto chairs but fail to find one another.

A superb, moving and thrilling interview with American actor Sterling Hayden (1916-86), held in Besançon, France, on board a dilapidated barge, when he was 65 years old. An unparalleled portrait, in his own words and without any qualms, of a legendary Hollywood star, icon of film noir and the western, who was also a marine, an OSS agent, an anti-communist informer, a writer and a wandering sailor: the hero of his own life.

Peter Lorre achieved international fame for his performance in the myth-making role in M. This character has held a peculiar fascination for generations of cinephiles. However, at the time, whilst such success meant recognition, it also weighed on the Hungarian actor as a constrictive burden. Using photographs and film extracts, Das doppelte Gesicht reconstructs the ups and downs of Lorre's career, taking into consideration the economic imperatives and workings of the film industry at the time. (Arnold Hohmann, 1984)

A German TV documentary that chronicles the daily rehearsals, the filming and all the behind the scenes of Jean-Jacques Annaud's classic "The Name of the Rose". From actors perspectives to the ideas used by the director to produce an impeccable international epic adaptation of Umberto Eco's best selling novel, the film presents the obstacles behind the creation of a production of such large scale and also the making of the many difficult scenes, most of the ones presented here are the characters' murders inside the mysterious abbey.

Documentary about three painters painting cities.

181 Berliners gaze at us: infants, chambermaids, workers, managers, dancers, divers, lawyers, confirmation candidates, boy scouts, a circus director. These are faces from West Berlin with which Antje Starost and Hans Helmut Grotjahn aim to capture a piece of reality.

Selected industrial and city settings from the three films were documented again for Usinimage and intercut with the corresponding fiction film scenes, in order to give the landscapes a new accent through artistic defamiliarization and condensation. It is an exploration of city architecture, in which the shooting location serves not just as reflective or constrastive backdrop but rather becomes itself content.

A documentary about the now abandoned and very influential punk club S.O.36. A punk music club on Oranienstrasse near Heinrichplatz in the area of Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany.

A Peruvian-German documentary about the gold fever in the Peruvian jungle and the life of the gold diggers.

Helga Reidemeisters poetic documentary gives various residents of East and West Berlin a chance to have their say. They discuss their different ways of life and the nature of their divided city. All interviews are refreshingly sincere when they consider the future of the city, and none of them are even remotely pro-American.

Rosa von Praunheim follows the lives and existential struggles of three contrasting German emigrant women in New York City. The protagonists not only tell of their exciting lives in the hectic metropolis, but many dramatic events also take place during filming.

The sunday ritual at home with parents, an alumni meeting of former school colleagues who once again, and some of them as young mothers and fathers, are confronted with the world of (their) children. Shots of mentally and physically disabled people who are brought to work in a bus early in the morning: people who have remained children. Many other images about childhood and being a child.

This documentary reports on the master potter Otto Engelmann from Klingmühl, who was commissioned to make black painted clay heads of Karl Marx in the spring of 1973. Engelmann briefly explains the individual work steps from mixing the casting slip to firing the clay heads and then painting them. An old craft is vividly captured on camera and accompanied by original sou

Documentary film.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder visited for two weeks the "Theater der Welt" festival in 1981 in Cologne. 30 companies showed in over 100 performances their own visions of a new theater. Framed by Fassbinder's reading of one of the famous essays on theater: Antonin Artaud's "The Theater and its Double". The audience is left to wonder how much of Artaud's radical and beautiful vision is realized in contemporary theater.

Using some unique documents and pictures, this colour film shows the life and work of Martin Luther in the context of his own time and his relevance to our time. Most of the places associated with Luther, the great Reformer and translator of the Bible, are in the GDR. Thousands upon thousands of tourists visit these places every year and learn how his legacy is kept alive and how it is protected today and for the future.

Klaus is one of the numerous drug addicts in Austria. His story (parents are separated and he is isolated) is made more realistic with interviews. Not only do the therapists of the drug units at Mödling and Enns, the physicians and politicians who are confronted with these social problems have their say, but also the man on the street who expresses the "voice of the people" - and many other drug addicts.

Everything you want to know about the secret erotic desires of Germans can be experienced here in documentary images and hard-hitting interviews that leave nothing to be desired in terms of unsparing openness. The film should serve as a warning to parents and a deterrent to daughters, because once registered means a lifetime burned market! And you can buy a lot from the earnings - but no happiness!

The Macedonian Soltana is the last original inhabitant of Europe. She still remembers the first automobile: she thought it was a terrible monster. She is neither capable of reading nor writing. At the age of 18, her family takes her to Austria, where she has the opportunity to marry a rich man. No use to think twice about it - Soltana obeys. As a woman, she says, she has no alternative. In Soltana's life no big events took place. But those who look closely are bound to discover tremendous openness and vitality in the small steps of her life.

An essay on Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau produced on the occasion of his 100th birthday.

Ribnitz-Damgarten, the jewel at the coast of the Baltic Sea, is located directly at the Saaler Bodden, between Stralsund and Rostock. The town and its surrounding area are made for vacationing. This documentary from 1989 also shows the other side, like, for example, how the increasing population density and the industrial production influence the ecological balance of the region. A community for the protection of the Bodden landscape is actively making an effort for conservation. At the institute for deep-sea fishery, research about the fish population is conducted, and agriculture as well is looking for solutions to preserve an intact environment.

The first summarizing film about the path of the class and the common stations in life. But also about the different paths in the profession, in love, marriage and family. As well as a soldier. A group chronicle, viewed from the historical distance of the 35th year of the end of the 2nd World War and after 18 years of shooting in peace, which ensured everyone the first human right: they were allowed to live.

The annual production conference, speeches by functionaries and silence of the workers while they are waiting to descent into the pit. Talking of the unimportant, what really should be said remains unspoken of. A suffocating closeness to reality conserved a part of history that remains ageless though impressive images.

Times have changed! Women are no longer off with the unimaginativeness of men. Sex machines are just as frowned upon as limp softies. Sex is no longer talked about behind closed doors.

Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.

This film was made entirely in Ghana and consists of documentary scenes and a fictitious story about a British engineer who wants to import microchips to Africa. But the reaction of the blacks to his plans to build a fully automatic plastic furniture factory surprises him. His faith in technocracy stands opposed to what they know about the environment. When the conflict has reached its climax, a spell is cast upon him... finally, he gives up... but his attitude toward Africa has changed for the better.