An Alternate Cinema – From the Deutsche Kinemathek Archives

Starring Christian Kuchenbuch, Florian Lukas, Kurt Naumann, Jörg Panknin

In 1970s East Berlin, two teenagers rebel against pervasive paternalism. In settling accounts with everyday and cultural life in East Germany, this film farce from the environs of Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre tried out a new cinematic language.

Starring Ulrich Schamoni, Anna Henkel, Jürgen Barz, Peter Ehlebracht

A bankrupt young industrialist goes all out on the idea of the “leisure society”. In his artfully run-down villa in leafy Berlin, he enjoys and preaches the “right to idleness”. A pleasant, frivolous summer étude that takes a few satirical pot shots.

Starring Edda Köchl, Ilona Schult, Irene Wittek, Klara Zet

During a fictional road movie, women from the director’s circle talk about relationships and ideal love. The director’s thesis film for the Munich film school HFF, it represents an early example of taking stock of feminist positions.

Starring Karina Fallenstein, Brigitte Kausch(-Kuhlbrodt), Susanne Bredehöft, Volker Spengler

After re-unification, former East Germans are massacred in the West by a family of cannibal butchers. The satirical horror film was a garish, blood-drenched commentary on the assimilation of the “brothers and sisters from the other side of the wall”.

Starring Peter Reusse, Anne-Kathrein Kretzschmar, Hans Hardt-Hardtloff, Jutta Hoffmann

In Weimar, a self-confessed rowdy butts heads with the school, state, and communist party authorities, becoming a marginalised outsider in East Germany. This provocative coming-of-age drama was initially banned and first shown in 1990.

Starring Hellmuth Costard, Marie-Luise Scherer, Jean-Luc Godard, Hark Bohm

This experimental documentary shot with a self-developed Super 8 system shows the basis upon which films by, say, Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Hark Bohm were made in Germany – not however by avant-garde filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard.

Starring Renée Felden, Luise F. Pusch, Claudia von Alemann, Helke Sander

In her search for a suitable man, “Lieschen Müller” interviews politicians and passers-by in the German capitol Bonn about their masculine self-image. Male violence is also on the tantalising list of survey questions in this satiric documentary.

Starring Karin Hübner, Harald Leipnitz, Louise Martini, Paul Esser, Wolfgang Spier

Thick fog has more than a dozen passengers stranded at Berlin’s Tempelhof airport overnight. With a collage of their encounters and conversations, this largely improvised ensemble film gels into a realistic portrait of society.

Starring Hilmar Thate, Katharina Thalbach, Ulrich Wesselmann, Karin Baal

During the 1948 Berlin Blockade, a gang, led by a young man who styles himself as the new Al Capone, commits robberies. A black-and-white film noir by former East German writer and director Thomas Brasch about a post-war generation with a zest for life.

Starring Jost Vobeck, Ingeborg Schöner, Paul Albert Krumm, András Gönczöl

After witnessing a kidnapping, a young man in Munich gets involved in trying to free the victim. His partisanship makes him a suspect and he has to justify his actions in an interrogation. A psycho-thriller set against a political backdrop.

Starring Claudia Geisler-Bading, Günter Lamprecht, Eva-Maria Hagen, Nino Sandow

After German re-unification, a young woman in Brandenburg falls victim to the economic crisis and becomes the target of xenophobic hostility. An intense depiction of social upheaval in the former East Germany – topical, authentic, and poetic all at once.

Starring Bettina Flitner, Hella von Sinnen

A satire of the cult of genius worship surrounding famous film directors. Bettina Flitner plays the young genius as she’s interviewed and at work. Hella von Sinnen is captivating in multiple roles, including mother, aunt, school principal, and actor.

Starring Anna Levine, Luc Bondy, Meier Breslav, Eva Ebner

In 1981, Jeanine Meerapfel questioned Jews living in Berlin about whether it felt like home, and about their fears. All of them were the children of exiled and persecuted parents. What they talked about is alarmingly topical, even today.

Starring Michael Brynntrup, Panterah Countess, Michael Wehmeyer, Stiletto

This “monumental film about the life and suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ” was a group production shot in Super 8. It is a freethinking, provocative biblical adaptation in the expressionist tradition, arising from the queer, punk, avant-garde scene.

Starring Ismet Elçi, Alisan Keziban, Wieland Speck, Lothar Lambert

A young Turkish man puts everything on the line trying to become a film director, while his best friend slips into a world of prostitution and crime. A low-budget Berlin production occupying a space between Anatolia and the underground.

Documentary

The story of a young home moviemaker, who shoots an amateur film group as it is making a village murder mystery. This short is a surrealistic satire that plays ironically and subversively with the conventions of cinema and the visual arts.

Starring Magdalena Montezuma, Bernd Broaderup, Heinz Emigholz, Fritz Mikesch

In a derelict house, an amateur detective stumbles upon four lethargic people who seem strange and hostile to him. Context dissolves within dream-like or nightmarish situations. Magic is in the air, and elsewhere, in this expressionist experimental film.

Starring Klaus Bueb, Pia Frankenberg, Adeline Almeida-Sedas, Thomas Struck

The everyday adventures of a filmmaker between social causes and amorous entanglements. Pia Frankenberg’s witty alternative to the popular rom-coms of the 1980s, reflecting an ironic attitude towards her debut film.

Starring Ayten Erten, Jürgen Prochnow, Aras Ören, Jannis Kyriakidis

A young Turkish woman who hopes to meet up with her lost fiancé ends up in the hands of a German pimp. This 1976 social-realism drama was an indictment of male violence and lawlessness in Germany’s migrant milieu.

Starring Charly Wierczejewski, Eva Mattes, Michael Degen, Walter Kohut

To help his girlfriend, a prostitute in Hamburg’s red light district St. Pauli, a young petty gangster gets involved in an armed robbery. But in this raw and action-filled social drama, everybody loses in the end.

Starring Tobias (Tobby) Fichelscher, Anik Fichelscher, Ed Fichelscher, Danny Fichelscher

A young jazz musician roams Berlin, meets up with friends, and plays sessions. A narrative film with documentary elements that draws a nuanced portrait of West Berlin and the urban artistic bohemian milieu in the early 1960s.

Starring Renan Demirkan (narration)

The big city seen in artificial light. This essay film illuminates the nightly lifelines that keep Frankfurt and Berlin running. The director undertakes a critical reflection on the urban “Empire of Light”, uncovering the underbelly of modern life.

Starring Hardy Krüger, Loni von Friedl, Walter Giller, Joseph Offenbach

Just before the Berlin Wall is built, a young East German worker tries his personal and professional luck as a barkeep in West Berlin. A realistic love story set during Germany’s post-war economic miracle, which here does not fulfil its bright promises.