Margit Carstensen

Margit Carstensen

Born: February 29, 1940
Died: June 1, 2023
in Kiel, Germany
Margit Carstensen (29 February 1940 – 1 June 2023) was a German theatre and film actress, best known outside Germany for roles in the works of film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Carstensen was born and raised in the northern German city of Kiel. Upon graduation from the local high school in 1958, she studied acting at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. This education led to her first stage appearances in Kleve, Heilbronn, Münster, and Braunschweig. In 1965, Carstensen began a four-year engagement with the German Playhouse in Hamburg.

In 1969, she gained a local profile for her work in the Theater am Goetheplatz in Bremen, where she first met director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She then worked under his direction in a comedy by the 18th-century Venetian Carlo Goldoni, The Coffee Shop (which was recorded for television in 1970), bringing her national attention in West Germany. She subsequently played the role of serial murderess Geesche Gottfried in the premiere of Fassbinder's own play Bremen Freedom (also televised, in 1972), and then in the title role of his Henrik Ibsen adaptation Nora Helmer (televised in 1974) derived from A Doll's House. Outside of theatre, Carstensen played leading roles in the Fassbinder films The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), her best-known role for him; Martha (1974), analysing a traditional marriage in a contemporary setting; Fear of Fear (1975); Mother Küsters' Trip to Heaven (1975); Satan's Brew (1976); Chinese Roulette (1976) and Women in New York (1977). She also appeared in episodes of two Fassbinder television productions: Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (1972), and Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980).

From 1973 to 1976, Carstensen held a steady acting engagement in Darmstadt. In 1977, she moved to West Berlin where she performed on the highly regarded Staatliche Schauspielbühnen. In 1982, she moved to Stuttgart in order to work with director Hansgünther Heyme, where she appeared in a series of plays directed by him.

During this time, Carstensen also worked in international film productions, such as Andrzej Żuławski's Possession (1981) and Agnieszka Holland's Angry Harvest (1985); the latter was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. By the late 1980s, she had developed ongoing working relationships with German directors Werner Schroeter, Christoph Schlingensief, and Leander Haußmann.

For the 2003–04 season, Carstensen appeared in the Vienna Burgtheater, in the premiere of Elfriede Jelinek's play Bambiland under the direction of Schlingensief. During the 2007–08 season Carstensen assisted with the Austrian-German TV documentary Mr. Karl – A Person for People, directed by Kurt Mayer.

In 2016, she was still on television, appearing in the long-running series Tatort.

Carstensen received many awards in her career. Among these were the 1973 German Film Awards (Gold), for her acting in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and the 2002 Bavarian Film Award, for her acting in Scherbentanz. In 1972 she was chosen by the German Film Critics Guild as Best Actress of the Year. In 2019, she was awarded the Götz-George-Preis for her life's work.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Margit Carstensen, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Movies for Margit Carstensen...

Schlingensief – A Voice That Shook the Silence
Title: Schlingensief – A Voice That Shook the Silence
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: August 20, 2020
Type: Movie
Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.
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Fassbinder
Title: Fassbinder
Character: Self
Released: April 30, 2015
Type: Movie
A film portrait of the influential Bavarian actor, director and screenwriter who publicly confessed his homosexuality.
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Fassbinder: Love Without Demands
Title: Fassbinder: Love Without Demands
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: February 7, 2015
Type: Movie
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was probably Germany’s most significant post-war director. His swift and dramatic demise at the early age of 37 in 1982 left behind a vacuum in European filmmaking that has yet to be filled, as well as a body of unique, multi-layered and multifarious work of astonishing consistency and rigour. From 1969 onwards, Danish director and film historian Christian Braad Thomsen maintained a close yet respectfully distanced friendship with Fassbinder. Fassbinder – Lieben ohne zu fordern is based on his personal memories as well as a series of conversations and interviews he held with Fassbinder and his mother Lilo in the 1970s.
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Finsterworld
Title: Finsterworld
Character: Frau Sandberg
Released: June 28, 2013
Type: Movie
The film tells different stories in a kind of parallel Germany about love, affection and hatred.
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Eine Kirche der Angst vor dem Fremden in mir
Title: Eine Kirche der Angst vor dem Fremden in mir
Released: May 2, 2009
Type: Movie
The movie version of Christoph Schlingensief's stageplay.
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Mister Karl
Title: Mister Karl
Character: Self
Released: March 30, 2008
Type: Movie
A documentary about the life of Karlheinz Böhm from his film career to his charity activities in Ethiopia.
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It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine.
Title: It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine.
Character: Linda Barnes
Released: November 21, 2007
Type: Movie
Paul, a man suffering from cerebral palsy, lives an unfulfilled life in a nursing home. Sitting in his wheelchair, he fantasizes about a life in which people understand him, women find him irresistible, and he is be a force to be reckoned with. He places this imagined self in four different sexual fantasies, each with a different woman.
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Hands off Mississippi
Title: Hands off Mississippi
Character: Frau Strietzel
Released: March 22, 2007
Type: Movie
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Agnes and His Brothers
Title: Agnes and His Brothers
Character: Roxy
Released: October 13, 2004
Type: Movie
Focuses on three very different siblings, all searching for happiness. Hans-Jörg is a sex addicted librarian, who is interested in young students. Werner is a successful politician with a dysfunctional family. Agnes, a trans woman, works as a table dancer in a night club. The three brothers just have one thing in common: their longing for a happy life.
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Shattered Glass
Title: Shattered Glass
Character: Käthe
Released: October 31, 2002
Type: Movie
To find a bone marrow donor for himself, fashion designer Jesko visits his upper-class family in southwest Germany where he has to confront mental illness and long-held grudges.
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Der Narr und seine Frau heute Abend in Pancomedia
Title: Der Narr und seine Frau heute Abend in Pancomedia
Character: Die Leserin
Released: April 11, 2002
Type: Movie
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Manila
Title: Manila
Character: Regine Gorler
Released: June 29, 2000
Type: Movie
Due to a delayed flight a group of German flight passengers have to wait in the hall of the airport of Manila. The crowd is quite mixed, ranging from an cultivated east German teacher couple up to sleazy sex tourists. As the waiting prolongs, more and more aggressions and long repressed behaviors shed their way to the surface.
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John Gabriel Borkman
Title: John Gabriel Borkman
Character: Gunhild
Released: May 27, 2000
Type: Movie
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Sun Alley
Title: Sun Alley
Character: Direktorin
Released: October 7, 1999
Type: Movie
A group of kids grow up on the short, wrong (east) side of the Sonnenallee in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and West reserved for German citizens. The antics of these kids, their families, of the "West German" friends and relatives who come to visit, and of the East German border guards, all serve to illustrate the absurdity of everyday life on the Sonnenallee, and therefore throughout the former East Germany.
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Gesche's Poison
Title: Gesche's Poison
Character: Mutter Timm
Released: January 1, 1998
Type: Movie
Gesche's Poison is a psychological portrait loosely based on the true story of Gesche Gottfried who became notorious in 19th century Bremen for killing fifteen people with arsenic. Known by her neighbors and friends as a merciful Christian, loving mother and devoted wife, she poisoned within fifteen years her parents, her brother, two husbands, three children and numerous friends. When caught, she never denied her deeds, but could not give any reason.
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The 120 Days of Bottrop
Title: The 120 Days of Bottrop
Character: Self
Released: November 6, 1997
Type: Movie
An eccentric homage to the Rainer Werner Fassbinder days of German filmmaking.
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Terror 2000
Title: Terror 2000
Character: Margret
Released: October 30, 1992
Type: Movie
Germany, right after the re-unification. The people are out of control, blind hatred towards immigrants is common sense. In this time, a social-worker, with the mission to bring a Polish family to their destination (an immigration camp in a little provincial town called Rassau), gets kidnapped just as the family. Chief inspector Koern and his girl-friend start to investigate in this matter in Rassau, exploring a world of obsessive sex, mislead lust and an over-whelming irrational love to the German nation, infiltrating anyone's mind. Rascism doesn't start with shaved hair and boots but rather in the middle of society itself...
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100 Years of Adolf Hitler – The Last Hour in the Führerbunker
Title: 100 Years of Adolf Hitler – The Last Hour in the Führerbunker
Character: Martha Goebbels
Released: February 18, 1989
Type: Movie
On 30 April 1945, dictator Adolf Hitler, his wife Eva Braun, and prominent members of the Third Reich live out their final hour in the Führerbunker.
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Title: Anwalt Abel
Character: Frau Nussbauer
Released: September 4, 1988
Type: TV
Anwalt Abel is a German television film series, broadcast on ZDF between 1988 and 2002. 20 television films were produced, based on the detective novels of Fred Breinersdorfer.
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La moitié de l'amour
Title: La moitié de l'amour
Character: Ivy
Released: August 1, 1985
Type: Movie
Unable to possess Ivy in reality, Adrian organizes himself so as to know everything about her, to possess her story. Like the viewer, Adrian will be an involuntary detective, witness to a passion.
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Angry Harvest
Title: Angry Harvest
Character: Eugenia
Released: February 20, 1985
Type: Movie
In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's now a farmer of some wealth, discovers the woman, Rosa, and hides her in his cellar. Leon's a middle-aged Catholic bachelor, tormented by his sexual drive. He doesn't tell Rosa he's seen signs her husband is alive, and he begs her to love him. Rosa offers herself to Leon if he'll help a local Jew in hiding who needs money. Leon pays, and love between Rosa and him does develop, but then Leon's peasant subservience and his limited empathy lead to tragedy. At the war's end, a ray of sunshine comes from an unexpected place.
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Die wilden Fünfziger
Title: Die wilden Fünfziger
Character: Sekretärin
Released: September 23, 1983
Type: Movie
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Liebeskonzil
Title: Liebeskonzil
Character: Staatsanwältin
Released: March 12, 1982
Type: Movie
Oskar Panizza’s The Council of Love (1895) is a blasphemous play set in 1495, during the first recorded outbreak of syphilis, which Panizza satirically presents as the punishment from Satan for sexually active humans. As a result, Panizza was imprisoned for obscenity. Schroeter alternates scenes from the Panizza’s work with a dramatization of his trial, presenting the play as an expressionist spectacle performed by actors wearing exaggerated makeup who gesture and grimace grotesquely. The film thus forms a bridge between Schroeter’s use of tableaux in his early experiments with the political urgency of his 1980s films. On the eve of the AIDS crisis, Schroeter is presciently worried about disease as an excuse for governmental repression and the oppression of sexuality. - Harvard Film Archive
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Possession
Title: Possession
Character: Margit Gluckmeister
Released: May 27, 1981
Type: Movie
A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.
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Title: Bayerischer Filmpreis
Character: Self
Released: December 1, 1979
Type: TV
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The Third Generation
Title: The Third Generation
Character: Petra Vielhaber
Released: May 30, 1979
Type: Movie
A wildly anarchic satire of guerrilla terrorism in which a band of leftist radicals inadvertently become puppets of the West German government, which uses them to justify its authoritarian policies.
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Spiel der Verlierer
Title: Spiel der Verlierer
Character: Frl. Rosner
Released: October 12, 1978
Type: Movie
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Women in New York
Title: Women in New York
Character: Sylvia Fowler
Released: June 21, 1977
Type: Movie
The main characters in this film are wives of rich men who have nothing to do because they have staff – like the cook, the maid, the hairdresser, the manicurist, the governess, the teacher, the tailor etc. – who work for them. Naturally, the wives themselves do not pursue careers, they depend on their husbands’ money. This is why most of their thoughts revolve around the husband. And because the husband only appears as “the” man, there is no man in this film. All women fight for the same man. Those who have one, want to keep him no matter what. And those who do not have one yet only have one goal: To take away somebody else’s husband.
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Adolf and Marlene
Title: Adolf and Marlene
Character: Marlene
Released: March 15, 1977
Type: Movie
When Hitler watches Marlene Dietrich in a movie, he falls in love with her. He persuades her to come back to Germany to be with him, but upon her arrival she constantly insults and provokes him until he eventually, on her command, bites the carpet to bits.
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Chinese Roulette
Title: Chinese Roulette
Character: Ariane Christ
Released: February 23, 1977
Type: Movie
A husband and wife lie to each other about their weekend travel plans, only to both show up at the family's country house with their lovers.
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Satan’s Brew
Title: Satan’s Brew
Character: Andree
Released: October 7, 1976
Type: Movie
A famous poet who hasn't written a word in two years unconsciously plagiarizes the work of Stefan George, while dealing with several mistresses, his dim-witted brother, and a murder investigation.
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Fear of Fear
Title: Fear of Fear
Character: Margot
Released: July 8, 1975
Type: Movie
After having her second child, a German housewife suffers from post-partum depression before inexplicably falling into a continually misdiagnosed mental state, befuddling her relatives.
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Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
Title: Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
Character: Frau Thälmann
Released: July 1, 1975
Type: Movie
After a worker kills a superior and commits suicide, each of his family members attempts to forge a path forward in life.
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Title: Derrick
Character: Frau Hauser
Released: October 20, 1974
Type: TV
Derrick was a German TV series produced by Telenova Film und Fernsehproduktion in association with ZDF, ORF and SRG between 1974 and 1998 about Detective Chief Inspector Stephan Derrick and his loyal assistant Inspector Harry Klein, who solve murder cases in Munich and surroundings.
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Martha
Title: Martha
Character: Martha
Released: May 28, 1974
Type: Movie
After the death of her abusive father, lonely librarian Martha is caught in a strange, sadomasochistic relationship with a monstrous husband whom she begins to suspect may be trying to murder her.
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Nora Helmer
Title: Nora Helmer
Character: Nora Helmer
Released: February 3, 1974
Type: Movie
A childish wife reveals surprising strength when faced with blackmail. Based on A Doll's House by Ibsen, this is a video recording made for German television.
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Title: World on a Wire
Character: Maya Schmidt-Genter
Released: October 14, 1973
Type: TV
Cybernetics engineer Fred Stiller uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy involving a virtual reality computer project.
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Tenderness of the Wolves
Title: Tenderness of the Wolves
Character: Frau Lindner
Released: July 12, 1973
Type: Movie
A German serial killer preys on boys and young men during the so-called years of crisis between the wars. Based on the true story of Fritz Haarmann, aka the Butcher of Hanover and the Vampire of Hanover.
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Bremen Freedom
Title: Bremen Freedom
Character: Geesche Gottfried
Released: November 12, 1972
Type: Movie
A very stylized TV version of the Fassbinder play. The set consists of a few pieces of furniture in front of a large screen on which coastal scenery is back projected. Geesche is a nineteenth century woman who wants to have a mind of her own. She defies convention and will do anything to achieve her freedom from oppression by her family and friends. (synopsis written by Will Gilbert)
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Title: Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day
Character: Erste Hausfrau
Released: October 29, 1972
Type: TV
Commissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, dodging expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany from a critical—yet far from cynical—perspective. Over the course of five episodes, the sprawling story tracks the everyday triumphs and travails of the young toolmaker Jochen and many of the people populating his world, including the woman he loves, his eccentric family, and his fellow workers, with whom he bands together to improve conditions on the factory floor.
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The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Title: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Character: Petra von Kant
Released: October 5, 1972
Type: Movie
Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.
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The Ancestress
Title: The Ancestress
Character: Berta
Released: December 20, 1971
Type: Movie
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Title: Scene of the Crime
Character: Margarethe
Released: November 29, 1970
Type: TV
Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss, crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland.
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The Niklashausen Journey
Title: The Niklashausen Journey
Character: Margarete
Released: October 26, 1970
Type: Movie
Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the "Black Monk" in a leather jacket. The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to have been called by the Virgin Mary to create a revolt against the church and the landowners. The "Black Monk" suggests that he would have more success if he dressed up Johanna and had her appear as the Virgin Mary.
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The Coffee House
Title: The Coffee House
Character: Vittoria
Released: May 18, 1970
Type: Movie
Avant-garde adaptation of a Carlo Goldoni play. Well-to-do Venetians congregate in a coffee house and discuss their problems.
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Title: Vorsicht Falle!
Released: March 24, 1964
Type: TV
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Title: Deutscher Filmpreis
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 1951
Type: TV