Travelling between Germany, France and Tunisia, Viola Shafik reconstructs and deconstructs the unknown life story of El Hedi Ben Salem through interviews with his companions and family members as well as archive material. With openness and slight naivety the interviewees explain how “Ali” became an oriental object of projection for the Fassbinder group, while El Hedi Ben Salem, the human being, was overlooked in order to establish the foreigner as “other.” A no-frills examination of a piece of German and Munich film history.

A documentary about the life and work of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Made during the last months of actor Kurt Raab, who died of AIDS in 1988. Raab, who had worked in both theatre and film, most notably with Fassbinder, was in the process of making a series of video sketches for a new production when he learned that he had AIDS. Despite his deteriorating health, and with the caring support of his friend Hans Hirshmuller, he carried on working. This tape is his last testimony. Awarded with the Adolf Grimme Award and Cinéma du Réel Award

Several comedy situations are strung together for this offbeat satire. An unassuming businesswoman is discovered to be the mastermind behind a terrorist organization, and a disgruntled waitress has looks that can kill, literally and not figuratively speaking. In another tacky passage, played as a reoccurring gag, an official is infected with the AIDS virus after suffering a bite from the businesswoman.

The true story of WWII's notorious Sobibor Nazi death camp, where a courageous inmate orchestrates and leads the escape of over 300 prisoners.

Kir Royal – Aus dem Leben eines Klatschreporters is a six-part television series by Helmut Dietl from the year 1986. This is a parody of the Munich newspaper, their gossip reporter Michael Graeter and Issuer Anneliese Friedmann. The series about the tabloid reporter Baby Schimmerlos plays in the Munich "Schicki-Micki" scene of the 1980s.

Together with her bisexual friend and manager Stefan, singer Miko is working on a great career that has so far failed to materialize.

Detektivbüro Roth is a German television series.

Denmark, by the end of the 19th century. Gov. Dihmer gives his resignation because of his illness. Two friends, a pastor and a physician, try to awaken his willpower and transcend a journey to Italy. Meanwhile, in the homeland, there are political breakthroughs that make little hope for new times.

Pete is no stranger to success, delivering hit series as a musician in a rock group. When he parts ways with his band and produces his first solo LP, he learns for the first time what a flop means. He did not expect this. He is insecure and desperate, while Lena, his wife, accepts this low blow as a challenge. Jealously, Pete observes that Lena is becoming more and more independent and self-confident in her surroundings. At home there are arguments until everyone packs his bags. Alone with his longing and tenderness for Lena, Pete composes the "Bolero" on his white grand piano that calls her back.

Young Tina has a big dream, she wants to become a successful pop singer. That's why she tries her luck in the music show 'Formel Eins'. There she meets all kinds of stars like Falco, Meat Loaf, Die Toten Hosen and Pia Zadora and of course the presenter Ingolf Lück. The result is a colorful mix-up and the question arises as to whether Tina can make her dream come true.

An Aussie businessman is trying to find out why and by whom he was kidnapped and then later released with no explanation.

A compelling drama/documentary chronicling the life and death of Il Duce himself, from his days as a terrorist to his alliance with Hitler to the betrayal of his son-in-law and untimely demise.

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.

Teenage girl idolises television game show host, and gets a chance to be his assistant

It's Friday evening. The lift repairman leaves the building and wants to finish his work on Monday. But he doesn't know there are four men in the building. They use the lift but stay in it about 100 meters from the floor. They have little oxygen and must survive…

Die schwarzen Brüder is the best-known story of German writer Lisa Tetzner and one of the most widely read children's books in the world.

A German short starring Kurt Raab.

Swaying between pleasure and despair, Elric throws himself into his pathological passion for the casino. Meeting Suzie could have saved him, but the young woman also sinks into gambling hell. The couple then start getting involved in the fearsome world of professional cheaters.

This film of a glitzy showbiz world by director Peter Keglevic in his first feature-length effort recounts the saga of a married torch singer whose numerous lovers are meant to steady her nerves and a saxophone player who loves her but cannot get his own act together. Singing and cinematography are pluses.

A women's prison on a tropical island is a hellhole where the inmates are raped, tortured and otherwise abused by the evil commandant and brutal guards. However, one of the guards falls in love with a beautiful inmate, and decides to help her and all the other prisoners escape.

Jesus (played by the director) returns to present-day Bavaria, walks around Munich in a somewhat dazed manner and strikes up an affair with a nun, arguing that they are married anyway. Therefore, he refers to himself as "Ober" (waiter), obviously the male form of "Oberin" (Mother Superior). He occasionally transforms into a snake when being afraid and is finally carried up into the sky by the nun, who transforms into a bird of prey. (IMDB review)

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

Hans Castorp, fresh from university and about to become a civil engineer, comes to the Sanatorium Berghof in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin Joachim, an army officer, who is recovering there from tuberculosis. Intending to remain at the Berghof for three weeks, Hans is gradually contaminated by the morbid atmosphere pervading the place. Wishing very much to be considered a patient like the others, he achieves his ends and stays in the sanatorium for ...seven years. During this time, he has enough time to take part in the furious philosophical debates pitting against each other Settembrini, a secular humanist, and Naphta, a totalitarian Jesuit. And to fall in love with the beautiful but enigmatic Clawdia Chauchat. When he is finally discharged in 1914 - along with all the other patients - it is only to plunge into the horrors of World War I.

The divorced and emancipated Margarete Johnson falls in love with her young and extremely medical bandaged nephew.

Based on unfinished 1954 novel by the German author Thomas Mann. It is a parody of Goethe's autobiography Poetry and Truth, particularly in its pompous tone.

The young knight Tristan is injured in a fight in Ireland and cared for by the beautiful Isolde. He falls in love with her, unaware that she is the daughter of the Irish king.

Film extras take possession of a bogus film production company and acting as ideal world of film to persuade one associates mother-in-law of marriage.

Bored with her stuffy village life, teenager Susanne decides to run away to the bright lights Frankfurt, while her boyfriend does his military. Caught in the swamp of drugs, prostitution, violence and human trafficking, Susanne experiences the dark side of the big city.

A man moves to Berlin after relationship trouble.

The subject of this historical drama is a splintering Berlin in the years of 1948 and 1949. Played against the backdrop of social upheaval, the characters in the drama come to epitomize the best and worst of each pole of the political sphere. A 17-year-old hoodlum by the name of Gladow works hand-in-glove with a local white-collar criminal to rob and pillage every day and night, defying capture. While he and his gang of thugs are terrorizing the people of Berlin, the Soviets are trying to make the blockade of their region of control impermeable. The future casts long shadows over the drama, as Berlin's problems take the shape of times to come.

Nik, a released prisoner who started writing in prison, wants to leave his past behind him, but refuses to contact his former girlfriend and her family. Under the name of his jail buddy Henry, he moves in with his pen pal - who has never seen him - and is always watched suspiciously by their roommate. Nik began writing in prison and now seeks contact with the literary culture, even though he feels disgusted by the pompous fuss of this society. He is not without talent and works on a novel in which he minutely describes the abduction of an industrialist. Henry gets shot at the prison breakout and visits Nik to get help from him. He likes his novel plot and wants to put it into action.

A biologist has succeeded in growing a particularly energy-rich lettuce and now the whole world wants to get hold of the product.

A sartorially resplendent woman of few words arrives in Berlin with plans to live out the rest of her days as a drunkard.

Der ganz normale Wahnsinn is a German television series.

This film tells the story about a group of girls at an exclusive German girls boarding school. Across the lake is an exclusive boys boarding school...

A film by Robert van Ackeren.

An early short by Wolfgang Büld, in which he wanted to depict the pleasant, mundane songs and movies of the 50s. The film was supposed to be like a song by Peter Kraus or Ted Herold.

The lackluster and plodding Bolweiser has the (mis)fortune to be married to the town’s siren; his trusting nature leads him into serious trouble when she beds nearly every available guy.

Leni Gruyetin, a resident of Nazi Germany, lives a tumultuous life as she bears witness to the fascist regime of the Nazis.

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.

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.

Munich Heinz and Herbert wants to escape the torturous confines of their home by swimming across the Atlantic.

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.

After a worker kills a superior and commits suicide, each of his family members attempts to forge a path forward in life.

Fox, a former circus performer, wins the lottery of DM 500,000 and can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. While he wants to climb up the social ladder, it isn't without turmoil, and being torn between his old working class roots, and the shiny new facade of middle class consciousness.

A pseudo variety show about the Aufbau-Era, the time of the German 'economic miracle'. Brigitte Mira recounts her four husbands through song and joke, on an series of artificial sets.

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.

Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.

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.

Born into a well-off family, Franz Blum had led a carefree youth until, some time after graduating from high school, he was arrested by the police. For, involved by a gang of bad boys, the young man had taken part in a bank robbery. A "heroic deed" which earned him six years in prison. Once behind bars, he was treated with ruthless inhumanity by the guards. And little by little - but inexorably - Franz turned into an insurgent...

Cybernetics engineer Fred Stiller uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy involving a virtual reality computer project.

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.

Based on Franz Xaver Kroetz's play, which is in turn based on a true story, this film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder tells the story of a very young girl who, after persuading a local boy to become her lover, induces the anger of her father, whose incestuous sexual attentions to her have grown unbearable.

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)

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.

Hans is a street fruit peddler and born-loser. His choice of career upsets his bourgeois family, causing him to turn to drinking and violence. After recovering from a debilitating heart attack, his business finally begins to take off. However the more he becomes a credit to his family, the more depressed he becomes.

Tensions between members of a film crew build while they wait for the arrival of the director and star to arrive on location.

"Whity" is the mulatto butler of the dysfunctional Nicholson family in the American southwest in 1878. The father, Ben Nicholson, has an attractive young wife Katherine, and two sons by a previous marriage; the homosexual Frank, and the retarded Davy. Whity tries to carry out all their orders, however demeaning, until various of the family members ask him to kill some of the others.

Inspired by the real life events of Mathias Kneißl, a marginal man, son of poor farmers from Bavaria, in the late XIX Century. Mathias stole from the riches to give to the poor, becoming a hero for the rural people, and a popular social rebel. He was chased by the police until his unfortunate sentence.

Berta, a naive young maid, searches for love when the army engineers come to town to build a bridge.

Michel and Guenther, working in dead-end jobs, are obsessed with going to Peru to find buried treasure, using a map of the Rio das Mortes. Michel's girlfriend, Hanna, humors their plan, but really just wants to get married.

About the making of "Der amerikanische Soldat/The American Soldier" in 1970.

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.

Ricky returns to Munich from Vietnam and is promptly hired as a contract killer.

The life of a married Munich technical draftsman with a son.

"End of the Commune"/"Ende einer kommune" is a great 49 min. long movie made in 1969 about Fassbinder and the early years of the legendary Antiteater he was a member/leader of. You can here see and hear some of the actors he was going to use in his movies for the next years. The movie shows rehearsals for his play "The Coffehouse" which also became a television-movie, and you can watch unique footage from the 19th Film-Festival in Berlin (1969) where "Love is Colder Than Death" were shown. As told in this documentary, his first feature-movie were given a cold shoulder by many of the journalists and visitors at the festival. You can in "End of the Commune" watch Fassbinder and actor Ulli Lommel walk out on stage after the opening of "Love is Colder than Death", while a man in the audience is shouting "Out with the director!". In this interesting documentary Fassbinder also talks a lot about his father which was a respectable doctor.

Avant-garde adaptation of a Carlo Goldoni play. Well-to-do Venetians congregate in a coffee house and discuss their problems.

Small-time pimp Franz is torn between his mistress and Bruno, the gangster sent after him by a shady crime syndicate he's refused to join.