Peter Kern

Peter Kern

Born: February 13, 1949
Died: August 26, 2015
in Wien, Austria
Iconoclastic Austrian indie director and former New German Cinema actor Peter Kern isn't just the subject of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's "Kern," but also the low-fi film's strongest creative force. He appeared in more than 70 feature films and directed a further 25. At his peak, Kern worked with the best directors of his era, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Fox and His Friends, The Stationmaster's Wife), Hans-Jurgen Syberberg (Hitler: A Film From Germany) and Wim Wenders (Wrong Move).

“When I yell at you, please do not be immediately hurt. If I insult you, take it as proof of love. Remember, I'm Austrian, insane, hysterical, hypocritical and undemocratic.”

Movies for Peter Kern...

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Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist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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Title: Ein Fall von Liebe
Character: Peter Braun
Released: October 30, 2014
Type: TV
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Rosas Welt – 70 neue Filme von Rosa von Praunheim
Title: Rosas Welt – 70 neue Filme von Rosa von Praunheim
Released: October 23, 2012
Type: Movie
Rosa von Praunheim is an icon in the scene: gay activist, loving provocateur and a very special filmmaker from Berlin for decades. His curiosity for people and their fates runs through his extensive film work. For his 70th birthday he has now made 70 new short films. In the first part of the big project, he confronts Thilo Sarrazin with the mayor of Neukölln, Heinz Buschkowsky, and the Turkish lawyer and women's rights activist Seyran Ates; shows a homosexual hustler in Bucharest; gossip reporter Andreas Kurtz, who knows everything about Berlin's celebrities; Rosa's neighbors who live with her dependent brother; Esther Bauer, who survived Auschwitz, and the Berlin comedian Ades Zabel. High on the roofs of Berlin, the gay chimney sweep Alain Rappsilber tells him about his fetish leather meeting Folsom.
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Belief, Love, Death
Title: Belief, Love, Death
Released: February 13, 2012
Type: Movie
When 82-year-old Mary takes her 63-year-old disabled son on a houseboat vacation on Lake Lychen in Brandenburg, things quickly go south as the boat becomes a prison, trapping them within the difficult emotional web of their relationship.
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Kern
Title: Kern
Character: Himself
Released: January 1, 2012
Type: Movie
Two directors shoot a documentary about the controversial director and pugnacious actor Peter Kern. But he cannot be easily rammed into the classical form of a documentary.
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Rent Boys
Title: Rent Boys
Character: Self
Released: December 7, 2011
Type: Movie
Documentary about the current hustler scene in Berlin. Based on interviews with former and active prostitutes, the realities of male prostitutes in Berlin are treated. The film is objective, and records the hustler scene as a social Submilieu, which is characterized by both tragic fates, as well as everyday things and routines. Not only the direct sale of sexual services is discussed, but also other aspects associated with male prostitution: poverty, drug addiction, AIDS, crime, migration, love and partnership.
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Monkey Sandwich
Title: Monkey Sandwich
Released: August 30, 2011
Type: Movie
Meet Jerry, an obsessive but frustrated director who decides to turn his back on the theatre in favour of a controversial new project. But things soon start to go wrong. As he struggles with the demands of his role as leader, he is plagued by surreal dreams conjured up by his guilty conscience. Monkey Sandwich is a portmanteau film with a captivating tangle of stories involving the search for an unborn child, a disturbing hunting trip, a haunted LP, a screaming piglet and a river gone rogue. The stories in Monkey Sandwich are urban myths or stories created with or by the actors. The film was originally part of a stage performance of the same name.
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Mondo Lux: The Visual Worlds of Werner Schroeter
Title: Mondo Lux: The Visual Worlds of Werner Schroeter
Released: April 7, 2011
Type: Movie
Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life.
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Daniel Schmid: Le Chat Qui Pense
Title: Daniel Schmid: Le Chat Qui Pense
Character: Self
Released: September 2, 2010
Type: Movie
When director Daniel Schmid grew up, his parents ran a hotel in the Alps, and this singular setting was to influence his film. Rather by coincidence he came to Berlin in the early 1960s and became part of the new German wave. Schmid worked with, among others, Wenders and Fassbinder, for example as an actor in Wender’s The American Friend. He met Ingrid Caven, who was to play a diva in several of his films. This is a documentation of a part of modern European film history and a good analysis of artistry and how it corresponds to the individual behind the camera. A wealth of archival footage brings us close to many directors and actors in Schmid’s circle. If you’ve never seen a Daniel Schmid film, you are sure to want to after watching this portrait of his life.
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Die verrückte Welt der Ute Bock
Title: Die verrückte Welt der Ute Bock
Character: Minister
Released: January 1, 2010
Type: Movie
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Initiation
Title: Initiation
Character: Head of Staff
Released: November 4, 2009
Type: Movie
16-year old Axel and his clique are rioting in a residential home. There he meets the 80-year old Gustav who gains interest in the young boy, as he reminds him of his lost love.
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Die toten Körper der Lebenden
Title: Die toten Körper der Lebenden
Character: Nachtclubbesitzer
Released: January 1, 2007
Type: Movie
Two men break out of prison and go on a killing spree.
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Berlin Nights: Grand Delusions
Title: Berlin Nights: Grand Delusions
Character: Valencia
Released: May 16, 2005
Type: Movie
Claire, Romy, Magali, Loete, and Jim are typical Brienen’s characters: their excessive lifestyle rhythmed by sex and drugs puts them in the margins of society, refusing to believe in love or any kind of happiness. Lacking a better alternative, they take a trip to Berlin to perform in their own erotic-trash show. But in Berlin, trouble only begins. Styled images of lost souls straying through the night and their humide debaucheries transport us into an universe of the abject where all moral limits are eliminated by the character’s insatiable bulimia.
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Title: Menschen bei Maischberger
Character: Self
Released: September 2, 2003
Type: TV
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Himmel, Polt und Hölle
Title: Himmel, Polt und Hölle
Character: Heinz Hafner
Released: November 30, 2002
Type: Movie
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Title: U3000
Character: Self
Released: November 30, 2000
Type: TV
In the eight-part program U3000 (2000), broadcasted by the music station MTV, Schlingensief assumes the role of the presenter who hates himself for his self-love disguised as telegenic selflessness. Common broadcasting formats are all being ridiculed without exception. A socially needy family can qualify for participation by winning the always same outside bet, in order to make their private fate public in front of a running camera and in the presence of passengers in the moving subway. Childlike rounds of games give them the opportunity to improve social welfare, critically watched by a jury made up of the handicapped actors from Schlingensief's ensemble. Aged show stars like Maria and Margot Hellwig, Christian Anders or Roberto Blanco are used in a talk-show wagon as cheap fodder and are forced to show compassion with such victims of the market economy. The bands of the MTV generation (Atari Teenage Riot, Surrogat, Söhne Mannheims and others) play in the dance wagon.
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Visionary Filmmaker - Marilou Diaz-Abaya
Title: Visionary Filmmaker - Marilou Diaz-Abaya
Released: January 1, 1999
Type: Movie
Potrait of director Marilou Diaz-Abaya
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Title: Coast Guard
Character: Willi Hanke
Released: April 19, 1997
Type: TV
Küstenwache is a German television series that tells the fictionalized adventures of a unit of Federal Coast Guard officers off the German coast of the Baltic Sea.
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Die Oma ist tot
Title: Die Oma ist tot
Character: Herr Eisfeld
Released: January 1, 1997
Type: Movie
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Wenches
Title: Wenches
Character: Sex Shop Costumer
Released: August 8, 1996
Type: Movie
Esther and Sophie are BFF! When it comes to men, they however differ fundamentally . While the career woman Esther is on uncomplicated sex and therefore experienced with her lover Winnie, Sophie is still looking for her prince charming . When she meets Chip , a PC expert , she believes to have finally found this . But then it turns out that Chip is none other than Winnie . From Esther and Sophie are suddenly bitter rivals...
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Title: Zimmer frei!
Character: Self
Released: July 9, 1996
Type: TV
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Title: Die Harald Schmidt Show
Character: Self
Released: December 5, 1995
Type: TV
The Harald Schmidt Show is a German late night talk show hosted on Sky Deutschland by comedian Harald Schmidt. The show first aired from 5 December 1995 to 23 December 2003 on Sat.1. Schmidt then moved his show to Das Erste as Harald Schmidt and Schmidt & Pocher, but he returned to Sat.1 on 13 September 2011. After cancellation on Sat.1, the show continued on Sky Deutschland in September 2012.
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Burning Life
Title: Burning Life
Character: Simon
Released: November 17, 1994
Type: Movie
Anna and Lisa, two young women, meet by chance in the vestibule of a bank, and decide after that to go on together leaving a successful trail of bank-robberies through Germany.
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Title: Im Namen des Gesetzes
Character: Rechtsanwalt Dr. Müller
Released: September 13, 1994
Type: TV
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Erotique
Title: Erotique
Character: Franz (segment 'Taboo Parlor')
Released: May 14, 1994
Type: Movie
The sexual fantasies of women are explored by three female directors.
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Terror 2000
Title: Terror 2000
Character: Körn
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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Title: Boulevard Bio
Character: Self
Released: August 6, 1991
Type: TV
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Malina
Title: Malina
Character: Bulgare
Released: January 17, 1991
Type: Movie
An unusual story of a triangular relationship in Vienna. A woman shares an apartment with a man named Malina. The woman meets Ivan and falls under his spell. It will be her last great passion. Her feelings are so strong and all-encompassing that Ivan can neither understand nor return them.
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Street Kid
Title: Street Kid
Released: January 1, 1991
Type: Movie
Axel is 14 years old, male prostitute, living in Düsseldorf. His mother drinks and her friends abuses him. He is sent to a bar to pick up customers. There he meets Karl-Heinz, and a loving relationship begins.
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Title: Zeil um Zehn
Character: Self
Released: February 2, 1990
Type: TV
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Virgin Machine
Title: Virgin Machine
Character: Hormone Specialist
Released: February 10, 1989
Type: Movie
A German woman travels to San Francisco to find her mother, but winds up distracted by the sexually flamboyant culture of the city.
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Johanna d‘Arc of Mongolia
Title: Johanna d‘Arc of Mongolia
Character: Mickey Katz
Released: February 1, 1989
Type: Movie
A group of cosmopolitan women passengers aboard the Trans-Siberian/Mongolian Railway are taken prisoner by Ulan Iga, a warrior princess.
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Title: Nachtcafé
Character: Self
Released: February 14, 1987
Type: TV
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Zischke
Title: Zischke
Character: Regisseur
Released: November 27, 1986
Type: Movie
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Der wilde Clown
Title: Der wilde Clown
Character: Junger Chef
Released: September 30, 1986
Type: Movie
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Title: Kir Royal
Character: Paula
Released: September 22, 1986
Type: TV
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.
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Das Totenreich
Title: Das Totenreich
Released: January 1, 1986
Type: Movie
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.
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Rambo Zambo
Title: Rambo Zambo
Character: Robert
Released: March 6, 1984
Type: Movie
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Title: Geschichten aus der Heimat
Released: December 31, 1983
Type: TV
Geschichten aus der Heimat is a German television series.
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The Swing
Title: The Swing
Character: Hofkapellmeister
Released: October 14, 1983
Type: Movie
Garden parties, music and dancing characterize the lives of a family of German aristocrats in the days leading to World War I.
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Die wilden Fünfziger
Title: Die wilden Fünfziger
Character: Franz Arnusch
Released: September 23, 1983
Type: Movie
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Bella Donna
Title: Bella Donna
Released: March 26, 1983
Type: Movie
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.
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The Island of the Bloody Plantation
Title: The Island of the Bloody Plantation
Character: Röder
Released: January 27, 1983
Type: Movie
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.
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Title: Schwarz Rot Gold
Character: Dr. Bernhard
Released: May 12, 1982
Type: TV
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Cinématon XVIII
Title: Cinématon XVIII
Character: N°170
Released: May 4, 1982
Type: Movie
Reel 18 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.
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Today We're Playing Boss
Title: Today We're Playing Boss
Character: Fritz Paulig
Released: November 27, 1981
Type: Movie
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.
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News from Robber Hotzenplotz
Title: News from Robber Hotzenplotz
Character: Räuber Hotzenplotz
Released: March 9, 1979
Type: Movie
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Title: NDR Talk Show
Character: Self
Released: February 9, 1979
Type: TV
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Title: Beate S.
Character: Hans-Peter Brand
Released: January 6, 1979
Type: TV
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Son of Hitler
Title: Son of Hitler
Character: Asylum Attendent
Released: January 1, 1979
Type: Movie
The leader of a right-wing German political party discovers that an illiterate woodcarver is actually the son of Adolf Hitler.
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Despair
Title: Despair
Character: Müller
Released: September 20, 1978
Type: Movie
Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.
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Flaming Hearts
Title: Flaming Hearts
Character: Peter Huber
Released: February 24, 1978
Type: Movie
When Peter Huber the proprietor of a Bavarian corner newsstand, wins a free trip to New York City in a magazine contest, he is overjoyed. Filled with romantic ideas from the movies, his actual encounter with the gritty realities of the Big Apple are sobering. Nonetheless, he is in for the adventure of his life. First, he meets Karola Faber, the German wife of a U.S. G.I. who has found life in the States not all it's cracked up to be: she has left her husband and makes her living through prostitution. Peter and Karola visit the local German emigré community's Oktoberfest, and win the festival's King and Queen crown. Their prize is a cow, which accompanies them on their further journeys in New York City.
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Kleinhoff Hotel
Title: Kleinhoff Hotel
Character: Müller
Released: October 27, 1977
Type: Movie
Pascale, married to an architect, misses her flight to London and is forced to stay in Berlin, at the Kleinhoff Hotel where she stayed as a student. Karl, a would-be revolutionary lives in the adjoining room and Pascale spies him and his ex-girl-friend through a hole. Then she follows him to a questionable place where she is arrested by the police during a revolutionists raid. When she returns to the Kleinhoff Hotel, Pascale finds Karl crying, and enters his room to console him and they have a love affair.
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Title: Polizeiinspektion 1
Character: Tino Rafaelo
Released: September 1, 1977
Type: TV
Polizeiinspektion 1 is a German television series.
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The Stationmaster’s Wife
Title: The Stationmaster’s Wife
Character: Treuberger
Released: July 31, 1977
Type: Movie
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.
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Our Hitler: A Film from Germany
Title: Our Hitler: A Film from Germany
Character: Mörder aus „M“, Göring-Puppenspieler, Alter Ellerkamp, SS-Mann, Fremdenverkehrsdirektor
Released: July 7, 1977
Type: Movie
This inventive, exhaustive seven-hour film looks at the rise, reign and demise of Adolf Hitler. German director Hans Jürgen Syberberg, who was a child during World War II, doesn't try to recreate history to the letter. Instead, he places his actors -- many of whom play several roles -- on a stage and has them reenact events based on and inspired by Hitler's life. The action combines traditional narration and historical characters, but also idiosyncratic tweaks, like the use of puppets.
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Group Portrait with a Lady
Title: Group Portrait with a Lady
Character: Werner Hoyser
Released: May 25, 1977
Type: Movie
Leni Gruyetin, a resident of Nazi Germany, lives a tumultuous life as she bears witness to the fascist regime of the Nazis.
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Die Geisel
Title: Die Geisel
Character: Rio Rita
Released: February 20, 1977
Type: Movie
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The Sternstein Manor
Title: The Sternstein Manor
Character: Toni
Released: October 19, 1976
Type: Movie
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The Wild Duck
Title: The Wild Duck
Character: Hjalmar Ekdal
Released: September 1, 1976
Type: Movie
Consul Werle holds a reception in honour of the homecoming of his son Gregers. At the reception, Gregers meets his childhood friend, Hjalmar Ekdal, who is married to Gina, a former maid of the Werle family. Hjalmar is unaware that Werle had an affair with Gina and that their 14-year-old daughter Hedwig is not his child. Gregers moves in with the Ekdals with the intention of allowing unsuspecting Hjalmar and his family to share in the "happiness of truth". Hedwig is entirely devoted to a wild duck, which lives on a pond outside their house. When Hjalmar learns the truth about his daughter, he wants to leave his family. Gregers advises Hedwig to kill the wild duck so that her father, impressed by this sacrifice, will return home. On the following day, Hedwig's birthday, she doesn't shoot the duck, but shoots herself instead.
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Title: Plattenküche
Character: Self
Released: February 23, 1976
Type: TV
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Title: Pariser Geschichten
Released: January 1, 1976
Type: TV
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Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
Title: Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
Character: Nachtklubbesitzer
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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Wrong Move
Title: Wrong Move
Character: Landau
Released: June 29, 1975
Type: Movie
Six days in the life of Wilhelm: a detached man without qualities. He wants to write, so his mother gives him a ticket to Bonn, telling him to live. On the train he meets an older man, an athlete in the 1936 Olympics, and his mute teen companion, Mignon. She's an acrobat in market squares for spare change.
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Fox and His Friends
Title: Fox and His Friends
Character: Florist "Fatty" Schmidt
Released: June 6, 1975
Type: Movie
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.
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Karl May
Title: Karl May
Character: George Grosz
Released: October 18, 1974
Type: Movie
This ethereal, three-hour biopic is the middle film in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s “German Trilogy” on the mythological foundations of the Third Reich. By fusing theater, music, and cinema, Syberberg conjures up Karl May (1842-1912), the immensely popular German author, who set many of his adventure novels in an idealized version of the American Wild West. His tales of the cowboy and the Ubermensch alike were beloved by many, including (Our) Hitler, who supposedly ordered his generals to read May works after defeats in the Russian campaign.
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La Paloma
Title: La Paloma
Character: Isidor Palewski
Released: August 28, 1974
Type: Movie
Nightclub singer La Paloma succumbs to the persistent courting of a chubby rich admirer and marries him. Before the marriage, she was thought to be dying, but soon she is well. She believes her husband's love has cured her, but her efforts to love him begin to fade as she discovers true love with her husband's old school friend.
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Title: World on a Wire
Character: Hospital Orderly
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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Tonight or Never
Title: Tonight or Never
Character: Artist
Released: February 1, 1973
Type: Movie
Satire on 19th-century class relations and thinly veiled commentary on the failure of the 1968 political revolution.
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Adele Spitzeder
Title: Adele Spitzeder
Character: Wirt
Released: September 18, 1972
Type: Movie
The true story of Adele Spitzeder, who started her own private bank in 1870s Bavaria by promising everyone that gave her money high interest rates. Initially dubbed the "Angel of the poor", she was arrested for fraud after the whole scheme collapsed.
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Ludwig – Requiem for a Virgin King
Title: Ludwig – Requiem for a Virgin King
Character: Lakai Mayr / Hoffriseur Hoppe / Röhm
Released: June 22, 1972
Type: Movie
Reflected in an artificial and bombastically staged illusory world with Wagnerian compositions, glossy and satirical time references, 19th century German figures and traditions are stripped of their mythology and interpreted by the Germany of 1972.
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Jakob von Gunten
Title: Jakob von Gunten
Character: Kraus
Released: October 6, 1971
Type: Movie
Adaptation of Robert Walser's novel about a young man who enters an oppressive servant school.
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Title: Scene of the Crime
Character: Niedlich
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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Seventeen and Anxious
Title: Seventeen and Anxious
Character: Hippie
Released: July 31, 1970
Type: Movie
Zbynek Brynych's forgotten masterpiece "Oh Happy Day" is best described as coming-of-age-psychedelia.
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Title: Die Perle – Aus dem Tagebuch einer Hausgehilfin
Character: 2. Hippie-Mann
Released: December 27, 1969
Type: TV
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Title: Deutscher Filmpreis
Character: Self
Released: January 1, 1951
Type: TV