Where? – Botetourt Gallery (Swem)

To see the trailer click here

Fatih Akin, the critically-acclaimed director of HEAD-ON, weaves overlapping tales of friendship and sexuality into a powerful narrative of universal love. In Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven, 2007), six characters are drawn together by circumstances-an old man and a prostitute forging a partnership, a young scholar reconciling his past, two young women falling in love, and a mother putting the shattered pieces of her life back together. Akin’s piercing sense of the human condition and contemporary world events charge these hyperlinked stories into a
multi-cultural powder keg.

When?- Tuesday, April 17 2012, 7:30 pm, Wash Hall 302

Where? – Washington Hall 302

To see the trailer click here.

Good Bye, Lenin!  (dir. Wolfgang Becker, 2003) successfullymixes comedy and tragedy, disappointment and joy, despair and hope. Set against the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the film extracts much humour from the language and ways of the (rapidly disappearing) German Democratic Republic (GDR—East Germany). It is, however, essentially a story about the strong bonds of love that bind parents and their  —and in this case, particularly, the love of a son for his dying mother.

The film captures the struggle of the devoted Alex as he fights to keep up his mother’s
failing health. In 1989, just before the fall of the German Democratic Republic, Christiane sees her son beaten by police during a riot. She falls into a coma, and then the Berlin Wall — and all it stands for — collapses.
‘Mother slept through the relentless triumph of capitalism,” Alex notes. Any sudden shock could kill Christiane, a committed woman of the left, so Alex contrives to keep her convinced that things are still the same.

When? – Tuesday, April 10 2012, 7:30 pm

Where? – Washington Hall 302

To see the trailor click here.

Das Leben der Anderen (2006, Dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

Dienstag, 03. April 2012, 19:30 Uhr, Wash Hall 302

This critically-acclaimed, Oscar®-winning film (Best Foreign Language Film, 2006; Dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck) is the erotic, emotionally-charged experience Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly) calls “a nail-biter of a thriller!” Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, East Germany’s population was closely monitored by the State Secret Police (Stasi). Only a few citizens above suspicion, like renowned pro-Socialist playwright Georg Dreyman, were permitted to lead private lives. But when a corrupt government official falls for Georg’s stunning actress-girlfriend, Christa, an ambitious Stasi policeman is ordered to bug the writer’s apartment to gain incriminating evidence against the rival. Now, what the officer discovers is about to dramatically change their lives – as well as his – in this seductive
political thriller Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) proclaims is “the best kind of movie: one you can’t get out of your head.”

To see the trailer click here.

Wann? – Dienstag, 27. März 2012, 19:30 Uhr

Wo? – Washington Hall 302

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (German original title: Die verlorene Ehre  der Katharina Blum) is a 1975 film adaptation by Volker Schlöndorff und Margarethe von Trotta of the novel of the same name by Heinrich Böll.

Katharina Blum, a young woman, has a one-night stand with a man who turns out to be a suspected terrorist under government surveillance and becomes a target of media
and police harassment When the police burst into Blum’s apartment, they fail to find the suspected terrorist they’ve been tracking and arrest Blum for harboring a fugitive. Immediately she becomes a media sensation; between the ruthless interrogation of the police, the even more invasive muckraking of a notorious tabloid, and harassment from the sensation-hungry public, Blum’s ordinary life is turned inside out until she has to lash out to defend her own sanity.

For more info click here.

Wann? – Am 20. März 2012 um 19.30 Uhr

Wo? – Washington Hall 302

A thriller that’s nearly devoid of thrills? That’s not a complaint–it’s what makes “The American Friend” (Dir. Wim Wenders, 1977) one of the most stylish (and, at the time, most expensive) films to emerge from the New German Cinema of the 1970s. Loosely adapting Patricia Highsmith’s mystery novel “Ripley’s Game”, director Wim Wenders shifted priority from plotting to character, emphasizing a richly colorful and atmospheric approach to locations in Hamburg, where a picture-framer (Bruno Ganz) is lured into an assassination scheme involving a mysterious Frenchman (Gerard Blain) and the titular American friend, Tom Ripley (played by Dennis Hopper, a far cry from Matt Damon’s portrayal of the same character in “The Talented Mr. Ripley”). The plotting is vague to the point of irrelevance; Wenders prefers to maintain the “aura” of mystery, as opposed to generating any conventional suspense, and expresses his affection for American movies by casting favorite directors Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller in pivotal supporting roles. The result is an intoxicating example of cinematic cross-pollination.

For more information click here

Stroszek  is a tale of people who don’t fit anywhere, in this case the alcoholic, ex-con loser Bruno Stroszek and his dysfunctional adopted family of prostitute Eva Mattes and eccentric Clemens Scheitz. Believing in the dream of US salvation, they decide to head for the Land of Promise. Leaving Germany is not a very difficult decision for Bruno because he has but one worthwhile, earthly possession: his beloved piano. He  believes the rewards of moving to the US will more than compensate for the loss of his piano. Instead of finding the American dream, however, Bruno S. discovers easy credit, unpaid bills, bailiffs, rifles and dancing chicken…

The film has a 100% “freshness” rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and Roger Ebert called it “one of the oddest films ever made” when including it as one of his “Great Movies”…

For more information click here

Wann? – Dienstag, 21. Februar 2012, 19:30 Uhr

Wo? – Washington Hall 302

Effi Briest (also known as Fontane Effi Briest) is a 1974 film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, adapted from German author Theodor Fontane‘s 1894 novel of the same name.

The setting is a handsome old country house outside Berlin in the 1890′s, the home
of a well-to-do upper-middle-class businessman, his wife and their seventeen-year-old daughter, Effi Briest. When the somewhat older Baron von
Instetten, whom Effi doesn’t know, asks for her hand, Effi is as happy as her
ambitious mother. Several days before the wedding, though, she is apprehensive.
She and her mother are taking the air, walking across a field of untended
grass, when Effi stops short. “The baron,” she says, “is a man
of firm principles.” Her mother agrees, pleased that a seventeen-year-old
might grasp such a point. Effi, desolate for the briefest of moments, adds,
“I have none at all.”

The film describes the
decline and fall of Effi Briest after she has flouted convention not out of
passion but boredom and whim…

Wir zeigen: “The Tunnel” (2001, dir. by Richter)

During the 28 years that the Berlin Wall stood, countless tunnels were planned as escape passageways from East to West. Roland Suso Richter’s Tunnel, based on harrowing true events, recounts the development of the most famous one, begun in 1961 by a determined, courageous team, whose quest for freedom and reconciliation with family and loved ones was all-consuming. The darkly atmospheric Tunnel, originally shown on Germantelevision in 2001, is as deep and claustrophobic as the hole the group worked so intensely to excavate.

Click here to see the trailer on youtube.

Circle of Deceit (German title: Die Fälschung) is an anti-war filmdirected by Volker Schlöndorff and internationally released in 1981. An international coproduction, it was an adaptation of Nicolas Born‘s novel of the same name, which
had appeared in 1979. The film follows a German journalist sent to Beirut to report on the Lebanese Civil War, which had begun in 1975.

Journalist Georg Laschen is sent to Beirut, where he is supposed to report on the local civil war. His feelings about this mission are influenced by the fact that his marriage to his wife Greta back home is dysfunctional, and the conflict in Lebanon remains incomprehensible to him.

He feels that his comments and his own problems to understand the situationdon’t really countbecause violence sells anyway. Subsequently he feels that his reports aren’t real journalism and by pretending to be that they can downright be considered deceit (or in German: Fälschung).

After a fling with a local lady named Arianna he happens to kill a man. He realises how relatively easily somebody can get lose decency in a warand even commit murder if there is so much deadly violence all over the place, and how hard or even impossible it is to remain unbiasedas a journalist.