Barbara Morgenstern – Doing It for Love

For the first time in six years, Barbara Morgenstern, pioneer of German-style electronic intimate pop, works on a new album. Her laptop sits on a shoebox, in the privacy of her home she finds first lines and harmonies: “I like to be alone,” one song begins. One by one, musicians join her. Intuitive ideas take shape. A window has opened. Arrangements, rehearsals, recordings follow. Step by step, the music enters public space, images are produced, videos, narratives. Questions arise: New beginning or back to the roots? New Biedermeier or tough political comment? The bigger the band, the riskier the booking. The more crisis-ridden the environment, the more comforting the music-making.

The Case of Bruno Lüdke

The incredible story of Bruno Lüdke (1908-44), the alleged worst mass murderer in German criminal history; or actually, a story of forged files and fake news that takes place during the darkest years of the Third Reich, when the principles of criminal justice, subjected to the yoke of a totalitarian system that is beginning to collapse, mean absolutely nothing.

It Is Not the Brazilian Homosexuals Who Are Perverse, But the Situation in Which They Live

Two queer Brazilians go skinny dipping in a lake where they talk about love, sex, colonialism and migration, on a pandemic summer afternoon in Berlin.

Dragan Wende - West Berlin

Dragan Wende has lived in Berlin since the '70s and has seen the city change through the years. His nephew comes to live with him as Dragan remembers the better days he lived as a Yugoslavian immigrant in a divided city.

Becoming Black

In the 1960s, a white couple living in East Germany tells their dark-skinned child that her skin color is merely a coincidence. As a teenager, she accidentally discovers the truth. Years before, a group of African men came to study in a village nearby. Sigrid, an East German woman, fell in love with Lucien from Togo and became pregnant. But she was already married to Armin. The child is Togolese-East German filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain. In interviews with Armin and others from her childhood years, she tracks the astonishing strategies of denial her parents, striving for normality, developed following her birth. What sounds like fieldwork about social dislocation becomes an autobiographical essay film and a reflection on themes such as identity, social norms and family ties, viewed from a very personal perspective.

100 Years of the UFA

The intricate history of UFA, a film production company founded in 1917 that has survived the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, the Adenauer era and the many and tumultuous events of contemporary Germany, and has always been the epicenter of the German film industry.

Sanierung im Berliner Wedding - Ein Erfahrungsbericht

People tell what difficulties you might encounter when you want to renovate an apartment in Berlin.

Central Airport THF

A documentary about Berlin's former airport Tempelhof. A film about Departures and Arrivals. And about those Berliners who come here to escape from their daily lives and those refugees who came here to finally arrive somewhere.

Ecco

A documentary highlighting some of the oddest, strangest and more grotesque examples of human behavior. Included are a tour of the Grand Guignol theater in Paris, a man who sticks long needles through his body, reindeer being castrated, and footage of lesbians and strippers.

Der Reichstag

Docudrama telling the story of a building with a breath taking career that began in the empire, flourished in the Weimar Republic, perished in the Nazi dictatorship, and was rebuilt after its partial destruction.

Köy

KÖY (Turkish for village) is about the longing for home, for belonging and the freedom of the self. Three women from three generations are united by their Kurdish roots.

Nick Cave: Stranger in a Strange Land

Documentary made for Dutch television about Nick Cave in Berlin in 1987.

Tunnel to Freedom

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

Kalter Krieg der Konzerte - Wie Bruce Springsteen den Osten rockte

Rent Boys

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.

Love Parade: When Love Learned to Dance

At the end of the Cold War, something new arised that should influence an entire generation and express their attitude to life. It started with an idea in the underground subculture of Berlin shortly before the fall of the Wall. With the motto "Peace, Joy, Pancakes", Club DJ Dr. Motte and companions launched the first Love Parade. A procession registered as political demonstration with only 150 colorfully dressed people dancing to house and techno. What started out small developed over the years into the largest party on the planet with visitors from all over the world. In 1999, 1.5 million people took part. With the help of interviews with important organizers and contemporary witnesses, the documentary reflects the history of the Love Parade, but also illuminates the dark side of how commerce and money business increasingly destroyed the real spirit, long before the emigration to other cities and the Love Parade disaster of Duisburg in 2010, which caused an era to end in deep grief.