Elfi Mikesch

Portrait made for the 70th birthday of Rosa von Praunheim by his close collaborator.

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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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Documentary about Austrian city Judenburg and its art scene.

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A retrospective look at the making of "World on a Wire".

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A documentary about the making of the television mini-series by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, including interviewees with the principal actors.

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Yi-Chun loves dancing. She attends ballet classes at her high school, with a lot of discipline, even if the exercises are painful. "Made in Taiwan" is a sensitive portrait of a 17-year-old Taiwanese girl who shares her very personal worries and joys with us. The young woman loves to eat, but every intake of food is watched suspiciously by her family; the slightest weight gain is a hindrance to her dancing career. Her voice-over tells of her school day, which is subject to a strict dramaturgy: the alarm clock rings at 5:45 am, she is often not home until 7 pm, then she does her homework, takes a shower and goes to bed - she has neither time nor energy for a boyfriend. The annual school trip to the seaside is the perfect escape from the routine: karaoke on the bus, sweets and a fairground make for a good atmosphere. Monika Treut observes the youthful hustle and bustle without judging it, always keeping a careful eye on her protagonist's face.

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Heinz Emigholz, the premiere purveyor of architectural oddities (Sullivan’s Bridges, Goff in the Desert), meticulously documents 15 rooms of the enormous Villa Cargnacco in Lombardy, Italy, designed by proto-fascist poet Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938). The controversial figure spent 17 years designing the Vittoriale, a state museum on Lake Garda, and furnishing the Villa Cargnacco, which is part of the grand complex. This unusual documentary resulted from a photography session in the villa, when four friends—cinematographers Irene von Alberti, Elfi Mikesch, Klaus Wyborny and Heinz Emigholz—simultaneously filmed the rooms and furnishings of the villa in their own specific styles.

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Interview with Christoph Schlingensief on his films. Including many film clips.

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Michel, a young man idolized by his mother, falls in love with Madeleine. What he does not know is that the young woman is already the mistress of his father, Georges.

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After reading a postcard that her mother let go in the wind, a woman learns that she has a twin.

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Sixty years after the Holocaust, director Peter Lilienthal, himself a victim and refugee of the Nazi regime, sheds a light on Jewish life in Germany in the early 2000s.

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A feature-length documentary on Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, award-winning artist and human-rights activist who has gained international recognition for her work with street children in Rio. The film recounts how a woman turned her back on a wealthy lifestyle, driven into action by the execution of 8 streetkids by military police in 1993. In subsequent years Yvonne's struggle to better the lives of endangered and abandoned children has led her to found "Projeto Uere" ("Children of Light") a radical project committed to protection and education of kids who live in the streets and slums of Rio which has brought her into conflict with Brazil's wealthy elite.

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This film tells the story of Markus Anatol Weisse, who, astonishingly enough, became an artist, in spite of being only very partially sighted. Markus also builds strange machine-like beings and wishes that he himself were a biological robot, or cyborg.

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A portrait of five St. Petersburgians and their connection to The Hermitage.

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The life story of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a German Jew, who as a physician established the field of sexology, and fought militantly against German anti-sodomy laws in the late 19th century. The script reveals main characters in Hirschfeld's life including impossible love interest Baron von Teschenberg, and Hirschfeld's aids- young Karl Giese and guardian angel, the transvestite Dorchen, as they establish the First Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin in 1920, and follows their struggles to keep it open, up to the rise of the Third Reich in the mid 1930s.

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Monika Treut explores the worlds and thoughts of several female to male transgendered individuals. As with Treuts first film, Jungfrauenmaschine, Gendernauts, enters a minority sector of San Fransisco culture. The characters in this film have a lot to complain about, and they do. They are people whose physical appearance (female) does not match their inner sexual identity (male). The subject is pinpointed in the film independant of sexual orientation. Leave your conservative hats at the door, this is going to need your special attention.

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Documentary musing upon the work of German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

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Two sisters try to manage life alone after their mother's accident.

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German director Werner Schroeter invited his favourite opera singers to a 13th century abbey near Paris. There was no pre-planned action. There was no script, no continuity. On the other hand, there were precise constraints that provided the rules of the game: the setting, the Abbey of Royaumont, and the chosen participants. Each singer came accompanied by a person of his or her choice, and worked on an aria chosen by the director.

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This story is told by the boy's father: "My father wrote letters from the front. He didn't come back from the war. In my dream, I saw a hundred thousand letters falling from the sky." The letters are memories and trauma. No one talks about them. The boy knows nothing yet about the legacy of all wars. The setting for this story is a former military airfield and its surroundings.

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The sexual fantasies of women are explored by four female directors.

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An actor and poet falls in love with a former mortuary photographer turned waitress. They find themselves caught up way over their heads in a dirty political and financial affair, an art smuggling case that touches them merely for the fact that it may separate them, be it through death or exile.

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The eponymous party is hosted by Queenie and Burrs, long-term lovers who are rapidly growing apart.

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Vicky, an out-of-work actress, struggling waitress and lesbian has her whole life thrown into turmoil when her father comes from Germany to visit. The main problem is that Vicky has told him she is a successful actress and happily married. She enlists the help of a gay friend to play her husband. Using a large range of characters—gay, lesbian, straight, transsexuals—the film creates a funny and touching view of family dynamics and sexuality.

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The story of a child who faces the emptiness that surrounds the figure of his parents, disappeared in Africa.

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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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The German homosexuals to whom the third film "Feuer unterm Arsch" is dedicated are visibly less enthusiastic about safe sex, let alone safe sex 'with Mother Earth', which Allen Ginsburg envisions for dealing with an AIDS-like contaminated earth. In Berlin, the gay capital of Germany, Praunheim encounters a party atmosphere during his research. "There's no one who thinks safe sex is good," say some of them, yet they plead for reason, "you also have to have the freedom to fuck yourself to death," is the extreme response of the boys, who do not want their painstakingly acquired identity as gays to be reduced to an AIDS identity through voluntary restrictions. Praunheim has also tracked down politically active people in Germany, but according to his observations, they are identified with the unpleasant truth and avoided according to the Cassandra principle.

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A woman reflects on her romantic relationship with a young Moroccan years ago. Her daughter travels to Morocco, attempting to relive her mother's past.

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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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The world according to Annie Sprinkle, renowned porn star and performance artist.

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In modern-day Berlin (1987), Frau Kutowski goes insane, believing herself to be the (real-life) notorious Anita Berber, a nude art dancer/drug addict/scandalous figure of post-WWI Berlin. (Berber died of tuberculosis in 1928, having achieved significant success and recognition throughout the dance world.) Frau Kutowski is placed in a mental hospital, where in her own mind she acts out Berber's final days, including in her fantasies the hospital's staff and patients, to represent Anita's friends and associates.

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