Willem Menne

Interdisciplinary studies put into practice is a plane on which HaF's interests and mine coincide. Ideas of fictional research projects in films emerge very early on, or of film as research device, allowing people from different disciplines to come together and discover something, to pursue a line of thought, or just be adventurous. These ideas correspond to a tendency we both have of accumulating knowledge from different sciences, for example so as to bring exact sciences like medicine together with subjects which aren't directly aimed at application, such as religious studies or anthropology.

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Anishoara is a 15-year old girl living with her grandfather and little brother in a small village among the rolling green hills of Moldova. Her life is marked by the quotidian rhythms of country life; in summer she feels the overwhelming sensation of first love when on a trip with friends to the melon harvest. In autumn a strange German tourist disrupts her otherwise calm existence.  In winter she travels for the first time to the sea alongside the young man with whom she fell in love. In spring she longs for her lover's return, but when that moment comes it's not what she expected.

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Three young Georgians have to clean a castle in Berlin, where a German arms manufacturer's art collection is being set up for an exhibition. Of course, the proletariat isn't welcome at the opening party and they are banished to a servants' room in the attic. Downstairs, however, a splendid buffet attracts them - so why not just ignore the unfair prohibition and cross the line of class society? Didn't the French Revolution start over a piece of cake?

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Berlin, a summer in the age of neoliberalism: the spectre of the soviet avant-garde is haunting the city. A young Georgian contract-worker is surprised to find the ghost of the Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in his kitchen. At the same time, his friend Kasimir inherits a big fortune, but what shall he do with all this money? Framed by a travel through time leading to Flaubert's 19th Century und the shooting of a revisionist melodrama for German television, the film follows the adventures of these three characters in contemporary Berlin. A suprematist digital comedy about the transmission of emancipatory energies.

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Sophie is admitted to hospital with a fainting spell. She has recently started feeling sick all the time and has a headache. She fears she might be pregnant again. And now she is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her husband Joachim is never around and their three sons consume all her energy. She throws herself into an affair with the doctor Paul Wolff in order to feel alive again.

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A director, his fiancee, a scriptwriter and a student interact and discuss their emotions, at length.

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An unconventional essay film that interrogates the visual and ideological legacy of the Vietnam War. Blending staged scenes, archival footage, photographs, and philosophical dialogue, the film follows various characters — including an American soldier captured by North Vietnamese villagers — as they reflect on violence, memory, and image-making. Set partly in West Berlin and partly in reconstructed spaces representing Vietnam, the film avoids traditional dramatic narrative in favor of a fragmented montage of voices, documents, and reenactments. Interweaving love stories, political debate, and historical commentary, Farocki creates a critical reflection on how war is represented, seen, and imagined, both in cinema and in public consciousness. The result is a complex meditation on images as weapons and instruments of perception.

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Follows a woman, Lotte, who travels through Germany and seeks human connections, but is unsuccessful as every person she encounters is locked into his own world. Based on the play by Botho Strauß.

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A film about the time of the blast furnaces – 1917–1933 – about the development of an industry, about perfect machinery which had to run itself to the point of its own destruction.

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