Rosa von Praunheim

Prominent filmmakers talk about documentaries that have moved, impressed, or had a lasting influence on them.

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In this daring autofictional documentary, filmmaker Tim Lienhard, raised in a Catholic family in southern Germany, traces his late-in-life transformation into a provocatively performative drag persona. Now 64, he reflects on identity, sexuality, aging, and self-esteem with shameless openness and humor. His journey takes him from Berlin to the Torremolinos Porn Festival and Pride Week in Gran Canaria, where he meets OnlyFans creators, partygoers, and peers who share their stories of desire and liberation. Blending confession and celebration, Lienhard’s grotesquely sexualized drag alter ego becomes both a mirror and manifesto—a vivid plea for authenticity and sexual freedom in regressive times.

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A sensual hommage to Germany's most productive queer filmmaker, Rosa von Praunheim.

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To mark the 60th birthday of the multi-talented comedian, singer and author Hape Kerkeling, the two documentary filmmakers André Schäfer and Eric Friedler have created a quiet, thoughtful and entertaining portrait of this often anarchic humorist. The film tells of his rapid rise as a teenager, his time and the blows of fate during the AIDS epidemic, the controversial forced outing, his confident exit from the show business and his new beginning. The film is a sensitive insight into the family history and a fast-paced journey through the career stages of a formative figure in German TV entertainment.

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Rosa von Praunheim has made 150 films and repeatedly provoked the middle-class to homophobic majority society. But he doesn't spare his own community either by accusing many gays of being conformist soft-spoken people; and by outing some prominent homosexuals against their will, he has made many enemies. For the younger generation of LGBTIQ activists, Rosa von Praunheim is still known as a figure from the early phase of the queer movement, but as a white cis man he hardly gets a hearing there. However, Rosa does not want to argue and theorize, but above all to live out his creativity. Sometimes narcissistic, sometimes angry and combative, sometimes anxious - and always with his own style. Companions such as the comic book creator Ralf König, the producer Regina Ziegler and the New York publicist Brandon Judell pay tribute to the artist and activist Rosa von Praunheim, who calls himself a “lucky child” because he was mostly able to do what he felt like doing.

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From the 1950s onwards, Erika and Ulrich Gregor brought countless film historical milestones to Berlin and shaped cinema discourse in post-war Germany. A look at the life and work of the couple without whom Arsenal and the Forum wouldn’t exist.

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Rex Gildo’s songs and musicals made him very popular. His best-known song was “Fiesta Mexicana” from 1972. Rosa von Praunheim tells the story of his life in the context of the gay pride movement, the normative pressures of the Schlager music industry, and the profound changes currently underway.

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A collective documentary film, from five european directors asked to witness the revolutions and dramas caused in their own countries by the pandemic. Among them, “Two Fathers”, directed by Julia von Heinz (20’). After the death of his father, Hans-Michael von Heinz, the director finds out the truth about her parent true sexual identity. In order to know more, she starts emailing persons who got to know him over the last years, among them his closest friend, director Rosa von Praunheim.

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How gay, how lesbian, how trans is German cinema? A 3sat documentary looks back at 100 years of queer film history.

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Julia von Heinz’s 80-year-old father dies completely unexpectedly. From his estate, the filmmaker discovers that the former reserve officer was homosexual and had led a double life. The director seeks out Rosa von Praunheim, an icon of the gay movement, to talk about it. The outcome is the portrait of an extraordinary, lonely man.

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The area around Stuttgarter Platz unites the most diverse worlds: It is a celebrity neighborhood, middle-class Charlottenburg and a meeting place for the drug scene. The documentary "Smart Berlin - Der Stutti" is a portrait of this special neighborhood through the eyes of its residents. Because they take over a bit of the direction here - from a selfie perspective.

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"Do not get bored!" The rbb television is serious: Kurt Krömer is back! On Tuesday, September 3, 2019, at 22.00 hrs, rbb television will premiere "Chez Krömer", the new show by and with Kurt Krömer and guests.

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Lars, a male nurse from Saarbrücken, moves to Berlin with his lover, Roland. They begin to renovate an apartment and their happiness seems almost complete. What Roland doesn’t know is that, while secretly checking out Berlin’s night life, Lars is also experimenting with a deadly poison.

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In this docudrama Rosa von Praunheim looks into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s sexual orientation, especially into his erotic experiences during his travels in Italy. Contrary to the common belief, von Praunheim argues that Goethe was not a heartbreaker and conqueror after all. It was only in Italy, that he had diverse sexual experiences, not least with men. Von Praunheim bases his assumption on letters written by Goethe to his friend Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi about these sexual encounters. Some of the content of these letters is re-encated in the film. At the same time, historians and linguists analyse and classify the letters into their historical context.

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MY WONDERFUL WEST BERLIN recounts the lives and struggles of gay men in West-Berlin. Through present-day scenes and never before seen archival footage, a fascinating picture emerges of a city, that today characterizes itself as a dream destination and place of refuge for gays.

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Desire Will Set You Free is a feature film that explores life in contemporary Berlin with an often critical and sometimes humorous eye. Based on a true story, the plot follows the relationship of an American writer of Israeli/Palestinian descent and a Russian aspiring artist working as a hustler, offering access to the city's vibrant queer and underground scenes while examining the differences between expatriate and refugee life. Our characters travel through Berlin's layered history and unique subcultural landscape; on their adventures they discover influences and remnants of the Weimar Republic, WWII, the Bowie years, and punk.

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The filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim remembers his humble origins from the unglamorous district of Frankfurt Praunheim.

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Starring Rosa von Praunheim & Christian Müller

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A New York film and at the same time the study of a young man suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The Berlin filmmaker Oliver Sechting (37) and his co-director Max Taubert (23) travel to New York with the idea of documenting the art scene there. However, the project is quickly overshadowed by Oliver's OCD, and the two directors fall prey to a conflict that becomes the central theme of their film. Encounters with such artists as film directors Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), Ira Sachs (Keep the Lights On), and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation) or the transmedia artist Phoebe Legere seem more and more to resemble therapy sessions. At last, Andy Warhol-Superstar Ultra Violet succeeds in opening a new door for Oliver.

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Rosa von Praunheim shows an intimate portrait of his dying friend Mario Wirz.

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A youth in middle of self-discovery, offending with his father, just discovering his sexuality and hiding it again. A boy who's often lonely loses a loved one and is in love with the wrong one.

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

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Five German directors celebrate the influence that famed filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has had on their careers in honor of his 70th birthday. After discussing Praunheim's inspiration, each protégé presents an original short drawn from the experience.

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You may not recognize the name Ralf König, but you probably recognize his art. One of the most commercially successful German comic book creators, he is best known for books like “SchwulComix (GayComix)” that offer a twisted take on queer culture. Equal parts Tom of Finland and R. Crumb, König’s comics are sexually charged and often politically incorrect, portraying daily routines of gay life alongside serious subjects like AIDS. King of Comics is a touching portrait of a cutting-edge artist with a wicked sense of humor. All hail the king! —Jimmy Radosta

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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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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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You say you’re interested in film and you’ve never been to the Moviemento? You are hereby put on cineastic probation – at least until you watch Bernd Sobolla’s documentary.

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TV presenter Markus Lanz invites prominent guests and experts from all areas of public life to his colourful talk show. As a rule, there are four guests, introduced individually to contribute their personal experiences to the topics.

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Filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim searches for his biological mother after discovering late in life that he was adopted.

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Anne Will discusses political processes, economic relationships, and social trends with her guests. Her motto: to think politically and ask directly.

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Rosa von Praunheim is the satanic sow, incarnated by the wanton actor Armin Dallapiccola. A poetic compendium of life and death with pushy fans, the Good Lord, lovers and Rosa’s horrified mother.

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Rex Gildo’s songs and musicals made him very popular. His best-known song was “Fiesta Mexicana” from 1972. Rosa von Praunheim tells the story of his life in the context of the gay pride movement, the normative pressures of the Schlager music industry, and the profound changes currently underway.

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Rosa von Praunheim was inspired to make this film by his own radio play “Die Nachtigall” (The Nightingale) from 1986, when he improvised together with street singer Friedrich Steinhauer, who called himself “die Nachtigall vom Ramersdorf” (The Nightingale of Ramersdorf), and Luzi Kryn, who became famous for her role in Praunheim’s film DIE BETTWURST. Now, more than 30 years later, Rosa von Praunheim has filmed his material with singer and actor Hubert Wild and an eccentric former teacher, Ellen Reichardt, who has appeared in several of his films already.

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Lars, a male nurse from Saarbrücken, moves to Berlin with his lover, Roland. They begin to renovate an apartment and their happiness seems almost complete. What Roland doesn’t know is that, while secretly checking out Berlin’s night life, Lars is also experimenting with a deadly poison.

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In this docudrama Rosa von Praunheim looks into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s sexual orientation, especially into his erotic experiences during his travels in Italy. Contrary to the common belief, von Praunheim argues that Goethe was not a heartbreaker and conqueror after all. It was only in Italy, that he had diverse sexual experiences, not least with men. Von Praunheim bases his assumption on letters written by Goethe to his friend Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi about these sexual encounters. Some of the content of these letters is re-encated in the film. At the same time, historians and linguists analyse and classify the letters into their historical context.

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About Stefan Stricker, who calls himself Juwelia and has been running a gallery on Sanderstraße in Berlin Neukölln for many years. Every weekend he invites guests to shamelessly recount from his life and to sing poetic songs written with his friend from Hollywood Jose Promis. Juwelia has been poor and sexy all her life, has always struggled for recognition, but only partially.

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Half documentary, half docu-drama about a German karate champion, who used to be a successful pimp...

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The filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim remembers his humble origins from the unglamorous district of Frankfurt Praunheim.

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“I am a hypochondriac”, admits Rosa Von Praunheim, the icon of the gay movement, right at the beginning at the film. The director, who turned seventy in 2012, is afraid of cancer, and he actually suffers from glaucoma, with osteoarthritis in his big toe. Von Praunheim is interested in alternative medicine and goes on a foray into the scene.

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

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You may not recognize the name Ralf König, but you probably recognize his art. One of the most commercially successful German comic book creators, he is best known for books like “SchwulComix (GayComix)” that offer a twisted take on queer culture. Equal parts Tom of Finland and R. Crumb, König’s comics are sexually charged and often politically incorrect, portraying daily routines of gay life alongside serious subjects like AIDS. King of Comics is a touching portrait of a cutting-edge artist with a wicked sense of humor. All hail the king! —Jimmy Radosta

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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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In this filmic memoir, German director Rosa von Praunheim returns to New York, a city he knew and loved in the woolly 1970s, to see what he might find and also to check in on the colorful protagonists of his 1989 documentary, Überleben in New York. Both a personal journey and a historical survey, New York Memories captures a transformed city by charting the shifting course of gay life, from Warhol Factory figures to the AIDS ravaged, within it.

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A newly arrived guest of a Hollywood hotel charms and amazes the regulars, and they decide to invite him to their Christmas dinner.

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Rosa von Praunheim, the director of the film, parodies himself and his time as a professor at the Film School in Potsdam Babelsberg, where he taught for six years.

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Filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim searches for his biological mother after discovering late in life that he was adopted.

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A retelling of the events that led to the death of Bernd Juergen Brandes. Brandes responded to Armin Meiwes' Internet ad in 2001, where Meiwes indicated that he was looking for a man willing to be killed and eaten.

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The film focuses on gay men who align themselves with hard-core right wing views, skinheads and Nazis. Rosa von Praunheim stated of the subjects featured in the documentary, “Some may be shocked that I do not take a stand in my film and do not portray gay neo-Nazis as monsters, but as people living their lives in dramatic contradiction.”

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Only the chosen few know this woman who started working as a secretary for the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) on 13 February, 1966. The path of Helen’s career is paved with famous names – including that of Wolfgang Petersen, Holger Meins (who later became a member of the Red Army Faction) as well as directors Wolfgang Becker, Detlev Buck and Christian Petzold. All have fond memories of forgetting their troubles after having poured their hearts out over a cup of coffee in Helene’s office – for Helene was both friend and advisor to countless film students.

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Joe Luga was a singer and accompanied the German soldiers in women's clothing on the Russian front. Nothing happened to him. It was only in the 1950s and 1960s that he was sent to prison in West Germany because of his homosexuality.

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Documentary portrait of German production designer Albrecht Becker.

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“This film is part of a series of films on gay men who survived the Nazi era. I met Walter Schwarze when he was already in his eighties. My camera recorded his first public account of his five-year incarceration as a homosexual at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was in his fifties when he met Ali in his hometown of Leipzig; the two men became partners and remained close until his demise. And yet, Walter told me, he felt he had lived in vain because he had not had the good fortune of today's gays, who are able to grow up in freedom. Walter Schwarze died of cancer on May 10, 1998.” Rosa von Praunheim

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Catchy mix of farce and documentary. Portrait of a Berlin theatre company made up entirely of the homeless, alcoholics and junks. They call themselves ‘rats’ and take the film over to have a party.

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Bosom buddies BeV StroganoV, Ovo Maltine, Ichgola Androgyn and Tima die Göttliche are four Berlin drag queens who met in the mid 1980s. These four queens became Germany’s most popular drag performers and have been busy fertilizing the German cultural scene. Besides being performers, they are also political activists – in AIDS awareness, anti-gay violence, the sex workers movement and the struggle against the extreme right and racism. The film tells their story.

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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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Pioneering gay German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim explores America’s burgeoning trans rights movement—from early leaders like Virginia Prince to contemporary activist groups like the titular Transexual Menace—in this powerful, yet sensitive documentary.

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Neurosia is the autobiography of the director Rosa von Praunheim. The movie begins with Rosa presenting his autobiography in a movie theater. Before the film begins, he is shot. But - his body gets lost. A female journalist from a TV station begins researching the life of Rosa. In the course of the movie she speaks to lots of aquaintances, shows short clips from Rosas old movies. Her main aim is to provide sensational and shocking details from Rosas life. It turns out that nearly everybody had some reason to kill Rosa. At the end of the movie, she discovers Rosa at a boat where he is kept prisoner by some of his old enemies. She frees him, and the movie ends.

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Documentary about Berlin's "Salon Kitty," a brothel that was systematically used by the Nazis for espionage. The owner's daughter took over the premises in 1953 and gradually converted them into an artists' guesthouse. In the early 1990s, her grandson tried unsuccessfully to set up a guitar school, and since then the guesthouse has mainly accommodated asylum seekers. Rosa von Praunheim traces the history of the house in conversation with prominent contemporary witnesses.

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The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

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In his film, Rosa von Praunheim approaches the famous communist theater director Erwin Piscator by developing irreverent improvisations in the spirit of Piscator together with acting students from the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in East Berlin. Interspersed with this are statements by theater professor Peter Jung, which serve as a biographical guide and shed light on the background of Piscator's epic and total theater.

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A trip through Lotti's horny life -- everything from her Aryan lover and her stay in a concentration camp while he is killed for their forbidden love -- is a fascinating look at this remarkable woman through the eyes and viewfinder of Rosa von Praunheim.

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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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This film powerfully documents New York City's gay community's response to the AIDS crisis as they are forced to organize themselves after the government's failure to stem the epidemic. Activists who are interviewed include playwrite Larry Kramer, People With AIDS Coalition co-founder Michael Callen (who died of AIDS in 1994), New York filmmaker and journalist Phil Zwickler, as well as representatives from ACT-UP, Queer Nation and the Gay Men's Health Crisis.

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AIDS victims and activists cope with hardship and society’s ignorance.

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Rosa von Praunheim follows the lives and existential struggles of three contrasting German emigrant women in New York City. The protagonists not only tell of their exciting lives in the hectic metropolis, but many dramatic events also take place during filming.

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