german documentaries 2011

Klaus Wildenhahn
DIRECT! Public and Private
by Quinka F. Stoehr PORTRAIT | FILM | CULTURE | ARTS
“This film centres on a film legend: Klaus Wildenhahn. A man who reinvented documentary cinema in
Germany. The study of a long, eventful life. ... The old man's apartment is not an apartment but an
archive. A treasure chamber, saturated throughout the course of time. Books, paintings, photographs
are taken from the shelves, stories told. Every one of them leads out into the wide open, back into lost
times. Quinka Stoehr's film is a voyage, a discovery.” (Nordic Filmdays, Luebeck)
He's not fond the center of attention. Klaus Wildenhahn prefers to stay on the margins as the ‘absent
central figure’ of Quinka Stoehr's portrait of this great documentary filmmaker and founder of
‘Uncontrolled Cinema’ in Germany. “I feel that human beings can't be captured. They may achieve stability
in the form of a continous strand of life for a while, but then they disappear.“ Wildenhahn says.
And so this film is open, observes the master giving lectures or a film class, talks about the war and
the post war era which influenced him deeply, and the happiness of the liberation, when British and
American occupying forces brought their literature, Jazz music and later Direct Cinema to Germany.
But Klaus Wildenhahn does not remain as elusive as he would probably like to believe in this delicate
film. He is diagnosed with skin cancer during the filming, but does not withdraw. We accompany him
to his second home, Ostend, learn about the formative relationship with his mother and follow the
traces left by his biography in his films and vice versa, exemplified by the bitter controversey surrounding
his ‘Emden Goes to USA’-films that wrote television history.
“This is a reflection about documentary film, about the ‘rough spots’ and uncontrollability of the
genre, and a tribute to a great filmmaker for whom ‘the pleasure of seing’ is always ‘a preparation for
disappearance’.” (Claas Danielsen, DOKLeipzig)
Festivals: DOKLeipzig, Hamburg, Luebeck, BLICKE/Ruhrgebiet
85min | DigiBeta | PAL | color & b/w | 16:9 | original German version with English subtitles available
The death at Wannsee Lake – a spectacular case that has, to
date, continued to disturb and fascinate the ensuing ages.
The German poet Kleist was found shot – what is that supposed
to mean? What exactly happened at Wannsee Lake that
afternoon on November 21st , 1811? Who shot Kleist? What is
known about the woman that died with him? Could it be that
the bullets were meant for her? Or that he shot her? Or she,
him? If yes, why? And why were the couple so cheerful and
playful mere moments before their death? Kleist’s work is well known, but less well known and even
far less understood are the exact circumstances of his death. But perhaps it is exactly there that a new
key to understanding his work lies. Why did Kleist have to die?
German title: DIE AKTE KLEIST
52min or 44min | DigiBeta | HDCAM | 16:9 | original German version with English subtiles available
Production:
StoehrMedien
Hansastr. 63
24118 Kiel, Germany
tel.: +49 (0) 431-81775
fax: +49 (0) 431-81027
www.quinkastoehr.de
THE KLEIST FILE
by Torsten Striegnitz, Simone Dobmeier and Hedwig Schmutte HISTORY | LITERATURE | CULTURE | THEATRE
“I built Auschwitz… because I arrived in the first transport.”
Memory, art and hell collide as an Auschwitz survivor finally
confronts the horrors of his past after 50 years of silence.
Marian Kolodziej, prisoner number 432, was 17 and on one of
the first transports to enter Auschwitz on June 14, 1940. He
never spoke of his experience until after a serious stroke
in 1993. His drawings and art installations, which he called The
Labyrinth, fill the large basement of a church near Auschwitz.
The documentary is eyewitness testimony to the horrors of Auschwitz that is unique in the annals of
documenting the Holocaust. Marian’s story of survival and persistence, of life before, during, and after
Auschwitz is a testament to courage, the power of faith and the resilience of the human spirit.
German title: DAS LABYRINTH
Festivals: Plus CamerImage,Poland; USA: DocuWeeks-L.A., Boston, Santa Barbara, Boulder, Redemptive, Miami
37min | HD | DVD | original English version, German subtitles available
Production:
gebrueder beetz
filmproduktion Berlin GmbH & Co.˘KG
Heinrich Roller Str. 15
10405 Berlin, Germany
tel.: +49 (0) 30-69566910
info@gebrueder-beetz.de
THE LABYRINTH
by Jason A. Schmidt ARTS | ORAL-HISTORY | WAR&PEACE | PORTRAIT | NS-POLITICS
Contact:
Loyola Productions Munich GmbH
Christof Wolf
Kaulbachstr. 22a
80539 Munich, Germany
tel.: +49 (0) 89-23862418
fax: +49(0) 89-23862402
info@lp-muc.com
german documentaries 2011 691