Edda Köchl
A man and two women are trying their luck in the red room in the countryside. The older (but therefore not wiser) Fred, freshly divorced as a kisser who still desires his ex, meets the self-confident Lucy, who feels called to explore the soul of men in her novels. She lives with her intimate friend Sibil in a Vorpommern house in the countryside. Fred decides to move from Berlin to the two women and try a ménage-à-trois. They get to know each other and themselves.
Film scholar Helmut Färber discusses Griffith' A CORNER IN WHEAT.
This film with a marked ethnographic nature, which was filmed without a pre-established plan and with a script that crosses the lines of documentary and fiction, tells the story of a group of five Germans who arrive on a remote island in the South Pacific called Parapara and belonging to Vanuatu. Their aim is to prepare a publication on the lives of the inhabitants of this remote island. The tasks were personally assigned: one would study the language, another would study the fauna; another the traditions, institutions and family systems; another the plants and another the songs and stories. However, the blind trust in the western scientific objective clashes head-on with the values and customs of the natives. Therefore, from the very beginning, the head of the tribe does not cease to ask and express his surprise regarding some foreigners “who have not come to rob his land”.
German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer’s block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected. After returning to Europe, the innocent friendship between Winter and Alice grows as they travel together through various European cities on a quest for Alice’s grandmother.
Helmut Färber makes connections between architecture and film
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a 1972 German language drama film directed by Wim Wenders. It was adapted from a novella by Wenders' long-time collaborator Peter Handke. A goalkeeper is sent off during a game for committing a foul. He spends the night with a cinema cashier, whom he afterwards kills. Although a type of detective film, it is more slow moving and contemplative than other films of the genre. It explores the monotony of the murderer's existence and, like many of Wenders' films, the overwhelming cultural influence of America in post-war West Germany.
Ingemo Engström’s graduation film DARK SPRING was made at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich, where she began studying in 1967. After the premiere at a festival in Mannheim, Uwe Nettelbeck wrote in "Filmkritik": "Films like DARK SPRING […] do not translate into the language of those who immediately think they know what such films are about […] But more, DARK SPRING is the film of a woman and a women’s film in which women say something, namely: how they see things."
