Herbert Steinmetz
Lindenstraße is a German television show on ARD's Das Erste, one of Germany's two publicly administered TV channels. The first episode was aired on 8 December 1985 and since then new episodes have been broadcast weekly. Its current timeslot on Das Erste is Sundays at 18:50. The events of the Sunday episode usually take place on the Thursday before the show, based on the TV station's original plan of airing the episodes Thursday night. Prior of the start of the show, the timeslot was switched to Sunday evening but the Thursday remained the day the events usually take place as the show shall feature the daily life routine of the protagonists on a working day. Exceptions are the so-called holiday episodes that take place on Sunday, such as for Christmas and Easter and also on important election days. Setting the pace for other soap operas in Germany, the first episodes were met with mostly bad reviews. However, Lindenstraße soon became one of the most successful shows on German TV.
Cinematographer turned director (Xaver Schwarzenberger) has filmed a small, wintry story of epic human proportions. A young doctor (Hanno Poeschi) exiles himself to a remote Austrian village when he accidentally causes a death. Once at the village, winter sets in and against that harsh and poetic backdrop a rabies epidemic sweeps through the population. The doctor convinces people he is a biologist but then he treats someone bitten and gives his real profession away. As the epidemic raises questions of life and death, the doctor's mind is brought back to the death that caused his exile and he considers suicide for awhile. The same issues come up again when an enraged villager goes on a killing spree and in turn, is hunted by the citizens. Faced with the prevalence of death all around him, the doctor starts to gain some perspective on the personal experience that brought him here in the first place.
In Munich 1955, German film star Veronika Voss becomes a drug addict at the mercy of corrupt Dr. Marianne Katz, who keeps her supplied with morphine. After meeting sports writer Robert Krohn, Veronika begins to dream of a return to stardom. As the couple's relationship escalates in intensity, Veronika begins seriously planning her return to the screen -- only to realize how debilitated she has become through her drug habit.
Germany in the autumn of 1957: Lola, a seductive cabaret singer-prostitute exults in her power as a temptress of men, but she wants out—she wants money, property, and love. Pitting a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, Lola launches an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale. Shot in childlike candy colors, Fassbinder’s homage to Josef von Sternberg’s classic The Blue Angel stands as a satiric tribute to capitalism.
We follow 15-year-old Paule‘s hard life on his parents' farm. Under his controlling father – who is fighting to save the homestead – he and his brother are forced to work very hard. When his brother leaves, the shy and obedient Paule meets the city girl Elfi – and with her a reason to rebel against the despotic and coarse father.
After having her second child, a German housewife suffers from post-partum depression before inexplicably falling into a continually misdiagnosed mental state, befuddling her relatives.
A German-made film based on one of the most famous German novels by Theodor Fontane. Effi Briest (Hanna Schygulla) is a socially ambitious, 17-year-old German girl who accepts a proposal of marriage from Baron Geert Von Instetten, a much older diplomat. Unfortunately, neither the Baron's family nor anyone in the secluded town she now calls home accept Effi as an equal. Starved for companionship, Effi begins an innocent friendship with a well-known womanizer that may jeopardize her position as the Baron's wife.
Das Blaue Palais is a series of five TV feature films written and directed by German author and filmmaker Rainer Erler. All five stories about the research and findings of an interdisciplinary scientific project have also been published as novels by Goldmann in 1978, 1979 and 1980. The series had an international cast. It was shot in Bavaria, Scotland, USA and Asia.
