Martin Gressmann
When Johanna's blind grandmother Ruth tells her the secret about their Jewish past, the “sleeping dogs” of the family history awake.
Thirteen German directors present short films exploring the state of their country.
After a period of separation, Sarah visits her research scientist mother on a remote New Zealand island. Before long Sarah becomes inextricably involved in events involving both Maori legend and an Albatross.
Hovering between the realms of poetry and history, this stunningly photographed, elegiac work – shot mostly in long takes – mixes cryptic metaphor and fantastic symbolism to tell the story of Avetik, an Armenian filmmaker exiled in Berlin. In sensuous, lyric styling, Askarian employs dreamlike images to reflect the history of his homeland, tranquil childhood memories, images inspired by erotic medieval poetry, and autobiographical shades of his own exile in Germany.
The film is dedicated to the Armenian monk and genius composer Komitas, and the 2 million victims on his people in Turkey in 1915. The final 20 years of Komitas life were spent in various mental hospitals. The destiny of Komitas? This is the magic beauty of Armenian culture and the abhorrent brutality of Armenian history. A cultural and artistic world that was slaughtered with a curved knife. A humanity that doggedly advances towards an apocalyptic catastrophe, that does not recognize its own original purpose, eradicates its own memory, its final roots.
A woman threatens to jump off a crane with her two young children in order to secure affordable housing. Won Golden Bear for Best Short at the 1985 International Film Festival Berlin.
