Valerias Journey
The old Man and the Desert
The Future of Mobility
Talents for Germany
Like in Heaven
The Turtle and the Cage
Darkness at Noon
At the Crossroads
The City of Women
Valeria in the City
Die Alpenauszeit
Good Morning Africa
We accompany four women in four African countries, from the wilderness of the Ugandan rain forest to the chaos of the metropolis of Dakar, from the barren spaces of the Lesotho highlands to deep into the Mozambique savannah. There is Margaret, head of a radio station in Uganda. She had to endure a lot in her life. This is exactly why she sends out “Reflections” every morning in her radio show, a message to the women of Uganda (“Women, wake up and go to work”) and by doing so gives them the strength to cope with their everyday struggle for survival. Ndéye is a car mechanic. She conquered a traditional men’s domain in the conservative society of Senegal. It is not only because of this that she has become famous but also because there is no one who can repair cars as good as she can. Even men are queuing to take lessons from her. Just as in her professional career Ndéye also in her private life goes an unusual way. She refuses to be in a polygamous marriage but yearns for a partnership and for love. Marcia wants Mozambique to be able to stand on its own feet without Western help so that people there become aware of their talents and strengths and take the initiative. To do so, she regularly says farewell to her husband and her children. Then she drives on impassable roads into the savannah into the heart of Mozambique where she believes she has found the key to a better future for her country. And finally Grace, who leads a clinic for AIDS patients in Lesotho, feeling that she balances on the verge of an abyss. But she does so with firm steps because each life that is saved is a hope for the next day.
Detroit – between Utopia and Perdition
“Detroit represents the end of the industrial age and the beginning of what life can be in the 21st century city.”
New ideas find a better breeding ground in Detroit than anywhere else in the world. The memory of the Golden Era is still there but also the memory of the arrogance of those days. Among empty factory buildings and high-rise ruins people now search for another world of tomorrow. On the one hand clever innovators searching for the future of automobiles. The magic formula is: electro-mobility. Cars powered by batteries. There are already prototypes, some are ready for serial production. On the other hand there are many who put the focus on the renunciation of the consumption of goods. They want to change society, not technology. The future has started again, in Detroit.
One Thousand Small Revolutions
They are the new heroes of the global civic society. Social entrepreneurs. They act where the state is not able to act effectively. With their innovative ideas for projects and businesses they take over responsibility and fight against the problems of our society. They are convinced that economic success and social conscience do not exclude one another. The documentation “1000 small revolutions” presents social entrepreneurs from developed and developing countries who have started to change their world. Given the many unresolved problems in our society it becomes apparent how important social entrepreneurs are.
A Laptop Against Poverty
“A Laptop Against Poverty” takes us on a journey around the world to follow the traces of a visionary and his revolutionary educational project. The idea: to enable the poorest in the developing countries to get access to knowledge. Yet today knowledge does not only mean paper, pencil and school books for the children. Knowledge has to endeavour the leap into the 21st century to guarantee a better future for the poor. The solution: a laptop for every pupil, cheap, robust and designed for children. 100 dollars for a laptop that may change the world.
The dark side of the moon
The composer Giacomo Puccini
150 years ago, the famous Italian composer Giacomo Puccini was born in the Tuscan town of Lucca. His music – notably some of the immortal arias of his operas “La Bohème”, “Tosca” and “Madama Butterfly” – is still among the most popular tunes ever written. Already in his lifetime Puccini was a very famous man, admired and adored for his genius by many as well as despised by others for the alleged sentimentality and even banality of his music. But Puccini was not only regarded as one of the greatest composers of his time, he was also seen as an especially attractive man, and his womanizing activities were widely considered as the typical behaviour of the quintessential Italian man! But beneath the shimmering surface Giacomo Puccini was a distressed, driven soul: full of self-doubt and self-hatred, full of self-destructive energy. His life was a continuous struggle to raise his low self-esteem, and this precipitated not only in Puccini`s public appearance as a playboy – he was always dressed in the latest fashion, and loved and bought fast cars and even faster racing boats – but as well in an almost irrepressible appetite in sexual affaires.
Drawn in by the sound (AT)
A (no) portrait of the composer Jörg Widmann
Jörg Widmann, born in 1973, is one of the most prolific composers of this time: the shooting star of contemporary music. At the same time he is one of the best clarinettists of the world who, with the most precious sound, revives Mozart’s clarinet concerto and frees it from its image of being a piece for musical request programmes. Widmann’s life as a composer and as an interpreter go hand in hand while he is also professor in Freiburg. A portrait of Jörg Widmann therefore is also an attempt to capture his world of sounds in the form of images: it is a “classic” portrait and at the same time the attempt to sensualize his music.
Wrong Planet
Rainer perceives the world like through a wall of glass that always separates him from the other people. He calls those other people “NTs”, which means “neurologically typical”, that is all normal people. Rainer watches them just like an extraterrestrial would watch foreign creatures when he lands on the wrong planet. The special form of autism that all three protagonists of the film have has been termed “Wrong Planet Syndrome”. Rainer, Nicole, and Hendrik are Asperger-autists, brillant and highly intelligent personalities who often experience the world around them as something they don’t understand.
Rainer doesn’t like small talk and social rituals and so he doesn’t participate in them. To get involved into talks is a serious and sometimes also strenuous matter for Nicole, so any communication has to be planned. Spontaneity for her means a change of her plans and therefore is very problematic because plans give her the stability in a world that is alien to her. The 14-years old Hendrik often has the impression that an Asperger-autist behaves so strange that he doesn’t even notice how strange he is. Still once a week he jumps full of joy on the trampoline during a therapy for autistic children and while doing so he shouts out words like “instruction manuals, pedagogy, and psychology”: every day he thinks about new words that make him happy when he speaks them out loud.
“Wrong Planet” accompanies Hendrik, Rainer, and Nicole in their everyday lives, watches them at home, at work, at school, or at the university while they, being insecure but also having extraordinary energy and courage, are trying to cope with normal people. The film shows the world from their fascinating point of view until one asks oneself the question whose planet is the wrong one after all .
Der Schnapsbrenner vom Funtensee
The Baghdad Railway
On dangerous Tracks (Part 1+2)
Legendary stories are being kept alive to this day about the world famous railway system, which was designed over a hundred years ago to connect Berlin with Baghdad and Damascus with Medina. A daring enterprise at the time and a masterpiece of engineering, the Baghdad Railway tied the destinies of many well-known personalities, which represented the rivalling interests of the big European Empires: Spies, engineers, saboteurs, diplomats, archaeologists, politicians and financiers were all intent on winning what they could for their home countries – to claim whatever stake they were able to get of this new lifeline through the Middle East, or to try and prevent it from ever being finished.
37° My world has a thousand secrets
The life and lines of thought of highly gifted
Autistic persons have a special perception of their environment. Noises, movements and people are perceived sometimes to be blurred and unrealistic, even frightening when they come too close. Only a strict daily schedule without any deviations makes life bearable for many. Therefore Nicole gets up at exactly 5.04 h every morning and has breakfast at 8.15 h on the dot. Rainer’s sense of order is governed by city maps. He knows every street, the origin of its name, who this person was, how many streets there are with the same name and the relevant bus line to get there. Rainer does not believe that autistic people like him are without emotions. According to him they just belong to a different emotional world. He is longing for a relationship but he is severely hampered in his search for a girlfriend. Flirting, to show interest in a woman and to express these feelings is something this otherwise highly intelligent man can neither understand nor learn. Rainer has a job as a translator and experiences many difficulties coping with everyday life. ” For me communicating with normal people is a bit like having to speak simultaneously in ten different foreign languages.” Nicole has written a book about her sense of life titled “A good day is a day with savoy”. In the epilogue she asks whether a life without autism would be desirable. “Personally I can answer this question with a definite “No”. “For me my autism is a very special way to live, to feel and act “. The series 37° allows us a close insight into the emotional world of three highly gifted autistic persons, fascinating us with their extraordinary talents. The film pictures everyday family life with highly intelligent people and at the same time moves us to reconsider our own perceptions and capacities.
37° I’m a Father Against My Will
An unintended fatherhood is a tremendous break in every men`s life. He has to take his responsibility for a new life and to live with the fact beeing misused by the mother. The feeling of security, love and power – every loving father tries to give as much as he can to his child. He`s dreaming of lucky and satisfied kids, loving and adoring him as a father. But a succesful marriage isn`t a qualification for a prosperous childhood anymore. Adjusted visiting hours and custody battles are daily routine for a lot of fathers today – supposing that they can be and live as the father. Chiara Sambuchi accompanies three men during their fight for their kids and into a new life as happy fathers.
37° Leben auf Pump
37° Ist heute Dienstag oder Mai?
Leben mit Demenzkranken
Dementia turns the mother, the father, the husband back into a helpless stranger. This is a fate which concerns millions of people in an aging society. Everything one has learned and experienced, a complete life seems to vanish irrevocably. The person you love is withdrawing and loses himself in his secluded world. The carers are confronted with a task that sometimes seems to be insoluble. Relatives face a life full of sacrifice and helplessness. The illness isolates them, too, as friends, acquaintances, and even other relatives often don’t want to keep contact with the affected person. The film accompanies relatives and carers who meet this challenge with energy, love, and humour and who fight against the illness day after day. They accept enormous destitution to provide the ill person a life in dignity. And sometimes life thus gets a new meaning.
37° Heartache and Happy End
The World of the Dime Novel
First the good news: It still exists, the perfect world. It is in Germany, to be more precise: in the Bavarian Alps. And millions of readers go with the trend of the perfect world. Order, politeness, discipline, and family are values held high again – every week at the kiosk for 1.35 €. The penny dreadful is booming.
37° Foreign Neighbours
Muslims between Isolation and Integration
Ali K. is seventeen and has lived between Turkish and Arab immigrants in the Berlin district of Neukölln since his childhood. The young Turk didn’t graduate from school and doesn’t yet know what to do with his future. His daily life is characterised by gang wars in his district and the rap music he composes. Every day, Ali goes to a little mosque in the myriad of backyards of an old building, where he helps his father, an Imam, to pass on the teachings of the Koran, and where he generally stays until afternoon prayers. “If I didn’t spend so much time there, I’d be out getting up to no good with my friends,” he says. For youths like Ali, Islamic organisations offer a wide spectrum of leisure activities, from summer holiday camps which focus on the Koran or Arabic to job mediation. Best-known is the organisation Milli Görüs, which is by far the largest Islamic organisation in Germany. According to a report on the protection of the constitution, it operates “what in reality is disintegrative youth work. This and its politics which only appear to be aimed at integration, support Islamic milieus in our country,” the report continued.
More and more people in our country fear these developments. The Egyptian Chaban S. is waiting in vain for permission to build a large Islamic centre in Berlin. He wants it to comprise a mosque and numerous rooms for a cultural centre. The young Egyptian doesn’t want it to be “just a meeting point for Muslims,” but “first and foremost, a place of inter-religious dialogue.” The German authorities are of course of a different opinion: “The investors backing the project should be “Islamic”.
It’s not only the construction of new mosques or Islamic centres, but also the issue of whether Muslim girls should be allowed to wear headscarves in school or whether they should have to participate in swimming classes, which have become topics of escalated debate over the past months. Is it even possible to integrate those with strong Muslim beliefs into German society? Or is the country already home to an Islamic parallel world in which the values and rules of a modern, central-European society are ultimately levered out.
The fight over the deportation of the Islamic leader Metin Kaplan in the city of Cologne has only served to fire this long-standing conflict. In this heated situation, ZDF writer Chiara Sambuchi spoke with Muslims who have decided between integration and isolation. The majority have long considered themselves at home in Germany.
The debate also hears from women’s rights activist and lawyer Seyran Ates, constitutional lawyer and Islam expert, Professor Mathias Rohe, and EKD (Evangelic Church in Germany) council Chairman, Bishop Wolfgang Huber.
37° Near Baghdad
Gulf war veterans talk about their experiences
America in the mood for war. What do Gulf war veterans think of another war mission in Iraq? How did they cope with their experiences? How did their lives change and what does the new war trigger in them?
Merseburg
Bilderbuch Deutschland
Approaching Merseburg an der Saale in Saxony-Anhalt: You immediately get the impression that you experience a region with abrupt contrasts, here, were the eyes can travel over vast distances. Right in the middle is the former bishop’s residence Merseburg and the imperial Pfalz with the impressive cathedral. Near the city borders there are huge industrial sites like Leuna and Buna. In the vicinity there are treasures of German cultural history dating back to the 15th century, enchanted nature reserves, a newly created lake district, and last not least exceptional personalities of today.
Fichtelberg
Bilderbuch Deutschland
Oberwiesenthal is the highest city in Germany. “Saxonian Siberia” as it is called by passionate winter sport enthusiasts. But no matter if it is winter or summer – the health resort on the border to the Czech Republic is a popular tourist destination. We travel through the seasons and once around the 1,214 meter high Fichtelberg and we encounter the inhabitants of this city: ski jumper ace Jens Weissflog, Brigitte Roscher, who was born at the meteorological station on the mountain, Hans and Jochen of the Fichtelberg narrow-gauge railway and other people.
Köthen and Köthener Land
Bilderbuch Deutschland
We are visiting the town of Köthen and the surrounding region. Between the rivers Saale and Elbe, Mulde and Fuhne we meet the people of this region, and its great diversity gives rise to the wish to see more. It is also the birthplace of many famous personalities: Johann Sebastian Bach was born here in Köthen, and Samuel Hahnemann, the father of modern homeopathy.
We will link history with the life and work of the people who are today conserving and reviving the traditions of this region.
We will visit mills and castles and enchanted gardens, be presented with mysteries and oddities and follow archaeological traces. In the process we will enjoy a wonderful piece of nature in the centre of Sachsen-Anhalt, which attracts animal and nature lovers from all over Germany.
Mitbestraft
His pathological gambling turned Mike B. first into a thief, then into an arsonist and an insurance fraudster. For his wife Silke the dramatic end comes completely as a surprise: One evening policemen knock at the door, arrest Mike, and search the apartment for hours. Silke only finds out some days later by reading the newspaper what he is accused of. The story is in the news for days and Silke has the impression that everybody in her small town in Saxony is turning his head to her. She is thirty when her husband gets arrested. Overnight she had to take over the responsibility for her three children and for making a living for the family all of her own. Despite of all her anger and disappointment about her husband’s fraud she visits Mike in Chemnitz every second week and makes sure that the children don’t lose contact to their father. The film accompanies Silke and her children during one year, shows their day-to-day life but also their visits in the prison.
Slave Labourers in Indian Stone Quarries
With this documentary there is proof for the first time ever: child workers and even bond slaves are working in Indian quarries, which are exporting tomb stones and other marble products to Europe and the USA.
For at least eight hours a day, 13 year-old Sanjeev and two other boys of the same age are holding on to the huge power drill. Their bodies are shaking with the vibrations, the noise is deafening. Dust is sticking to their eyes and gets into their unprotected lungs. Sanjeev and his friends are working in an Indian quarry for no pay.
Big business for the owners of the quarries who export marble and granite to countries around the world as building materials and for grave monuments on cemetaries all over the western world. The profit margins are enormous, due to the extremely low cost factor of child labour. Sanjeev has to work for the money his parents received in advance from the owner of the quarry. His parents live some 60 miles away and he will not be seeing them for a long time. Sanjeev is a bond slave.
By Indian laws child labour is forbidden and both, Indian and western representatives of the stone business claim, it does not exist. The opposite is the truth and child labour is a large factor in the Indian economy.
We follow the child labour-expert of an NGO into several quarries in India, where he also finds children as young as 7 years working in the production of building materials for the domestic Indian market. In some quarries, the owners try to quickly hide the youngest of their workers, but in most cases, our cameras get a clear picture of the working conditions.
The direct link between the Indian quarries in which children are working and the German importers has been made in this documentary. Our sources enable us to do the same for several other countries.
Compagnia Aterballetto
Tanz ist der Spiegel der Seele
The Dance Compagnia Aterballetto wants to give prominence again to the Italian art of dance in the world. In the provincial city of Reggio Emilia where in the 18th century the Italian tricolour, the symbol for freedom and national identity, had its origin, the ensemble was created in 1979 as a joint initiative of several theatres. Lead by the dancer and choreographer Maurio Bigonzetti, Aterballetto became the first permanent dance ensemble which managed to hold its ground independently of a theatre. Bigonzetti’s pieces for the ensemble are quite different from one another but they have one thing in common: they incorporate all aspects of art. Be it fine arts, drama, poetry, music – in the choreography of Aterballetto they all merge into an extraordinary dance event. Andreas Morell accompanied the Compagnia Aterballetto in her everyday life for his film. The beauty of physical discipline but also the tough physical work and the intimate moments of complete concentration are conveyed in personal encounters, at performances and rehearsals: dancers from all over the world on the painstaking and fascinating path of artistic creativity.
Von Schönefeld in alle Welt
The History of the East German Airline
INTERFLUG was the core of civil aviation in the GDR. This showcase organization of a country in which everybody wanted to travel but hardly anyone was allowed to do so. Those who managed to travel with INTERFLUG were part of a sworn circle. Be it with Western German charter tourists on a foreign currency flight to Bulgaria or with 150 fishermen back from Montevideo to the GDR; be it on a solidarity flight to Hanoi with bicycles for Ho Chi Minh’s jungle path or with eighty thousand fledglings from Budapest to Syria. INTERFLUG was a widely ramified company, always on the way in the name of socialism and yet something of a home for its employees. Pilots, flight engineers, navigators, and stewardesses formed the image of the airline. The film shows the privileges and the oddities of the aviation routine between Havanna and Heringsdorf. But also the system of surveillance. Each employee could guess that informers of the ministry of state security were on board, especially on flights abroad. But who exactly they were is what many INTERFLUG-employees only learned from their files after the fall of the wall. The film “Das Himmelreich der Interflug” (“Interflug’s empire of the skies”) also takes a look on the turbulent but forgotten times when INTERFLUG was still called “German Lufthansa of the GDR”.
Taoism in a Bowl of Water
Tan Dun - A Chinese composer
Taoism In A Bowl Of Water, our film with and about Tan Dun, is the visual record of a work in progress, of a particular time in the life of Tan Dun. Together with him we will embark upon a journey over a period of several months, which will lead us into two opposing directions. In the end we will realise that we have moved in an all-encompassing circle.
We will take a journey from Tan’s present central point in New York to his cultural roots and influences in order to document their importance for his current work. We will accompany him into an uncertain future, on a path paved with the traditions of the past and the continously changing influences of the present that will lead Tan to new shores.
The almost commonplace Buddhist wisdom that the journey becomes the goal precisely describes this film. Every step on the way that Tan has already done and is still to do is part of the maze that illustrates Tan’s musical universe. From his biographical past we move through his present into the future.
The Mighty Product Fetish
Cult brands are trendsetters, which redefine consumers’ tastes. Like religious idols they establish contact to everyday shapes, to tradition and the common background. Banal objects surpass their real value. The product world is slowly encroaching into areas, which were formerly the domain of religious and cultural institutions. In addition to their practical uses some products are assuming the character of religious icons and become product icons.
Their emotional aspect changes them into objects of desire, which replaces the reason for their creation. The film shows how a product fetish comes about. From its creation to its introduction onto the market the documentary shows how designers, advertising agencies and marketing experts attempt to artificially create a fetish character for the product.
Simultaneously, the film follows a ceremony of the Hopi native American tribe showing the effect of religious fetishes on the tribe members.
The profane and the sacred mingle. The product fetish becomes sacred and the religious fetish corrupt.
Magic Things – Think Magic
In order to fulfil the need for a more accessible religion, an increasing number of people are looking for new ways of developing their spirituality. In his film Falko Blask shows different disciples of a new spiritual wave, which often involves symbols and rites. He visits followers of healing with precious stones in the southern German Swabian Mountains, and classic Japanese Samurai philosophy students, who have dedicated themselves to the ceremonial art of sword fighting.
In the middle of traffic in the Bavaria city of Munich, a woman wearing black, clutching a broom, turns around in a small circle made of white beans. The well-known magic researcher Luisa Francia is performing a ritual. “Magic is a playful way of expanding space, the ability to communicate with all creatures and things and creations”, explains the writer, who picked up a lot of nature religion magical fetishes during her long travels through Africa. Frederico Tolli, Catholic theologian and magician on the other hand, is involved in the tradition of European ritual magic and views modern occultism as the rebirth of an ancient mystery game. He says: “magic is a kind of art, a kind of design, it’s about the design of its own metaphysical, religious ideas.” The film accompanies Tolli to an occult order and without the unthinking clichés of Satanism, shows the ritual magic ceremony of a Saturn order in Germany. In order to fulfil the need for a more accessible religion, increasing numbers of Germans are looking for new ways of developing their spirituality. The film also shows followers of healing with precious stones in the southern German Swabian Mountains, and the disciples of classic Japanese Samurai philosophy, who have dedicated themselves to the ceremonial art of sword fighting. Sharp swords which sharpen the mind: “I see the sword as a tool on the path to mental development,” says a German sword master.
Inspired – Fetish Scenes
This documentary shows the story of the origins and the filming of a fetish fantasy. It follows Maria Beatty, a director living in Paris and New York and an icon of the fetish, female-erotic subculture, from her initial fantasies and ideas to meticulous investigations and finally to the shooting of one of her very special videos. Early fetish photographs and depictions from Europe, mainly from Berlin in the 1920s, serve as a source of inspiration for this American woman.
By means of interviews with the producers, actors, gatherers, and with the director Maria Betty who is being watched at her work in Paris and New York by filmmaker Max von Strömungen, “Inspired – Fetish Scenes” becomes a film in the film, a Making Of of a whole creative process. Max von Strömungen watches the investigations, preliminary discussions, and the shooting. He follows Maria Beatty in the studio of a corset maker, he explains the background of the lust for the fetish game and he shows her talking to a “mistress” from California. The film manages again and again to keep the subject and the protagonists away from some of the popular clichés and prejudices. This is the place of desires and imaginations, memories and inhibitions. It is a film about the most intimate and sometimes strange human desires. “Inspired – Fetish Scenes” does not follow obscure erotic sensations but it documents the artistic and almost artisan diversity without speculation.
The Conscience of the World
Paths to a peaceful Future
“When you are on the plane, if you pray, then you are doing this for God. As the almighty prophet says, an act dedicated to God is better than the whole world.”
–from 9-11 mass-murderer Atta’s note
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
–The Golden Rule
The attack on the World Trade Center in New York left in its wake nearly 2600 victims. This unbelievable event put, as the saying goes, the fear of God in everyone who watched it. The perpetrators in fact were convinced that God was with them on that day.
For years now, American fundamentalists have also killed in the name of religion. They have murdered numerous physicians who perform abortions. As on September 11, these people, too, have allegedly fought for their beliefs, for a life of positive values. These values are defined on one side by the Quran and on the other side by the Bible.
Religion continues to serve as a justification for murder and destruction. And yet, “do not kill, do not lie, do not steal, do not commit adultery, respect your elders and love your children” are the five commandments for mankind which all religions share: a minimal, ethical foundation, that makes it possible for people to live together in harmony.
Where can we look to evaluate ourselves, what regulations can guide us, or in crucial moments, give us restraint? Even the Dalai Lama is struggling to remain true to his own religion, exploring spirituality only through traditional Buddhist rituals.
In this film project, we follow the trail of the worlds’ great religions in search of examples of a global ethic. As if on an expedition, we are searching for people from different cultures who make their ethics a way of life. The final product will be a documentation and illustration of a universal, fundamental ethic and shed light on the question, if the World Ethos Project will gain sufficient real-life power to effect change.
Fortsetzung folgt
Sophias neue Welt - Papa ist im Gefängnis
Hendrik’s World
Even as a very small child, Hendrik was different from other children. When he was six months old he started to speak and he could read when he was three years old. Hendrik’s IQ is much higher than the IQ of most people. But Hendrik developed arather bizarre behaviour in more than one way: he avoided contact with other children, constantly refused to leave his room and had extreme tantrums. It soon became obvious: Hendrik is suffering from Asperger-syndrom, a special form of autism. His feelings are different and he does not understand human relations: Hendrik sees and interprets everything very differently from normal children. Every now and again he drifts into his own secret world. Being highly giftet, however, he is able to tell us about his world.
Wahlverwandtschaften
Help for children in critical family situations
Headline news about children’s misery has shocked Germany. Day by day cases of neglect, isolation and maltreatment occur more often than society suspects. There are, however, means to detect imminent disaster at an early stage. “Children’s Protection” is not only prevention but an investment in the future.
The ZDF documentary shows various examples of assistance before the family situation begins to get out of hand.
Holy Mountains
Deutschlands heilige Berge
When the mountain is calling, the thirsty people turn up in droves. Andechs abbey is profiting quite well from the beer business. But many of the more than 1.2 million people climb the “sacred mount” also because they look for an encounter with God inside of the abbey’s walls. The “sacred mount of Heroldsbach” is not quite as famous. In 1951 a housewife had visions of Mary on the “Heavenly Meadow” in that village near Forchheim in Franconia. Meanwhile, Heroldsbach has developed into a centre of popular devoutness being the destination of thousands of pilgrims every month. Many of them are looking for help in existential distress here. It is not only in Peru or in Africa but also in Germany where people have worshipped sacred mountains since pre-Christian times. In the night before May 1st hundreds of “witches” and “devils” meet at the foot of Mount Brocken to celebrate Walpurgis Night. We know little about the many sacred mounts in Germany, also, because the Nazis misused old Germanic rites for their purposes. But today there is again a vivid culture of devotion right in the heart of Germany.
Anne Worst and Chiara Sambuchi are presenting in their film some of the people who have a very special relationship to a sacred mount in Germany.
Die Könige vom Erdgeschoß
Von Hausmeistern in der Berliner Platte
Pferde nach Sydney
EXAKT (Trailer)
Zeitbombe Computer
Friedrich List – Verkannt, verschmäht, vertrieben!
Come Together. Japan
Jazz Open 1996-99
(with B.B.King, Santana, Isaac Hayes, Cassandra Wilson)
Sir Simon Rattle
Birdwatching in Chernobyl
Chernobyl in autumn, the 17 th after the disaster in the Ukrainian nuclear power plant. Ghastly silence in the death zone, in the off-limits area around the atomic pile which caused the largest nuclear disaster in history.
Nature and animals seem to be unaffected by it, an enigma for various scientists who are looking for explanations. Chernobyl became an eerily beautiful attraction. Each year hundreds of tourists are coming into the disaster zone. It is regarded as a thrill to come so close to the Chernobyl sarcophagus. A protective suit is part of the equipment of these curious people of a different kind. Pripyat, the city of technological progress of the former Soviet Union, is almost deserted today, a ghost town.
After the reactor accident all 280,000 inhabitants were evacuated, 2,000 came back. Until now only parts of the effects of the disaster have been recorded, statistics have been manipulated, victims have been ignored for too long. International humanitarian aid is being accepted willingly. The German foundation “Children of Chernobyl” has helped for eleven years.
Imagefilms
Splitscreen presentations
Infotainment Ford News
Imagefilms and Productfilms
Commercials
Corporate Design and Screendesign Landesfunkhaus Magdeburg
Legends (Teaser)
Christmas campaign (10 Jingles)
Spring campaign (5 Jingles)
Sport im Osten (Trailer)
Das Inselduell (10-teilige Serie)
Christoph Jumpelt and Roland May, Executive Producer and Head of Department of “Das Inselduell”, were the people behind this Real Life – TV Show, which aired on SAT.1 in the summer of 2000 with exceptional ratings.
May and Jumpelt lead the production crew of 70 people through the various stages of this Real Life Series. Starting with the creation of the rule book and conducting the casting of the candidates to the editorial and logistical tasks in the Asian archipelago.
While filming on location, both also directed multi-camera-sequences. The script for individual episodes was often adapted up to the last minute, according to developments on the candidate’s island.
24 hours: The Train Surfers of Rio
24 hours: Prèt-à-porter
Swing versus Goose Stepping
KGB. Two Spies – One Friendship
Sportpalast
Arena of Passions
Treasures of the World
Olinda
“Olinda is not a city, it is a garden full of masterpieces!” This poetic assessment was done by the UNESCO commissioner when he was asked to describe Olinda in a few words. The small city in Northern Brazil is indeed so rich in impressions that the observer finds it hard to decide which ones are the more beautiful – the natural masterpieces or those made by man. The film describes the unmistakable mixture of nature, light, and architecture. The spectator can only vaguely perceive the wind that permanently blows a breeze over the sea to Olinda and thus provides for moderate temeperature despite of the burning sun.
In the numerous abbeys of the city that were built on eight hills, stories of more than 400 years are hidden. The fate of the first Portuguese settlers that built their houses in Olinda already early in the 16th century can still be traced in the ruins of the oldest churches of Olinda. The name Olinda, too, has its origin in those days. When the Portuguese first set their anchors here in 1535 they found ideal conditions for the establishment of a settlement. Their leader Duarte Coelho Pereira is said to have climbed a hill and to have exclaimed “Ò linda situacam para se fundar uma villa!” (Oh, what a beautiful place to found a city!) when he saw the region. Even today one can very well understand the euphoria of those first settlers.
The film by Roland May makes clear how deeply the Portuguese formed Brazil. Olinda still is an excellent witness of the European culture of the 17th and 18th century. In the old city centre, which still preserves the style of the early years, religious buildings are dominating. Today, just as back then, monks and nuns gather for their morning prayers in front of the altars. It was already in those years that the friars regarded the unique power and charisma of Olinda as a promise to the future.
Treasures of the World
Ouro Preto
Black gold – this is the name of the city and it is also its history. The first pioneers in the 17th century settled here because the gold findings exceeded everything the Portugese had ever discovered before in Brazil. The whole region that was then many day’s journeys away from the coast, held so vast amounts of this precious metal that the colonial masters brought tens of thousands of slaves from Africa to Brazil to mine the mineral resources.
The film by Roland May shows the architecture of one of the most important gold digger towns in the world and the story of its most important architect, Antonio Francisco Lisboa. With his work and his tragic life he is tightly connected to the fate of his city. Lisboa became known under his nickname “O Aleijadinho” (“Little cripple”) because he suffered from an incurable disease which decomposed his body slowly almost like leprosy does. The traces he left with his sculptures, reliefs, and architectural works in Ouro Preto have a unique power and beauty. O Aleijadinho must have suffered terrible pains in his later years during his work. Still he created untiringly new variants of the style that later was termed “Barocco Mineiro” until he died in 1813. He finally tied his sculptor instruments to his arms when he was no longer able to use his hands and with beauty he fought against his own terrible crippledness – a life between heaven and hell.
Hot Spot Shanghai
Legends
Soraya
Soraya’s life under public scrutiny began with a bang. The daughter of a Berlin woman and a Persian student fell in love with the Shah. When the marriage was celebrated shortly afterwards, Soraya was 18 years old and on of the most sought-after objects of the press photographers. She achieved the unbelievable and got onto the Persian Peacock Throne. From then on Soraya’s fate in Teheran’s imperial palace became a top subject of the yellow press.
None of her steps remained unnoticed by the paparazzi. Many true and just as many invented stories caused a stir with millions of readers all around the world. But the dream of the fairy tale was not to last even a decade. In 1958 the Persians pushed the beautiful empress from the throne – because she didn’t give birth to a child. Soraya reflects the people’s desires for wealth, beauty, glamour, and family that made her a legend as empress.
Princess Soraya rarely gives interviews, she avoids journalists. They followed her all of her life. They were on the look-out day and night to shoot photos and to meticulously document the fate of the empress: from the German fairy tale princess who ascends the Peacock Throne to the modern monarch in Persia and finally to the “poor empress Soraya” who was repudiated by the Shah. Soraya’s life always provided good stories.
The author of the film managed to win the princess over for a long interview. She narrates about her first encounter with the Shah: “It was love at first sight”. But the palace in Teheran was to become a golden cage for the young woman. She was loved by the people, acclaimed by the press but deep in her heart she remained lonely. She always felt torn between the Christian and the Islamic world. As an empress she fought for the policy of her husband, for wealth and for the emancipation of the woman.
The Iranian government is very cagey about the original sites of the monarchy. The Iranians love Soraya but not the former empress. For Soraya and her friends it is therefore never safe to talk publicly about the life and the fate of the princess. The film describes the true story of Soraya, her compulsions, her doubts, and her hopes.
Legends
Curd Jürgens
Brigitte Bardot called him the “Norman wardrobe”; he regarded himself as a colossus on feet of clay. He was one of the few German world famous stars in cinema. Curd Jürgens’ mostly turbulent private life always provided stories enough for the magazines and made millions of people believe that they knew him almost as good as the neighbour next door. There were times when the public was more interested in his existence than in the political affairs of the day. Jürgens was a master of self-dramatization and he managed to get in the news in such a lasting way as hardly anyone before him. His shining glance and his whiskey voice became the trademarks of this German giant. The film “The Devil’s General” became his international breakthrough. Then productions with star-studded cast followed, and when he acted as the villain antagonist of James Bond, the New York Times headlined: “The man, you’ll love to hate”.
“Never push me in a wheelchair to the window as if I was vegetable”, Curd Jürgens begged his last wife Margie. Even after a critical heart operation he didn’t give up his role as a “tough guy”. This was the role of his lifetime. Curd Jürgens became a world famous star at a time when Germany was just beginning to recover from the horrors of the wartime years. Producers and directors recognized in him the man of their times: energetic, tall, blond, shining blue eyes. Curd Jürgens lived for his audience. He presented his wealth, his houses, and his affairs. He was married five times. The news wrote reports about him over and over again, the readers took part in the luxury he lived in, in his glory, and in his escapades.
But his loneliness was mostly hidden from the public. So were the feelings of Curd Jürgens who became sterile due to an accident. “60 years old and not a bit sage…” is what he later sang about himself in a defiant and at the same time reflective manner. Who was the man behind the self-dramatization? – this is the question the film tries to answer with the help of colleagues, friends, and the wives of Curd Jürgens.
Legends
Roy Black
“I was a marionette. Nobody was interested in who I really was.”
Roy Black, 1991
He dominated the German record market like no-one had done before him. In the first ten years of his career alone the satin voice of Roy Black sounded from twelve million discs. And it is until today, eight years after his sudden death, that Gerhard Höllerich, who grew up in a Bavarian small town, has been regarded as the unbeaten king of shallow music. For his songs of love, heart, and happiness lulled half the nation and he became the man of their dreams for young girls and their mothers and the secret idol of many men.
The film, which is part of the “legends” series, also shows the other Roy Black. For a deeply divided personality was hiding behind his charismatic smile. The schlager singer with the soft voice is an image with which he according to his own statements couldn’t identify from the very beginning although his aim was a career as a rock musician. Neither did he himself see his melodies as high art. But the lack of artistic ambition of those years was compensated by other benefits for the then 22-years old singer. To sing schlager means: driving a brand new Porsche, kiss a thousand girls who adore him…
Shortly after Roy Black’s spectacular start in music business the film producers were already scrambling to get him. In all the twelve films he was acting in during the following eight years his clean, non-political image was exploited and further idealized. Roy Black was stylised as an ever happier and shining, friendly polite artificial character.
But in the mid 1970s the record turnovers of his new songs plummeted. In 1984 his wife is leaving him and takes the son with her. The sonny boy image broke apart – alcohol problems and depressions didn’t fit to the product Roy Black. His public descent begins.
Plastic Fantastic
Plastic is the most innovative material of the 20th century. The theme evening deals with the huge influence of the synthetic material on all areas of our everyday life. Plastics always have polarized people. The have loved it and they have hated it. There are worlds between the spontaneous global sympathy of women for nylon stockings, the enthusiasm of the New York Museum of Modern Art for the first tupperware vessels, and the deep contempt of conservationists against the imperishable piles of rubbish of the throwaway society. Because of its diversity this material was able to survive times in which it became known that many ubiquitous plastics have a carcinogen effect and that during the production of plastics highly poisonous substances are released into the environment. In the 1970s and 1980s plastics were regarded as ugly and repugnant for a while. But it is the nature of plastic authenticity to be able to invent itself anew over and over again and to imitate natural materials. The same material can appear here as a bucket, there as a necklace of jewels, or even as an artificial heart. Even in Africa, far away from the big centres of the industrialized society, one single product of plastic changed the lives of people – the plastic bucket. This is one reason why plastic never really was able to distance itself from its legendary image – the base origin of a cheap substitute material.
“The reason why plastic has become the dominant medium of our synthetic age is because it combines in itself the true characteristics of the twentieth century: artificiality, availability, and synthesis. The final triumph of plastic was the victory of the packing over the product, the victory of style over substance, and the victory of surface over essence.”
(Stephen Fenichell)
The Schlecker Gang
Life behind the wall
Brotherly Love
The Second World War was over. In the Soviet occupation zone the population had to adjust to the permanent presence of the Russians. There was much antipathy for the occupying forces, but also cooperation with them and even some friendly relations. The horrors of war were a thing of the past, but day-to-day life was still largely characterised by suffering and fear. Fear of the arbitrary power of a Stalinist-style dictatorship that crushed many a new hope right from the start by means of persecution and arrest of dissenters, intolerance and narrowmindedness, and which drove many to leave. But there was also the will to build a new society, and an air of optimism about the future and the belief that it was possible to create a new and better world on the basis of socialism. The film covers the period from the founding of the German Democratic Republic to the eve of the construction of the Berlin Wall.
“We’d gone over to the West to agitate and now we were sitting there with a bag of chocolate we’d been given.” Irene Geismeier attends the World Youth Festival in East Berlin in 1951. The young people had been trained in the agitation of “decadent West Germans”. When they meet an elderly woman in West Berlin who gives them chocolate as a present, Irene encounters a conflict within herself. Not until the chocolate begins to melt does she dare eat it.
Bernhard Kimmel
Der Al Capone von der Pfalz
At the end of the 1950s a gang of yobs is making trouble in the Palatinate region. They are responsible for more than 200 burglaries, the police are helpless. Until one New Year’s Eve when the gang shoots death a man. The largest manhunt in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany then leads to the arrest of the perpetrators. Bernhard Kimmel, head of the gang, becomes famous when he tries to escape during a field appointment, and after his release in 1970 he starts a career as a stuntman and supporting actor in show business. For the thankful media he plays the role of the “Al Capone of the Palatinate”. In 1981 he reoffends, hits a bank with an accomplice and kills a policeman. This time the court has no mercy for him and sends him into jail for 22 years.
Dagobert
Der Kaufhauserpresser
On May 25 th, 1988, a bomb explodes in the Berlin department store “Kaufhaus des Westens”. Shortly afterwards a blackmail letter arrives. The bomber asks for 500,000 Deutsche Mark, otherwise people would die in further assaults. The money is supposed to be thrown out of an S-Bahn train at his command. This is how one of the longest and most spectacular blackmail cases in German criminal history starts. For six years “Dagobert”, as the perpetrator soon is called, and the police of Berlin and Hamburg play a risky cat-and-mouse-game – watched by a public whose sympathy is on the side of the clever and intelligent criminal who mucks around with the police for such a long time.
Hot Love – Cold War
At one o’clock in the night they march out. Armed border policemen in the Eastern sector of Berlin. They tear open the road surface, ram concrete piles into the ground, place barbed wire. The starry night of August 13th, 1961, tears the country and its people apart, for decades. “Love without borders” tells the story of a couple that got between the frontlines of the cold war and that finally manages to overcome the wall and the barbed wire.
Ingo Metzmacher conducts Hartmann
Günter Wand conducts Bruckner
The Poacher
(Opera • Gärtnerplatztheatre Munich)
Tan Dun Water Passion
(Liederhalle Stuttgart & Barbican London)
The Creation
(Festspielhaus Baden-Baden)
12 cellists Anniversary Concert
(Philharmonie Berlin)
The King Kandaules
(Opera • Salzburg Festival)
New Year’s Concert with Simon Rattle 2003
(Philharmonie Berlin)
The Tales of Hoffmann
(Salzburg Festival 2003)
Opening concert Salzburg Festival with Ozawa
(Salzburg 2004)
Concert at the Gewandhaus with Herbert Blomstedt
(Leipzig 2004)
Opera for Everyone – Tristan and Isolde
Public Viewing from the Staatsoper Unter den Linden
German Short Film Award for “First night”
IVCA Grand Prix & Gold Award Education for “If only we all played cricket”
“Dancing at Lughnasa” – Shortlisted for the Berlin Theater Festival
Grand Prix de Dance International for “I Want to Fly”, Guangdong Dance Company
Prudential Award for “Documentary I”
Down with Goethe
(Enzensberger • Kunstfest Weimar - Weltpremiere)
Dancing at Lughnasa
(Brian Friel • Theater Lindenhof Melchingen)
Frankenstein
(Wolfgang Deichsel • Prater Volksbühne Berlin)
Documentary I
(Helmut Oehring • Almeida Theatre London)
Adina
(Rossini • Canto Bayreuth)
The Duke Quartet
Sarah Chang
Maxim Vengerov
12 Cellists play Ellington
12 Cellists go Elvis
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
(Brecht • directed for the stage by Heiner Müller)
The Hour Zero
(Marthaler • directed for the stage by Christoph Marthaler)
The Devil’s General
(Zuckmayer • directed for the stage by Frank Castorf)
The Similar Ones
(Strauß • directed for the stage by Peter Stein)
A Sport Piece
(Jelinek • directed for the stage by Einar Schleef)
Before Retirement
(Bernhard • directed for the stage by Claus Peymann)
The Kiss of Forgetting
(Strauß • directed for the stage by Matthias Hartmann)
The Captain from Köpenick
(Zuckmayer • directed for the stage by Katharina Thalbach)
Three Times Life
(Reza • directed for the stage by Luc Bondy)
Rosmersholm
(Ibsen • directed for the stage by Peter Zadek)
The Fair Maid of the Mill
(Schubert • directed for the stage by Christoph Marthaler)
The Assignment
(Müller • directed for the stage by Ulrich Mühe)
Siebenstein
(Children's serial)
Dandelion
(Children's serial)
Mallorca
Unter uns
St. Angela
Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten
Square
(Kinoauswertung Concorde-Film: "Besonders wertvoll")
No Man’s Land
(Festivals Sydney, Midnight Sun, Bilbao)
The Chinese Method
(Serial Tatort)
Witchfire
(Movie of the Week)
Electric Boy
(Dance for the Camera)
The Shadow of M – Claude Chabrol
First night
Bach in the bag – The conductor Helmuth Rilling
The clouds of reality – Ingo Metzmacher
A Winter Journey by Franz Schubert – Hampson & Sawallisch
Movement & Silence – Krzysztof Penderecki
On the road to Vegas
Two sides of the road – Dance in Russia & India
Nino Rota – Un maestro della musica
Blades of light
Huun-Hur-Tu meets Stimmhorn
Iraq Nightmare
Patched-Up and Back to the Front
They are America’s heroes, who set off to war, putting their lives on the line in the name of freeing Iraq. That at least is the official version presented by the American government. Before they were deployed, they were also told they would be welcomed as liberators by the suppressed Iraqi nation.
“I can’t be certain about anybody. One moment I’m talking with someone and he could be my friend, then the next minute he turns around and tries to kill someone,” said David Tennent, who was a soldier in Iraq.
Their deployment is an emotional game, as thousands of kilometres from their homes they are supposed to defend their country from terrorism. They might still believe that joining the war against terrorism is a valuable thing to do, but they no longer belief that the battle will soon be won.
“This war against terrorism can’t be ended in one place, because terrorism is everywhere,” says Ferando.
There is a constant stream of casualties from this war which has supposedly already been won. For many a stay in hospital is the end of the illusion that they are untouchable.