Archive

!Women Art Revolution - A Secret History

American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson has been involved in media art since the seventies. For this film, she has viewed and distilled several hundred hours of interviews and taped conversations with colleagues, friends, art historians, curators and critics into a singular documentary describing the history of the Feminist Art Movement.
No less than 42 years of unique film material was put at the director’s disposal – material which provides a fasc...

...a bude hůř

Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll in a communist police state. The film takes place in the 1970s in the northern part of Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia. It centers on anti-hero Olin, who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital, where he ended up after slashing his wrists to avoid military service. A few weeks after his release, he becomes an important figure in the underground scene, attracting increasing attention from the forces of order....

1 Berlin Harlem

Legendary film from super-indy filmmaker Lambert, one time most-featured Berlinale director, about the forms of racism in Berlin’s vibrant lifestyle at the time of the film's making. Brimming with cameos galore: alongside leading actor Conrad Jennings the likes of Ortrud Beginnen, Tally Brown, Ingrid Caven, Peter Chatel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Günter Kaufmann, Dietmar Kracht, Evelyn Künneke, Lothar Lambert, Y Sa Lo, Bernd Lubowski, Brigitt...

18.15 Uhr ab Ostkreuz

On the way home from a coffee and a chat with her best friend, Karin Höhne, a retired primary school teacher from Haselhorst in Berlin, is witness to a brutal murder in a passing local train. A young woman falls victim to an axe murderer. Unfortunately, the police – particularly visiting British superintendent Rock Milchester – consider the elderly lady’s statement to be merely a tall story that she has concocted. Their suspicions appear to be co...

20.000 especies de abejas

An eight-year-old is suffering because people keep addressing the child in ways that cause discomfort. They insist on calling the child by the birth name Aitor. And the nickname, Cocó, even if less obviously wrong, does not feel right either. During a summer in the Basque country, the child confides these worries to relatives and friends. But how can a mother handle her child’s quest for identity when she is herself still dealing with her own amb...

46 oku nen no koi

Jun Ariyoshi works in a gay bar. One night, one of the customers pesters him and a terrible fight breaks out during which Jun kills the man. Jun does not show the slightest sign of remorse and is put in prison. One of the inmates is a young man named Shiro Kazuki, who wears strange-looking tattoos and whose remarkably penetrating looks can kill. From the outset, Shiro makes brutality and violence his trademark and, as a result, soon makes his way...

52 Tuesdays

Sixteen-year-old Billie can’t believe her mother has decided to undergo gender reassignment surgery. James – as her mother now prefers to be known – has always wanted to be a man. The challenging journey will take one year. When Billie learns that she is to live with her father Tom in the meantime, she feels her own wishes have been ignored. James’ promise to spend every Tuesday afternoon with her is scant comfort. Nonetheless, James tries to obs...

54: The Director's Cut

‘We’ve revolutionised going out‘, pronounces club owner Steve Rubell. At the legendary Studio 54, the mother of all nightclubs since the invention of disco, clubbing was much more than just socialising to music. In 1998, director Mark Christopher created a cinematic monument to this ostentatious mixture of Art Deco and plush, frivolous 1970s hedonism and drug-induced 24-hour party people. At the producers’ behest his film about this up-market dis...

575 Castro Street

575 CASTRO STREET begins with the following introduction: “In February 1977, the SAN FRANCISCO GAY FILM FESTIVAL was born when a self described 'ragtag bunch of hippie fag filmmakers' got together and projected their Super 8 short films on a bed sheet. Many of these films explored gay themes, but (…) many were simple studies in light and motion. Most of these films passed through Harvey Milk´s Castro Camera Store at 575 Castro St. for proce...

7 Deadly Kisses

From fish kiss to dragon kiss – this is where people of all ages and genders who want to learn how to kiss can find out (almost) everything about the no-no’s of the face fuck. Two willing and able male trainees demonstrate the first seven deadly kisses for any relationship…

A Boy Needs a Friend

In this latest installment of his ongoing video essay, “Final Thoughts”, Steve Reinke ostensibly turns to the subject of friendship. A Boy Needs a Friend delves into its topic head on, in particular investigating the notion of queer Nietzschean friendship. Using his signature dry voice over monologue to tie together an eclectic array of disparate images, ranging from found footage collages to digital animation and cell phone video, Reinke sets fo...

A casa de Alice

A working-class district in São Paulo is home to fortysomething manicurist Alice who has been married to her husband, Lindomar, for more than twenty years. Lindomar's mother, Dona Jacira, lives with the couple and virtually runs the household. She cooks, cleans and does the washing. While she works, she listens to her favourite show, 'grandma's programme' on the radio. Alice and Lindomar have three children who also live with them...

A Dog Barking At The Moon

When the young student Li Jiumei meets her future husband Huang Tao, she is youthful and happy; her daughter Huang Xiaoyu has not yet been born and the secrets of the family are still hidden behind closed doors deep inside the house. Her daughter Huang Xiaoyu is already a young girl when creeping suspicion overcomes Li Jiumei. She kicks down a door behind which she catches her husband with a young man. Huang Xiaoyu is now pregnant and living in t...

A Horse Is Not A Metaphor

Filmmaker Barbara Hammer fights ovarian cancer with visions of horseback riding and river swimming in her new experimental film, A Horse Is Not A Metaphor.
As a “cancer thriver” rather than “survivor,” Barbara Hammer rides the red hills of Georgia O’Keefe’s Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, the grassy foothills of the Big Horn in Wyoming, and leafy paths in Woodstock, New York, changing illness into recovery.
The haunting and wondrous music of Meredith M...

A Jihad For Love

The word “jihad” or ‘holy war’ often has negative connotations. In the wake of the attacks of September 11 and increasing fears of Islamic terrorist threats, the term has often been reduced simply to ‘war’. Yet the term ‘jihad’ has a far more complex significance. Jihad plays a central role in Islam, for it refers to the individual’s struggle to ‘strive in the path of God’, as well as the bid to serve Islamic society through one’s deeds and conduc...

A Lazy Summer Afternoon with Mario Montez

A boat, a lake, a lazy summer afternoon, how to look glamorous in nature. Legendary, irresistible, indestructible US underground legend Mario Montez dissects Hollywood icon Joan Crawford’s ridiculous fashion tips: ‘such crap!’

A Love Song

A remote lake in the North American landscape. The sand is yellow, the sky is blue and the mountains distant; there is nary a tree far and wide to provide shade. Faye is spending her days here in a trailer, with two books and a radio, leisurely birdwatching and stargazing. With her wiry build, wild blonde hair and hands that speak of a life of labour, she fits in perfectly here. Anything that breaks, she simply fixes; the only time she sits u...

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare's most popular comedy is a merry-go-round of young lovers and supernatural wood sprites. An extravaganza of Hollywood stars and fantastic special effects by Max Reinhardt, the 'great magician' of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.

A Rainha Diaba

The Black gay “Devil’s Queen” (her real name is never mentioned) rules the underworld of Rio de Janeiro from the back room of a brothel. Her eyes thick with green eyeshadow, her gaze falls mercilessly upon the members of her drug cartel. The same jackknife can be used either to shave her legs or to slit open traitors. But her reign of terror is unstable; resistance is brewing. Soon, everyone is waging war against each other to replace the queen: ...

A Rosa Azul de Novalis

A film like an invitation to someone’s house. In his apartment in São Paolo, between making coffee and gay hook-ups, Marcelo’s fetishes and longings are revealed, casually and full of intensity. Marcelo’s closest confidants seem to be books, especially Novalis’ unfinished novel “Heinrich von Ofterdingen”, whose protagonist seeks an elusive blue flower. Marcelo is also looking for something, following the traces of his eventful past. The camera o...