A structure-free, four-part examination of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Each part explores a different topic, from Hitler's cult of personality in propaganda to how said propaganda was associated with pre-Nazi German cultural, spiritual, and national heritage to the Holocaust and the...
The panorama of human affairs encounters the “man with a movie camera”. His playground has no boundaries, his curiosity no limits. Characters, situations and places pitch camp in the life of a humanity that is at once the viewer and the thing viewed. But what are the last days of this humanity?...
A Teutonic lecher on vacation has a wager with some local peasants that he can't make a walking circle from sunrise to sunset to secure some coveted land. The middle-aged businessman embarks on his journey only to be slowed down by the beautiful reporter Scarabea. With thoughts of drunkenness and...
Reflected in an artificial and bombastically staged illusory world with Wagnerian compositions, glossy and satirical time references, 19th century German figures and traditions are stripped of their mythology and interpreted by the Germany of 1972.
This surrealistic experimental film finds the son of a young nobleman staying with hash-smoking hippies in a seamy section of Munich. He falls for a hippie girl who is involved in shaking down the young man's parents for money. She falls in love with the young man but the group continues to extract...
A psychological interpretation of the opera mixing in references to the history of Germany, Wagner’s life, German literature and philosophy. The action is centered on Wagner’s death mask. Kundry is the main character – one might read the film as the story of her redemption rather than that of...
The Ister is a 3000km journey to the heart of Europe, from the mouth of the Danube river on the Black Sea, to its source in the German Black Forest. Hailed by Scott Foundas of Variety as "a philosophical feast—at which it is possible to gorge oneself yet leave feeling elated,” the film is based...
Documentary about young actress Romy Schneider, capturing just the right moment between her first career as a young actress in mainstream "Unterhaltungskino" ("entertainment cinema") and her second one as acknowledged European arthouse actress.
Theodor Hierneis oder Wie man ehem. Hofkoch wird consists of a monologue performed by Walter Sedlmayr, who plays Theodor Hierneis, the chef at the court of Ludwig II of Bavaria. The screenplay was written by Syberberg and Sedlmayr and is based on the memoirs of Hierneis. The film received the...
Meetings with readers, acquaintances and contemporaries of writer Uwe Johnson at the places where he lived. Volker Koepp, who is also from Pomerania, looks for Johnson’s sophisticated literary voice in the landscapes of the region they both stem from.
Die Nacht ("The night") is a 1985 West German installation film directed by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. It consists of a six hours long monologue performed by Edith Clever, who reads texts by Syberberg and many different authors, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich von Kleist, Plato, Friedrich...
In Heinrich von Kleist's "Penthesilea", war, the death of love and erotic cannibalism merge into a battle of the sexes. The drama, which was published in 1808, was not premiered until 70 years later. It is considered almost unplayable. Edith Clever and Hans Jürgen Syberberg have remembered that...
