Kunst & Bühne

Bauhaus is the home of the avant-garde and the foundation of modern architecture. Today, almost 100 years after being founded, the Bauhaus-masters continue to be the stars of the architecture and design history. However, the (his)story of the Bauhaus remains male dominated. Only experts know the names of the female contributors of the art school, even though a great part of its innovative potential goes to its women. The documentary "Bauhausfrauen" is a homage to the forgotten Bauhauswomen and shows: The Bauhaus idea is alive and is also HERstory.

Ralf Winkler a.k.a. A.R. Penck (1939-2017) was a German painter, printmaker, sculptor, and jazz drummer. Training at the academies of the GDR or membership in the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR remain A.R. Penck refused, although he applied several times for it. And although his art, which oscillates between abstraction and figuration, does not correspond to the aesthetic ideal of socialist realism, he shares the cultural-political view of the role of the artist as a socially relevant force. Again and again Penck deals with the actually existing socialism and rubs against its contradictions. In the mid-1960s, Georg Baselitz sold Winkler's works to the gallery owner Michael Werner, who organized his first solo exhibition in Cologne in 1968.

About the artist John-Erik Franzén and his work to portray the Swedish Royal family 1984-85.

With her powerful, ironic pictures from Carinthia, Maria Lassnig conquered the world's pinnacle of art. Throughout her life she distanced herself from conventions and went her own extravagant path. The wide range of different styles she worked with made it impossible to pigeonhole her. The fact that art keeps you young was proven several times in the film portrait of the then 90-year-old jubilee.

Kralj Matjaz ruled Carinthia in the early middle Ages. He helped all everyone who asked for help. He gave mint gold coins and during his reign in Carinthia ruled good times. Other envious rulers have united against him. After a battle he and the surviving soldiers hid in the hollow below Peca, which opened itself and hid them all. In the cave Kralj Matjaz felt in a deep sleep at the table. The legend says, that once his beard nine times wrap around the stone table, he will be awakened. Then the good times will return to Carinthia. Kralj Matjaz and his soldiers will beat all enemies, drove away the injustice of the world and rule again. Josef Broman did it all. He saved the world.

The world's most important collection of pictures, sculptures and texts from psychiatric clinics, the Heidelberg Collection Prinzhorn, has opened up its archives and magazines to the director Christian Beetz and granted an insight into peculiarly iridescent art worlds. Fascinating as well as disturbing works have come to light, creations of undisguised directness and power - created about a hundred years ago behind high prison walls and barred windows and doors under circumstances that are hardly imaginable today.

A portrait of the doll maker Sissel Bjørstad Skille in Trondheim. With her own hands - and scissors, knitting needles and buttons as tools - she makes dolls, which have become famous far beyond Norway's borders. In 1993 she began a collaboration with an American doll manufacturer, Georgetown Collection Inc. She designed, modeled and dressed up dolls, which the company then reproduced in porcelain for the American collector market.

Anna Casparsson (1861-1961) was a Swedish visual artist, pianist and textile artist. She spent time with and was inspired by many important artists, such as Anders Zorn and Ernst Josephsson. In 1960 the Modern Museum in Stockholm dedicated an entire exhibition to Anna Casparsson, which is exposed in the documentary. The film also features an interview with Anna Casparsson recorded in 1948.

The garden of philosopher of life, Anders Björnsson, situated along the northern Klarälven, Sweden. An early attempt to portray our endangered relationship with ecology. The tableau-like still images underline the shifts of light and the biological cycle.

For women in East Germany, »Sibylle« was both an inspiration and an illusion. Artistically sophisticated photos by well-known photographers such as Roger Melis, Günter Rössler or Sibylle Bergmann adorned the pages. Models wore chic clothes that were often not available in stores and seemingly evoked utopian longings in the readers. The magazine for fashion and culture was launched in 1956 by a costume designer, Sibylle Gerstner, and decommissioned in 1995.

Four protagonists - one topic - dealing with the political remnants of a totalitarian system - family stories from the point of view of the 2nd generation - 25 years after the dissolution of the GDR. The film "XXS - Zertzen, Eine Strategie" is a documentary about the children of parents who came into conflict with the GDR for various reasons - because they believed in other forms of society. It is not the search for truth, but for suppositions, feelings, gaps and questions. Influenced by the "contemplative" (invisible) method "Decomposition" and its generational aftermath, a cinematic quest is described in which the stories can finally be spoken about.

Albert Mertz in a pub conversation at Andy's Bar in Copenhagen. Once his hometown cafe, decorated by himself. Mertz tells two young artists (Michael Kvium and Christian Lemmerz) about his perception of the meaning of art for modern man - yes, does it even make sense, and which of the century's "isms" have crossed the line? The two artists listen with big ears to Mertz, who is introduced in the program by the American conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner.

"Did you hear what happened?" - Fria Proteatern share things that happened this year. The short play deals with labor market issues in a strongly critical tone. The performance is characterized by burlesque exaggerations, not to say exaggeration. Savage satire. Among other things, the Saltsjöbad agreement between LO and SAF in 1938, is ridiculed. LO's chairman, August Lindberg, in his intoxicated excitement is about to sign the restaurant bill instead of the agreement.

Ion Barladeanu is on his way to becoming an important contemporary artist, but in May 2008 he was still a tramp on the streets of Bucharest.

Is there such a thing as strictly feminine cinema? Is it more difficult for a woman than for a man to direct a film? Is gender parity necessary in the industry? Actress and producer Julie Gayet and actor and director Mathieu Busson ask these questions to twenty French woman filmmakers, who face a camera together for the first time. After over an hour of lively, informal, spontaneous and funny interviews, it becomes obvious that these issues are still problematic and definitely worthy of a documentary. As Mia Hansen-Løve remarks, "In the eyes of the people, a woman's film is always a woman's film, while a man's movie is simply... a movie".

A sympathetic portrait of the Swedish sculptor Sivert Lindblom, one of our time's most engaged sculptors for and of the design of public space. Hearing a young Sivert Lindblom (age 36) reason about his world of thought and view of art is an ear and eye opener that leads us back and forth into his unique language of form and imagery. We get to follow how his early discoveries from a point and then to a line lead us to his originally most famous and iconographic work: Sivert's own Profile rotated 360 degrees.

The film is based on Swedish artist Marianne Hall's sculptures. The music - "Prayer of the Heart" - is written by the English composer Sir John Tavener and performed by Björk. The film expresses protest and appeal, tenderness and care in the midst of the agony of our time, it is a prayer for mercy, for mercy.

About the relations which connected the opera and the Third Reich from 1933 to 1944. If there was one thing that surpassed the theatre and the cinema in the eyes of the Nazis, it was opera. In Germany, it was considered to be the best way to reveal German qualities. Blending hearts and spirits was indispensable for the powers at the time. It is about this liaison which united the world of opera and criminal politics that we ask questions. How did a totalitarian régime, the Nazi régime, for over ten years, from 1933 to 1944, find at its disposal, so many musicians, composers, singers, orchestral conductors, decorators, directors, and manage to use them ? The 3rd Reich wanted to fascinate by setting itself up like an opera, bursting the limits of the stage and invading life with its fatal fascination.

About the Swedish playwright, novelist and poet Lars Norén featuring glimpses of rehearsals of his plays staged in Sweden, Norway, Germany and France. Memories from growing up in Genarp, Skåne, his mother's never-ending influence and his daughter Nelly.

About a lost but curious young man among stagnant people.

Shot in 1967 but not released until 1976, actor Pierre Clémenti's acid-infused experimental whirlwind of color and music featuring a who's who of the French 60s underground.

Claimed by some to be one of the most unconventional and experimental films ever made, Wavelength is a structural film of a 45-minute long zoom in on a window over a period of a week. Very unconventional and experimental, indeed.

Depicts stage and cabaret entertainment in Germany.

The story about how Trude Hesterberg (1892-1967) managed to scrape together the funds necessary to set up her own cabaret. To earn her living she sang the title role of the Operetta "The Merry Widow" by Franz Lehar. She commuted every day between the Metropol Theatre in Friedrichstrasse and her cellar theatre at Theater des Westens. Her partners were, amongst other people, Kurt Tucholsky, Walter Mehring, Klabund and Joachim Ringelnatz. She gave Bert Brecht his first break on a Berlin stage. She discovered the performer Kate Kühl. In 1921 Trude Hesterberg opened The Wild Stage Cabaret in the basement of the Theater des Westens in Berlin.

Entirely composed of visual and audio archives; German fictions and musical operettas of the period, news clippings and documentary footage, musical shorts, home movies, restored in HD, as well as photographs and photo montages, paintings and drawings. "CABARET-BERLIN, THE WILD SCENE" offers an inside view of the Berlin artistic kabarett scene, as an eye witness to the Weimar Republic's history, and doing so, reveals "the true story of Cabaret". With unheard-of artistic expressions, and serving as a lightening rod for criticism and protest, the Berlin cabarets became critically reflective mirrors of topical events, politics and culture of the unstable Weimar Republic, as well as the symbol of Berlin Tempo, too. Alongside the dramatic events accompanying the Era of Inflation, the Golden Years, the Depression and the surge of Nazism, the film shines a spotlight on this watchtower of unbroken conscience. The film itself is structured as a cabaret show led by its Master of Ceremony, the famous actor Ulrich Tukur who, off-screen, narrates necessary background information, connecting songs and sketches to their historical, political and social context. The treatment sticks to the aesthetic style of the period and uses the archive sources not as documentary samples, but as a stock of edited rushes which weave the dramatization of the story. At the end of the day, CABARET-BERLIN, THE WILD SCENE is a film about the birth of modernity.