Special Section

Special Section 1975

7.10

In occupied France during the WWII, a German officer is murdered. The collaborationist Vichy government decides to pin the murder on six petty criminals. Loyal judges are called in to convict them as quickly as possible.

1975

Medea

Medea 1970

6.60

Based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Medea centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position in the Greek world threatened, and the revenge she takes against her husband Jason who has betrayed her for another woman.

1970

F for Fake

F for Fake 1973

7.40

Documents the lives of infamous fakers Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving. De Hory, who later committed suicide to avoid more prison time, made his name by selling forged works of art by painters like Picasso and Matisse. Irving was infamous for writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles moves between documentary and fiction as he examines the fundamental elements of fraud and the people who commit fraud at the expense of others.

1973

Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni 1979

6.90

Screen adapatation of Mozart's greatest opera. Don Giovanni, the infamous womanizer, makes one conquest after another until the ghost of Donna Anna's father, the Commendatore, (whom Giovanni killed) makes his appearance. He offers Giovanni one last chance to repent for his multitudinious improprieties. He will not change his ways So, he is sucked down into hell by evil spirits. High drama, hysterical comedy, magnificent music!

1979

Das beste Stück

Das beste Stück 2002

5.00

Mark Demski discovers his girlfriend is cheating on him and thinks it has happened because of his small penis. Sad, he dumps the girl and promises himself never again to fall in love, but he fails. When he encounters Lara Singer he must fight with his own fears.

2002

Othon

Othon 1971

5.50

Straub-Huillet’s first color film, adapts a lesser-known Corneille tragedy from 1664, which in turn was based on an episode of imperial court intrigue chronicled in Tacitus’s Histories. The costuming is classical, and the toga-clad, nonprofessional cast performs the drama’s original French text amid the ruins of Rome’s Palatine Hill while the noise of contemporary urban life hums in the background. Their lines are executed with a terrific flatness and frequently through heavy accents; the language in Othon becomes not merely an expression but a thing itself, an element whose plainness here alerts us to qualities of the work that might otherwise be subordinated.

1971

From the Clouds to the Resistance

From the Clouds to the Resistance 1979

5.20

'Dalla nube alla resistenza (From the Cloud to the Resistance ) (1978), based on two works by Cesare Pavese, falls into the category of History Lessons and Too Early, Too Late as well. It, too, has two parts—a twentieth-century text and a text regarding the myths of antiquity, each set in the appropriate landscape. Pavese's The Moon and the Bonfires looks back on the violent deaths of Italian anti-Fascist resistance fighters; Dialogues with Leucò is a series of dialogues between heroes and gods, connecting myth and history and returning to an ambiguous stage in the creation of distinctions, such as that between animal and human, which are fundamental to grammar and language itself. Such a juxtaposition of political engagement with profoundly contemplative issues such as myth, nature, and meaning points to the characters of Empedocles and Antigone in the Hölderlin films.' (From "Landscapes of resistance. The German Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub" by Barton Byg)

1979

The Bridegroom, the Actress, and the Pimp

The Bridegroom, the Actress, and the Pimp 1968

4.60

Three sequences are linked together in this short film by Straub; the first sequence is a long tracking shot from a car of prostitutes plying their trade on the night-time streets of Germany; the second is a staged play, cut down to 10 minutes by Straub and photographed in a single take; the final sequence covers the marriage of James and Lilith, and Lilith’s subsequent execution of her pimp, played by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. "The film is a look entirely at Western decadence" - Jean-Marie Straub.

1968

Rio das Mortes

Rio das Mortes 1971

5.30

Michel and Guenther, working in dead-end jobs, are obsessed with going to Peru to find buried treasure, using a map of the Rio das Mortes. Michel's girlfriend, Hanna, humors their plan, but really just wants to get married.

1971

The Death of Empedocles

The Death of Empedocles 1987

5.10

Film adaptation by Straub and Huillet of Hölderlin's 1798 tragedy on the symbolic death of Empedocles, the legislator in Ancient Greece.

1987

History Lessons

History Lessons 1972

5.60

Set in contemporary Rome, the film shows through a series of encounters with “ancient” Romans, how the economic and political manipulation by ancient Roman society led to Caesar’s dictatorship. - British Film Institute

1972

Class Relations

Class Relations 1984

6.80

A young man, recently arrived in New York from Europe, becomes swept up in a series of events that are beyond his knowledge or control.

1984

Pioneers in Ingolstadt

Pioneers in Ingolstadt 1971

5.30

Berta, a naive young maid, searches for love when the army engineers come to town to build a bridge.

1971

The Niklashausen Journey

The Niklashausen Journey 1970

6.00

Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the "Black Monk" in a leather jacket. The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to have been called by the Virgin Mary to create a revolt against the church and the landowners. The "Black Monk" suggests that he would have more success if he dressed up Johanna and had her appear as the Virgin Mary.

1970

Mein Schüler, seine Mutter & ich

Mein Schüler, seine Mutter & ich 2008

1

Music teacher Carlo, an easygoing old rock'n'roller, meets doctor Ellen in hospital. She is completely stressed out, so that even son Franz often falls by the wayside. A short time later, Carlo makes an unforgivable mistake: fed up with the pupils' never-ending paltry questions, he advises Franz, whose anger at his mother is slowly boiling over, that he should simply report her to the Youth Welfare Office.

2008