Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

Demmin Cantos

Hans Jürgen Syberberg grew up in the town of Demmin, the subject of his current film. The history of the town, in which a mass suicide with hundreds of deaths took place at the end of the Second World War, plays an important role. In his film, Syberberg documents his attempts, initiated decades ago, to re-establish Demmin's central market square as a place of community. A café was revived where people could watch films, drink coffee and sing together. Two architectural firms even presented concrete plans for a redesign of the square. Syberberg's commitment is not intended to restore "old conditions", but to give a place and a community back its lost center.

Leaving and Staying

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.

The Last Days of Humanity

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? Have they already passed? Are they now or still to come?

El Mito de Narciso

"Life is a latency that as time and space becomes visible as a figure. But never eat at all, there are other possible lives. Making a life is difficult, filming the impossible itself . with this imago-auto-bio-graphy is an attempt to talk about this ambiguity, where what could be is the possibility of a memory, where what was and what was not, can be remembered in the same way, . always I lived with mixing the imagined thing is chosen in this chancy; go left on the road the other films that might have emerged" -Narcisa Hirsch

The Ister

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 on the work of one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the 20th century, Martin Heidegger, who in 1933 swore allegiance to the National Socialists. By joining a vast philosophical narrative with an epic voyage along Europe’s greatest waterway, The Ister invites you to unravel the extraordinary past and future of ‘the West.’

The Night of the Filmmakers

A meditation on the first 100 years of German cinema, featuring an assembly of German filmmakers.

Signs of Vigorous Life: The New German Cinema

BBC documentary about the rise of the New German Cinema and several of its most important figures.

Sex-Business: Made in Pasing

Interview with German softcore film director Alois Brummer

Romy: Anatomy of a Face

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.