Jürgen Flimm

Shark Alarm at Müggel Lake

A lifeguard at Lake Müggel has his hand bitten off and the marks indicate a shark attack. The lake is closed to the public by extending a local festival indefinitely while the city council thinks of what can be done to remove the shark. The public becomes restless having their lake closed for so long and come up with a plan to drive the shark from the lake with large quantities of beer.

Waltraud Meier: I follow a voice within me

Waltraud Meier is “La Wagnerissima”, the queen of Wagner’s repertoire. In her very personal account “I follow a voice within me”, we enter her world and learn about her motivations, aspirations, and her joyful way of pursuing them. In addition to personal insights, this truly ingenious portrait presents Waltraud Meier on stage and in rehearsal in her most celebrated Wagner roles and as an interpreter of Mahler’s Lieder. It becomes clear how she coined today’s musical world when other great musicians such as Daniel Barenboim or Plácido Domingo speak about her and her work. This beautiful portrait of one of the greatest interpreters of our time is rounded off with a powerful recording of Mahler’s “Lied von der Erde”.

Mozart: Don Giovanni (Zurich Opera House)

Live 2001 production from the Zurich Opera House of the classic Mozart/Da Ponte opera, with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting and directed for television and video by Brian Large.

The Passenger – Welcome to Germany

An American filmmaker travels to modern day Berlin to make a film based on a real-life incident from 1942 in which 13 Jewish prisoners from a concentration camp were promised freedom if they appeared in a German propaganda film. Unfortunately, the Germans lied. The psychological process undergone by the modern filmmaker while shooting the story provides the basis of this arty and challenging film.

Angels of Iron

The subject of this historical drama is a splintering Berlin in the years of 1948 and 1949. Played against the backdrop of social upheaval, the characters in the drama come to epitomize the best and worst of each pole of the political sphere. A 17-year-old hoodlum by the name of Gladow works hand-in-glove with a local white-collar criminal to rob and pillage every day and night, defying capture. While he and his gang of thugs are terrorizing the people of Berlin, the Soviets are trying to make the blockade of their region of control impermeable. The future casts long shadows over the drama, as Berlin's problems take the shape of times to come.

Looping

A small carnival is in dire financial straits. Their show is attracting fewer and fewer paying customers, as their "attractions" are ageing, out of shape and beset by internal feuds and bickering. One day a beautiful young woman shows up and suggests a way of attracting customers: put on a strip show, with her as the main attraction. Her act attracts customers in droves, but it turns out that the girl has her own agenda, and it isn't to help out the carnival.

The Accident

The brother of a Spanish immigrant worker comes to Germany just to find out that his brother was the victim of a freak accident.