Rutgers Housing's German Special Interest Section will be hosting a German Movie Night Wednesdays during the Spring 2008 semester at 7:30 in Leupp Hall.

----------BOESE ZELLEN-------(Free Radicals)-------Written and directed by
Barbara Albert, Austria 2003-----------All the characters in this gloomy
two-hour mosaic of everyday people whose lives are affected by the death
of a young Austrian woman in a car collision are searching for an
underlying meaning to seemingly random events. The sudden death of Manu, a
grocery store clerk on the way home from a disco, comes six years after
she narrowly survives a plane crash while flying home from a vacation in
Rio de Janeiro. The movie toys with the possibility that Manu was living
on borrowed time because she had already cheated fate once. It also hints
at the notion that Manu, even after her death, might still be observing
(and perhaps manipulating) the lives of her friends and family in the
dreary Austrian town where she grew up.


More here:
http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=Free+Radicals+(Movie)

----------IM JULI-------(In July)-------Directed by Fatih
Akin)-----Daniel (Bleibtreu) is a geek. He’s studying to be a teacher,
he’s struggling to get a date, and he dresses like the host of a
children’s TV show. Luckily for him, he’s noticed by local gal Juli
(Christiane Paul), who tells him that if he buys a sun-shaped ring from
her, he’ll find a girl who owns an identical sun motif in the next few
days, and she will be ‘the one’. Juli’s plan is to reveal herself as the
owner of the matching pair, but Daniel meets a Turkish girl (Idil Uner)
with the same design on a T-shirt and sets himself to follow her across
Europe so he can profess his love. However, in a twist of fate, Juli
decides that if she can’t have Daniel, she’s leaving town and going
wherever the first person who stops will take her. And who stops to pick
her up on the side of the road? You guessed it: Daniel.

----------GEGEN DIE WAND-------(Head On)-------Directed by Fatih
Akin)-----Love doesn't just hurt in this jagged German romance; it cuts
and bleeds and even kills. A story about a lonely man and a still-lonelier
woman fighting against their worlds and what often seems like their own
best interests, the film has caused a stir in Germany for the murky,
troubling light it sheds on the lives of the country's Turkish immigrants.
Its popularity made it a fleeting social phenomenon and a minor cultural
footnote. This film is about two strangers with suicidal tendencies and a
deep commitment to self-aggrandizing drama. One of the truisms about
romances, even those shaded pitch black and set to banging rock music, is
that you have to fall in love with the characters when they're falling for
each other. It takes a long time for Cahit (Birol Unel) and Sibel (Sibel
Kekilli) to get inside each other's heads, much less anywhere else, but it
doesn’t take us long to care about these two perfectly imperfect beings.

More details here:
http://www.boston.com/movies/display?display=movie&id=7505

-------------THE PIANO TEACHER------(La Pianiste)-----Germany
1979---Directed by Michael Haneke--Based on Elfriede Jelinek's novel _Die
Klavierspielerin_--------Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) teaches piano at
the Vienna Conservatory. At 40, she still lives with her mother (a savage
Giradot), trapped in a mutually destructive relationship. Erika is a
failure: she is neither the concert pianist of her mother's desire, nor is
she the sexually and emotionally fulfilled woman she, more reasonably,
might like to be. Bound by a life of abuse and frustration with more than
a hint of mental illness, Erika finds release in hard porn,
self-mutilation and voyeurism. When a handsome pupil, Walter (Magimel),
falls in love with her, any hope of a happy ending is dashed as Erika's
perverse sense of human relations turns playful desire into psychopathic
violence. Huppert's performance, at once monstrous, insensible and
fragile, is spine-chilling and the whole piece balances on the edge of
human reason. All this underpinned by a sublime soundtrack of Schubert and
Schumann.


More details here:

http://www.movieeye.com/reviews/get_movie_review/364.html

-------------CODE UNKNOWN------(Code inconnu: Recit incomplet de divers
voyages)--------France 2000)---Directed by the German-born filmmaker
Michael Haneke---------The focus of the narrative is split between three
sets of people: the French actress Anne (Juliette Binoche), her husband
and in-laws; a Romanian woman, Maria (Luminita Gheorghiu), who struggles
to raise money for her family back home; and Amadou (Ona Lu Yenke), a
teacher for the deaf who is at odds with his resolute African clan. The
catalyst for the stories begins on a streetcorner, where Anne's
brother-in-law Jean (Alexandre Hamadi) insults Maria, who is begging for
change; incensed, Amadou picks a fight with Jean, resulting in negative
repercussions for the triptych of protagonists. Throughout, Haneke
punctuates the action with his unique editing and use of sound. After its
Cannes debut, Code Inconnu made its North American premiere at the 2000
Toronto International Film Festival.


More interesting details here:

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/film.nsf/reviews/codeunknown

-------------HEIMAT 1--------------(Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany,
Volume 1)-----Germany 1985---Directed by Edgar Reitz----------------This
is a massive, 15 1/2-hour chronicle of the life in Germany during
turbulent years, from 1919 to 1982, as reflected in the fluctuating
fortunes of the members of one family, initially peasant-farmers, in the
fictitious village of Schabbach in the Rhineland. It is produced for
German television over a 5-year period. The central character is Marita
Breuer, who matures from a fresh-faced teen to a wrinkled, grim-visaged
survivor of the best and the worst life has to offer.


More details here from New York Times Review:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE3DA1F3CF936A3575AC0A960948260

-------------Le Coup de Grâce------(Der Fangschuss)-----Germany 1976---The
story was inspired by a Marguerite Yourcenar novel and directed by Volker
Schloendorff. It is set in Latvia in 1919, at the height of the Soviet
Civil War. Margarethe von Trotta plays an aristocrat sympathetic to the
Communist cause. Besides her ruinous habit of falling love with men who do
not love her, Margarethe's tragic flaw is her refusal to acknowledge the
cost of the revolution in terms of human lives.
More details here:

http://www.notcoming.com/reviews.php?id=40

----------DER AMERIKANISCHE FREUND-------(The American
Friend)-------Directed by Wim Wender-----The film is a superb adaptation
of Patricia Highsmith's novel Ripley's Game, with Hopper as her amiably
cynical hero. Jonathan Zimmermann, a German picture-framer, is dying of a
rare blood disease. Despite his illness, the happily married Jonathan does
his best to live each day to the fullest with his wife and child. But when
Tom Ripley, a cunning American gangster, learns of Jonathan's sickness, he
convinces the dying man—deeply concerned about his family's financial
future—to work as a hit man for a big payoff. At first reluctant, Jonathan
finally accepts the deal hoping that the reward can help him find a
solution to cure his illness. But then Blain won't leave him alone and
proposes another hit. Dennis Hopper, who appreciates Jonathan, will help
his "amateur in crime" friend to get out of this dangerous spiral.

More details here:
http://www.film.u-net.com/Movies/Reviews/American_Friend.html

--------------------------DEUTSCHLAND IM HERBST---------(Germany in
Autumn)-----------Germany 1977-----This provocative film anthology
contains nine short fiction and documentary films believed to have had
great influence on the development of New German Cinema. Each of the five
was directed by a different German filmmaker and is set during the
politically tempestuous summer of 1977 in West Germany when terrorism ran
rampant. Filmmakers include Fassbinder, Böll, Schlöndorff, Reitz, Kluge
(who narrates) and more.

More details here:
http://www.cinemonkey.com/reviews/bennett/germanyinautumn.html

---------------DIE VERLORENE EHRE DER KATHARINA BLUM----(The Lost Honor of
Katharina Blum)------------Directed bu Volker Schloendorff and Margarette
von Trotta, Germany 1975-------Based on Heinrich Boell's novel with the
same title, the story deals with the sensationalism of tabloid news and
the political climate of panic over Red Army Faction terrorism in the
1970s FRG. At a costume party, Katharina Blum meets Ludwig Goetten and
spends the night with him. The next morning, he's gone and the police bust
into her apartment looking for him with the belief that he is a dangerous
terrorist. She is taken into police custody and interrogated by Kommissar
Beizmenne, who questions her about her every action. Meanwhile, sleazy
reporter Werner Toetges makes her story into a scandal in the papers by
writing sensational stories about her personal life and portraying her as
a criminal in photos. He exaggerates the testimonies of her ex-husband,
neighbors, and even her elderly mother who is dying of cancer in an
intensive care hospital. With the fear-induced public thinking she is a
Communist and terrorist sympathizer, Katharina receives hate mail and
personal threats until she is finally driven over the edge.

More here:
http://worldfilm.about.com/library/weekly/aafpr031003.htm

---------AGUIRRE, DER ZORN GOTTES----(Aguirre, The Wrath of God)-----------
Germany, 1972-----------Based on the journals of Brother Gaspar de
Carvajal, this is a hallucinatory tale of Spanish colonialists searching
for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold, in 16th-century Peru. When the
travellers reach an impasse, a scouting party is assembled to search for
any traces of the mythical empire. As they attempt to forge their way
through the dense jungle, more and more of the party falls ill while their
ruthless leader, Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), grows increasingly
insane. Widely considered to be Herzog's finest film, AGUIRRE, highlights
the director's visionary approach to filmmaking.
More about the film here:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/01/19/aguirre.html

------DER JUNGE TOERLESS-----(The Young Toerless)---Germany 1966------
In his first feature film, the director Volker Schlondorff
created a milestone of the new German cinema and crystalized the emotions
of a country still struggling to come to terms with its recent past of
Nazi horror. Based on Robert Musil's novel, the film is a chilling parable
of how people could come to accept the worst in human behavior. Set in a
military boarding school, the story follows a shy, intelligent boy who
witnesses, but does not report, the humiliation and torture of a fellow
classmate. When he finally comes to realize his moral obligation to help
the abused student, he finds it may be too late. Starring Mathieu
Carriere, Marian Seidowsky, Bernd Tischer and Barbara Steele.

For more information:

http://www.reel.com/movie.asp?MID=131115&PID=10118529&Tab=reviews&CID=18#tabs

-------DIE MOERDER SIND UNTER UNS----(The Murderers are Among
us)----Directed by Wolfgang Staudte, Germany 1946----The first feature
film produced in postwar Germany. It is set in the moonscape of a
bombed-out city, where people manage to go on living among the rubble. A
doctor who served in a concentration camp attempts to deal with his
immense guilt and ascribe meaning to his life. Driven to drink by his
tormented conscience, the doctor wanders through a Germany ruined by the
privations of the war, while his former captain at the camp has neatly
segued back into a nice life with his family, apparently untroubled by his
participation in the Holocaust. Encouraged by his girlfriend, a
concentration camp survivor, the doctor decides to denounce his captain to
the war crimes investigators. Their personal crusade to bring the Nazi
captain to justice becomes an allegory for the state of the German people.

Here's a longer film review:

http://www.apolloguide.com/mov_fullrev.asp?CID=4275