Under Control (2011)

documentary

Mutters Maske aka Mother's Mask is a free adaptation of the film Opfergang (1944) aka The Great Sacrifice of Veit Harlan. Schlingensief exposes his source material's dangerous proximity to kitsch and camp by reducing the genre conventions known from Harlan, Sirk, Fassbinder & Co to the level of a daily soap: set within a noble family from the German Ruhr, Schlingensief's story revolving about Willy von Mühlenbeck's tragic love to terminally ill neighbor girl Äls (Susanne Bredehöft) and the inheritance intrigues by his evil brother Martin von Mühlenbeck (Helge Schneider) creaks with melodramatic devices and self-conscious dialogues. Rather than being a mere spoof, "Mother's Mask" is perhaps Schlingensief's purest black comedy.

Documentary by Thomas Heise.

Documentary about the current hustler scene in Berlin. Based on interviews with former and active prostitutes, the realities of male prostitutes in Berlin are treated. The film is objective, and records the hustler scene as a social Submilieu, which is characterized by both tragic fates, as well as everyday things and routines. Not only the direct sale of sexual services is discussed, but also other aspects associated with male prostitution: poverty, drug addiction, AIDS, crime, migration, love and partnership.

"Wild creatures flee in terror as a strange missile flies overhead. As it passes over the sleeping city, the world's leaders and wise men look upwards. The missile explodes, destroying humans, wild creatures and the Earth itself. A Short Vision became one of the most influential British animated films ever made when it was screened on US television as part of the popular Ed Sullivan Show. Although children were advised to leave the room while it played, it still caused outrage and alarm with its graphic representation of the horrors of nuclear war.

Documentary by Thomas Heise.

A dream that occurs after breaking up with a boyfriend.

Laura Gemser introduces herself, "It's your old friend Emanuelle again..." to present a sexy mondo film, with her voice-off narration over the different sketches, and reproaching comments between them.

A group of young people in Halle-Neustadt moving aimlessly between the concrete blocks once built as a socialist model housing estate. Familiar certainties dissolved along with the GDR. Even though there were hardly any foreigners in Saxony-Anhalt, a dull aversion to everything that hadn’t been part of daily life until then began to spread. The general dissolution, perceived as a threat, is countered by apparently clear world views. When Thomas Heise won the “Documentary Film Prize 1992” at the Duisburger Filmwoche, the laudation ended with the assumption that the film would probably provoke disagreement. It turned out to be true.

Two rival gangs try to obtain the five parts of a dangerous formula held by five scientists.

Kathi is 30 years old, a single mother and a luckless actress who is regularly turned down at auditions. While Kathi doesn't know how to get her life on track, her mother Chris is a successful psychoanalyst. Chris doesn't take her daughter's career choices seriously, and constantly tries to give her good advice on everything. One day, Kathi's father suddenly appears after 15 years of absence and wants to reunite the family. Confronted with the past, Kathi gets the unexpected chance to address the ongoing conflict with her mother and to set new goals for her future.

Mother stands in for a runaway bride and marries the groom by proxy, then both set out to convince her daughter to reconsider. Later they mistake the missing bride and her companion for two escaped convicts and pursue them with a sex obsessed teenage boy in tow. All paths cross at a remote motel run by a jilted church deacon.

A filmmaker returns to Normandy thirty years after a working on a movie based on a local homicide and tries to find the actors who worked on the project.

These Encounters Of Theirs divides 10 non-professional actors into couples, then has them take turns in declaiming the Dialogues With Leuco, Cesare Pavese's abstract, philosophical work.

Early evening - a big city. Two teenagers shyly flirt with each other, a housewife sits down to watch her daily soap, nurses in a hospital gossip before the nightshift starts, a trendy couple drives through rush hour, so excited they can hardly wait to get home - a man with a rifle enters a building seeking revenge. In the blink of an eye seemingly unrelated events turn upside down what were once secure, happy, 'normal' lives. Behind fear, beyond the unexpected, there is love and hope.

Nine year old Murray Murray is discovering his sexuality in the era of disco and leisure suits. He has a crush on sixteen year old Deidre, whose younger sister believes herself to be Murray's girlfriend. He also must deal with, among other things, the noisome, nightly lovemaking of his swinger parents.

Looks at two communities on either side of the Czech-Austrian border. There's an elderly man in Austria looking for a new wife, and he meets a lone single woman on the Czech side of the border.

Four film-makers embark on a cinematic survey of Austria, documenting the political and social state of the nation and its people. An eye-opening experience. In the wake of the 1999 elections, four filmmakers decided to go out with cameras in hand and gauge the mood of their countrymen, who had made Jörg Haider's FPO party the second most powerful in Austria. What they found was a country apparently "like any other" , filled with nice ordinary people. Who feel perfectly comfortable dreaming of a possible future without foreigners, or speaking with equanimity about the old days of the Third Reich.

Pianomania takes the audience on a humorous journey through the secret world of sound and accompanies Stefan Knüpfer in his extraordinary work with the greatest pianists in the world. To select the instrument that corresponds to the vision of the virtuoso, according it to his desire and accompany him until he goes on stage, Stefan Knüpfer has developed nerves of steel, a boundless passion and above ability to translate words into sounds.

Jing lives with her mother and grandparents in a small fishing village in a southern Chinese province. Instead of going to school, the deaf-mute teenager spends her time on a fishing boat with her mentally handicapped uncle – until one day she gets (too) close to him. Mei, a city kid rock musician of the same age, travels from club to club with her guitar, dreaming of an independent life. When Jing goes to live in the city with her hardboiled police officer father Zhang, the two girls come together. Mei is Zhang’s lover. Despite an initial standoff, the three manage to open up and create an emotional tie that gives their lives new perspective. SONGS OF SILENCE tells in elegantly convoluted sequences of the meeting and separating of the three protagonists, each of which is isolated in their own way.