Robert van Ackeren

The film presents dazzling, creative, and surprisingly diverse "home theater" from five decades. And especially on the basis of the sometimes explicit sexual scenes, van Ackeren draws a very specifically German picture. This includes twenty-five Super 8 films with such beautiful titles as "Lady Di's Hat" (The VIP Movie), "Skin the Cock" (The Leisure Movie) or "Model Experiment" (Sex Film Without A Highpoint).

Five women leave their husbands and discover an opportunity for an unusual new beginning. They devise a scheme for the selection of the "ideal male," but the plan is turned upside down when the women jointly hire a housekeeper.

The 30-years old Max is MD and engaged to the attractive Coco, who jealously keep watch over him. After he heard the lovely voice of an unknown misdialing woman, he starts a restless search ...

The 30-years old Max is MD and engaged to the attractive Coco, who jealously keep watch over him. After he heard the lovely voice of an unknown misdialing woman, he starts a restless search ...

The 30-years old Max is MD and engaged to the attractive Coco, who jealously keep watch over him. After he heard the lovely voice of an unknown misdialing woman, he starts a restless search ...

Eva, an upper-class housewife, frustratedly leaves her arrogant husband and decides to enter the call girl business. She lets Yvonne, a prostitute, teach her the basics and both set out for prey together, until Eva starts an affair with Chris, who turns out to be a call boy, as well. Consequently, she moves into his penthouse, large enough for both to offer their services separately.

Eva, an upper-class housewife, frustratedly leaves her arrogant husband and decides to enter the call girl business. She lets Yvonne, a prostitute, teach her the basics and both set out for prey together, until Eva starts an affair with Chris, who turns out to be a call boy, as well. Consequently, she moves into his penthouse, large enough for both to offer their services separately.

Eva, an upper-class housewife, frustratedly leaves her arrogant husband and decides to enter the call girl business. She lets Yvonne, a prostitute, teach her the basics and both set out for prey together, until Eva starts an affair with Chris, who turns out to be a call boy, as well. Consequently, she moves into his penthouse, large enough for both to offer their services separately.

Eva, an upper-class housewife, frustratedly leaves her arrogant husband and decides to enter the call girl business. She lets Yvonne, a prostitute, teach her the basics and both set out for prey together, until Eva starts an affair with Chris, who turns out to be a call boy, as well. Consequently, she moves into his penthouse, large enough for both to offer their services separately.

A handsome Belgian sailor on shore leave in the port of Brest, who is also a drug-smuggler and murderer, embarks upon a voyage of highly charged and violent homosexual self-discovery that will change him forever from the man he once was.

Two life stories. That of Malou, a French woman, married to a German Jew, a refugee stranded in South America: a picture of the pre-war generation reflected in the unusual destiny of an individual woman. And that of Hannah, an alert, independent, modern woman, seeking after freedom and her own identity, and trying in present-day Berlin to save her shaky marriage.

Reel 9 of Gérard Courant's on-going Cinematon series.

An abstract look at the changes in a woman's inner self. Married to a down-and-out writer, she is forced into a liaison with a book thief.

"Deutschland privat" is a special project by Robert van Ackeren, who in 1979 asked people to send him their 8mm home movies by placing ads in several magazines in Berlin, Germany. In the ads he announced that he was planning to blow up and mount the best of those movies into a feature documentary to be released in German cinemas. He was surprised how many home movies he received and how generously people allowed him to use them for his feature. Part 1 of "Deutschland privat" gives us typical German home movies of the 1970s, i.e. private holidays, family parties, etc. Part 2 consists of what is now called "amateur porn"; home made 8mm movies featuring real porn action.

In this triangle melodrama, a woman shuts herself off from the world, rejects the advancement of her husband in society, and enthrones her own successor.

A film by Robert van Ackeren.

A film by Robert van Ackeren.

Leo, the owner of the stocking product "Discrete", has driven his company into the wall; the company is virtually bankrupt.

Leo, the owner of the stocking product "Discrete", has driven his company into the wall; the company is virtually bankrupt.

While out on the town in Berlin, Raymond sees and falls for Harlis, a star of a troupe of lesbian cabaret strippers. Attracted to a man for the first time, Harlis leaves her long time girlfriend and dance partner. Overwhelmed by jealousy and anger, his brother (Peter) and his ex-fiancee (Ria) are determined to sabotage this budding romance.

While out on the town in Berlin, Raymond sees and falls for Harlis, a star of a troupe of lesbian cabaret strippers. Attracted to a man for the first time, Harlis leaves her long time girlfriend and dance partner. Overwhelmed by jealousy and anger, his brother (Peter) and his ex-fiancee (Ria) are determined to sabotage this budding romance.

Collage of dramatic scenes, some exaggerated to comic effect, with asynchronous sound from well known classic, operatic, and rock and roll music – with different approaches to love, suffering, and death.

Daniel, a young man from the provinces come to the city and moves from one gay subculture to the next. His adventures begin on the streets of Berlin, where the shy brunette Daniel meets the blonde Clemens, who invites him home for coffee and offers him a place to stay. Soon Daniel is living with Clemens and believes he has found the love of his life. The two try to imitate a bourgeois marriage and its lifestyle. But after four months of tedium, Daniel is cruised by a rich older man who entices him to move into his villa, where he encounters a group of older gays, pretentious in their appreciations of fine art and classical music, who fawn over him.

Schroeter's virtuosic staging of the Oscar Wilde tragedy is a complex montage of image and sound, filmed on the grand steps of Baalbeck, the ancient Roman temple in Lebanon, and interweaving Lebanese and German folk songs with the music of Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, Mozart, Bellini, and Donizetti. Elfi Mikesch, the cinematographer of Schroeter’s later films, designed the film’s sumptuous costumes. A contemporary critic for Le Monde wrote admiringly of Schroeter’s depiction of "the deadly struggle between dark Christian morality and luminous paganism.“

Fearing being deported, Gabi, a young foreign girl looks for a husband and even has 5,000 German Marks for him. But within the free and marital environment of the commune, there are no candidates for a wedding.

After pulling off a bank robbery two bandits meet in a deserted mining town to divide their loot but an old miner tries to steal it from them.

A strange case baffles the police and the citizens of a German small town. A two-year old girl has disappeared. There are suspects, innocents, guilty ones and a web of lies. It's saturday afternoon, and Achim's parents are invited for a topping-out ceremony. The neighbour's daughter, Monika (Renate Roland), is the babysitter for Achim (Sascha Urchs) and his little sister Kathrin, but Monika doesn't take the job too serious. She'd rather go for a ride with her boyfriend. Through a unforeseen row of circumstances, Achim becomes the murderer of his sister, and hides the body in a wrecked car on the scrapyard. When the parents return home, a frantic search for the little child begins. Only the father (Sieghardt Rupp) seems to know the truth…

Fictionalized documentary about the first man killed at the border between East and West Germany.

Jimmy Orpheus is about a young day labourer at the docks. After a crawl through the late-night bars in the St. Pauli red-light district, he meets a prostitute, for whom he risks life and limb while walking around night-time Hamburg … A love story that is as poetic as it is realistic, with Roland Klick trying out various extravagant editing and camera techniques, such as jump cuts and time-lapse shots, as well as his idea of action movies.

Short film by Helmut Herbst.