BEWARE THE KRAUTS ARE COMING!
Door open 20h
20h30: BRD 1974, 87 min. german, opt. english subs
Dorothea, a 16-year-old bourgeois girl from Hamburg, plays with her
friends of both sexes, imitating the production of adult movies. In the
end, pretending to make sex-scenes is not satisfying enough, and with a
street professional, Dorothea is initiated in hard sex.
Dosto-Sado-Maso-Jewski!!!
Though primarily intended to be a parody on the then-notorious wave of
German sex-films that claim to be "scientifically" accurate, "Dorotheas
Rache" won a price as best picture of 1974. And if that wasn't good
enough, the price is the Prix de Group Panic, donated by the brilliant
cinematic trio infernal consisting of playwright/artist Roland Topor
(best known to film lovers as the author who provided the story for
Roman Polanskis "Le Tenant"), neo-surrealistic director Fernando
Arrabal ("Viva la Muerte") and multi-talented filmmaker-genius
Alejandro Jodorowsky ("El Topo"). The three applauded "Dorothea" as a
masterpiece of the new, larger-than-life, politically reflective film
of the post-68 years. It offers, they stated, thought-provocation in a
daring, symbolist manner that resembles a mix-up of Pasolini and
Breton. And indeed, director Peter Fleischmann and fellow screenwriter
Jean-Claude Carrière (long-time collaborator of Luis Bunuel) have gone
to the limits with this passion of a young girl in search for the
meaning of love. Almost all the actors are non-professionals from the
sinister underworld of St. Pauli, Hamburg. Anna Henkel – who later
starred in Bernardo Bertoluccis "1900" and still later married famous
German pop singer Herbert Grönemeyer, but tragically died of cancer at
a young age – is brilliant as the 17-year old protagonist on her
journey through darkness, weirdness, obscurity and obscenity.
While
trying to find out about the nature of love and the magnetic force
between the sexes, she stumbles across pornographers, prostitutes and
dominatrices, all of them deliberately depicted not as bizarre
caricatures, and all of them behaving as if their home ground were the
suburbs of a sex-loaded hellfire. Eventually, Dorothea's trip turns out
to be a rite of passage in the midst of a capitalistic system. As
first, there's her parental background: Her father owns a factory that
produces comedy articles (such as jewel cases that provide laughter
when opened), her mother is as average and boring as a mother can be –
but only at first sight. Dorothea slowly evades from this surrounding
into unknown territory when a friend, with whom she is making a
hilariously absurd 8mm film called "Encyclopedia of Love" (devoted to
the weirdest sexual practices you have ever been advised to re-enact)
starts posing for pornographic pictures and is sexually abused during
the first session. Both disgusted and attracted at the same time, and
being broad-minded as can be, Dorothea starts trying it out herself.
It's all done for her quest for the meaning of love in a world of
exploitation, humiliation and perversity.
Stations of Dorotheas passion
include her being laid by three old, very unattractive men (full
frontal nudity here, even "fuller" than usual!), with the girl
surprising the men by turning the situation around. Subsequently there
are her lesbian experiences with a domina (among whose clients is a
single-legged masochist that likes to be crucified), her (harshly
punished) attempt to be a nice to an unloved, frustrated man even
prostitutes don't want as a customer, her idea to comfort her fathers
economical problems with incest, and a personal encounter with Jesus
who advises Dorothea to have sex with the mad and the lunatic to become
happy… It sounds like a porn-revue from the asylum, and in some way, it
is. But it's also an astonishing insight, a hallucinating voyage seen
through the eyes of an, after all, innocent girl that tries to
understand why things are the way they are. She keeps her innocence
throughout her experiences – almost, at all (there's one "guilt"
appearing out of the middle all those unredeemed sins). German writer
Martin Walser called it a film in "Dosto-Sado-Maso-Jewski"-qualities
when it came out, newspapers spoke of a "moralistic fable", of "Sex
with a slice of Mao", and the film was nicknamed the "Maria Magdalena
of the red-light district" or "Alice in Sexland". Views may vary, but
there's no doubt "Dorotheas Rache" is an amour fou with erotic tension
being the prime subject of a surrealistic roller-coaster ride.
review from imdb.com by Thorsten_B (thb8@hotmail.com)
22h10: BRD 1983, 77 min. german, opt. english subs
Owing to a computer error at the
factory for instant children, model child Konrad, age nine, is
mis-delivered to a woman artist. The well-mannered child and the
bohemian artist are very different, yet they bond as a family. The
factory, realizing the mistake, tries to reclaim the misdelivered
product, but Konrad does not want to leave his new mother. What to do?
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