Tag Archives: Germany

Das Kleine Chaos: 1966 Short Film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment


Here’s a 1966 short crime film by a young and learning Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The great and too-soon-departed German filmmaker actually plays one of the three young criminals who decide to invade a woman’s home to terrorize and rob her. The film is relentlessly cool and begins at around the 3 minute mark to really show how deeply Fassbinder was mining the work of Jean Luc Godard. Those shots in the apartment with Fassbinder reading the novel out loud in front of a wall of pinned art prints is straight up Godard stuff. But it’s just fine to imitate other filmmakers as long as your real intention is to destroy them from the inside. Fassbinder was just that kind of filmmaker.

Here’s an article about Fassbinder on the Senses of Cinema site.

Talkin’ World Awakening – New Topical Song For Greece, Freedom and All People Sacked by Banka-Gangstas

by Cimaxion

German musician and filmmaker Michel Montecrossa sings a song of rage and protest aimed at banks and their governments who seek to eliminate entire populations in favor of a very small group of super-wealthy. The first decades of the 21st century are proving not to be about some ridiculous war on terror, but instead they are seeing the beginning of a conflict between large corporate interests and enormous populations. The uprisings in the Middle East have nothing to do with the dictators there. Those uprisings are against the corporations that do business with the dictators.

I like Mr. Montecrossa’s hard and direct approach. He is a wild man and he’s making some very interesting things. I posted earlier about his ‘Resurrection’ movie.

The Resurrection Movie: A Film Trailer by Michel Montecrossa

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

MATURE CONTENT AND NUDITY:

This is Michel Montecrossa’s peace and climate change musical. It tells a great passion story which is the love-tale of cyberrocker-astronaut Starlight and his mate Earthpower and how they change hellish mega city planet through their music into a free world. It’s full of rock & roll, motorcycles, leather jackets, keyboards, cowboy hats, sex drawings, mirror sunglasses, hip rocker women, New Age and science fiction. I don’t know who these people are, but they sure do look fun and they have some kind of wild movie going on here.  It features the poetry of Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and William Wordsworth!  My general take on it is that the film is a cry for individual expression and freedom in a time of unending war and conflict managed by the forces of homogenous corporate control.  Director Michel Montecrossa is described as a ‘prolific songwriter, orchestral composer, painter, writer, moviemaker, futurist architect and cyberartist.’  Wild people like this should make more films.

The Books of Anselm Kiefer

by Cimaxion | 3 Comments

The Art of Memory, a blog that specializes in minimal film, music, literature, poetry and art, has posted a series of images from a rare book called The Books of Anselm Kiefer, 1969-1990.  Kiefer has worked on books since the sixties and incorporates many different materials in them, including photography, painting, sand, straw, cloth, and metal.  The books are one of a kind artworks and are seldom seen.

There is always something fascinating about a book made by the hand of an artist.  The problem with seeing books in museums is always the same though: you can only see two pages of any given book.  But since most people have no experience with turning a book’s pages, you simply would not want to trust patrons with this responsibility.

One of Kiefer’s main instincts has always been to try to look directly at the horrific history of Germany in the twentieth century.  These book pages contain some of his attempts to do so.

Trailer for Metropolis with Restored Lost Footage

by Editor

Hey! I thought I had the darned movie already! But now there’s yet another ‘restored’ version of Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction masterpiece, Metropolis. Boy is that a gorgeous trailer though! Wow! And the music is far better than what’s on my DVD. This is the movie that just keeps making itself over and over and over.

I want to make a feature film and I’ll release the 2-hour version, but there will be 17 hours of ‘lost footage’ hidden in various places around the globe so that the movie can recompile itself over the decades into an ‘official version’ which bears absolutely no resemblance to the original movie. Or better yet, I’m going to start shooting fake Metropolis footage and then discover it in the broom closet of an old bus depot in the middle of Kansas. So the movie will suddenly expand to 4 and a half hours.

1927 ‘Metropolis’ with 25 Minutes of Lost Footage

by Editor

The TCM Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles is hosting the North American premiere of Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction classic, Metropolis, with 25 minutes of newly discovered footage.

Metropolis is the story of a mechanized future city with rulers who live atop high towers and masses of slave workers that operate the giant machines below.  A rebellion is incited when a robot version of a young woman who works to help the poor is set out to inflame the oppressed workers.  The setting of the film is just astounding and has not been matched for beauty by any film since.  This is one of the great classics of world cinema and finding 25 minutes of lost footage is incredible.  Several years ago, I went to the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood to see a newly restored version that had still photos inserted where footage was missing.  I suspect that many of those missing scenes are now included!

The film was discovered in a museum storage room in Argentina.  So not only did Argentina hide escaped Nazis, but it has also been hiding a German science fiction treasure… unwittingly of course.  And if you look at Metropolis carefully, you can see the Nazis coming.  The film is permeated with it.  If you don’t believe me, consider that the screenwriter, Thea von Harbou did in fact become a Nazi.  Another Fritz Lang classic, Spies, is so riddled with antisemitism that it is almost impossible to watch.  So there it is.  Great classic yes, but also profoundly threatening.

Here’s the Los Angeles Times article about the restoration.

Here’s a link to the prior restoration: Metropolis (Restored Authorized Edition)