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- The movie "Earthbound" is based on an authentic story: Franz Seeliger, a 75 year old psychiatric patient wants to steer a self-built, muscle propelled flying machine. But he is kept in custody since the Thrid Reich. After Dr. Frank launched his case to the press, Seeliger is released to a retirement home and his plan(e)s can now take shape. He is supported by the new manageress Hanna, his former doctor who also left the clinic. The old man shortly becomes acquainted with a group of circus freaks. After successfully performing his flying bicycle act he decides to never return to the retirement home but rather tour with the circus. But at the initiative of his guardian, Dr. Frank, the old man is escorted back by the police. It's now that Seeliger has to fulfill his dream: To fly by throwing himself with all his might at the ground and missing. Best artistic contribution (Europe Cinema, Viareggion Italy). Best screenplay (Imagfic, Madrid, Spain). Prix De la federation Del cine club, Figueira DA Foz, Portugal. FBW: Wertvoll.
- "Priests of the Condemned" portraits the life in the leper Colonies situated in shadows of Himalaya. In the world's once last Hindu Kingdom of Nepal, leprosy - now easily curable - is yet regarded as a curse of gods, those deities who forsake the Kathmandu Valley each year for the length of the monsoon season. As the rains pour down, humankind is left to stand alone, defenseless against the demons who dole out afflictions for the transgressions of former lives. Leprosy is one such punishment. In Nepal one reckons with 170,000 instances of leprosy of which many are severely handicapped, hands, feet and face badly deformed. A large number, because of fear, horror and religious dogmas , have been rejected from family and village communities. They have no means of existence, no abode nor anything to eat , neither is suitable medical treatment available. These dire circumstances drive them to the cities where they vegetate as beggars. Prädikat: "wertvoll"
- Australians call the uninhabitable desert areas in the center of the continent "Dead Heart". Out here, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, is the settlement of Birdsville - 23 houses and a pub with liquor license. Telephone service didn't arrive before 1979 - some 90 years after the locals first had applied to it. One weekend out of each year, however, this forgotten place is turned in a crowded inferno as some 5,000 civilization-weary Australians descend here for the annual Birdville Cup Horse Race. Buses, four-wheel drives, motorbikes and small airplanes invade the place like a swarm of locusts. The drunken merriment reaches its crescendo on Staurday night, when everyone indulges in a final uproarious round of revelry. By Monday morning all that remains behind are 23 houses, a pub with liquor license - and, strewn everywhere, 80,000 empty beer cans.
- Franz Woyzeck, the protagonist of Georg Büchner's unfinished drama is incorporated in this adaption of a classic. The contemporary Franz Wodzeck lives in Germany's Ruhr industrial region. Wodzeck meanders back and forth between the monotony of working each day in a car factory and returning each evening to the cheerless desolation of the factory dormitory. Once his girlfriend, Maleen, snubs him for his boss, Wodzeck's personal and social frustrations escalate into a vista of emotions: he runs amok and bloodily stubs Maleen to death. After he has killed his one sole love Wodzeck resigns himself to his fate. A hollow shell of a man is admitted to a psychiatric asylum. He feels no more anxiety, no more desire. He simply exists. FBW Prädikat: "wertvoll".
- The "World Beyond the World" is a cybernetics documentary. 'Thinking machines' and 'people thinking as machines' (super-computerprogrammers who have internalized computerese) are perhaps two of a kind. But clashes with the 'real world' are preprogrammed for these machines of flesh and blood. The film traces humankind's striving to discover itself again in its mechanical creations, from the effort to construct automatons in Switzerland some 200 years ago, to a pinnacle display of the 1980ies achievements: a robot playing Haydn's 'Genesis' at the World Expo in Japan. The film concludes with an interview between human being and computer, the latter issuing the final summation: "We are discussing you - not me". Is it only the internalized mechanization which separates us human beings from animals?
- Contemporary "conquistadores" continue the search for the gold of El Dorado. Docegeto, the Brazilian mining company discovered gold deposits while exploiting the mineral resources of the Amazon jungle. Impoverished Brazilians, lured by the promise of quick fortune, flocked to the area to stake out claims. The prospector enclaves are miniatures of the Brazilian society at large, wealth determining human worth. A labyrinth of ladders connects the crazy-quilt of claims, a busy anthill patrolled by military police. Most claims are worthless; many fortune-hunters wind up toiling like medieval serfs for the lucky few who struck it rich. The government has declared the region off-limits for women, arms and alcohol. Predictably just outside of the military barriers , boom-town bar districts have sprouted up. And here the small profits scratched together by the gold diggers are quickly gone.
- The live on the road of a group of irish people is shown in great detail. Although they are real irish and no gypsies they live like gipsys on the road and with all the troubles this form of living brings with it. The historical backround is told in their own words and tales and in historical data. Wherever they go people turn away and try to block even roadsides where they used to stay overnight in their trailers. Their very modest style of living is financed by simple work like melting copper out of used wires (by burning them) or making buckets. Traditional stories show that their lives had alsways been hard since they took on the road in the last century. Beatifully and touching traditional songs transport those stories.
- "The Bavarian Al Capone" is the autobiographical portrait of Theo Berger. a man who spent most of his lifetime behind bars. His records of criminal exploits as house- and jail-breaker register more than 150 criminal offenses committed since turning eighteen. Theo Berger was sentenced to some 30 years in prison, terms twice superseded by by stints of preventive detention. Footage was shot during the half year parole Theo Berger received once prison doctors arrived at his medical verdict: leukemia. Soon after the participation in this film Theo Berger - not yet prepared for freedom - robbed a bank, got arrested and was sentenced to another 12 years. A telling tale on guilt and expiation, describing the justice system in Germany at the end of the 20th century.
- Mathias Kneissl was Bavaria's last genuine robber. The movie, based on 19th century historical sources, depicts the last year in the life of this famous outlaw and folk-hero. At the age of 23 he is released from jail after completing an unjustified sentence of six years. He now goes astray to rob the money for his and his girlfriend's emigration to America. After shooting a policeman, Mathias Kneissl remains at large for a number of months. Not until he is betrayed by his girlfriend did the police track him down, three hundred soldiers surrounding the barricaded farmhouse in which he his hiding. The ensuing siege lasts several days. Finally, severely wounded, Kneissel is pulled from the farmhouse ruins. He recovers in a Munich hospital only to be executed in 1902. He is 27 years old.
- The Bikini Atoll, formerly a remote and peaceful site in the South Pacific, exploded in the public's consciousness in 1946 when the United States began using the small islands as proving ground for atomic warheads. The film, interweaving historical and contemporary footage, documents the abuse of the native islanders in the fallout areas as human guinea pigs. Half a century years after the last blast the dangerous radioactive aftermath is omnipresent. Finally, after a lengthy struggle, the U.S. Governement agreed to issue a reparation payment. But the dollars seeking to solve the nuclear sores have only served for further wipe out the native culture. 'The money has made us poor', realizes the King of the exiled Bikini islanders. Honorary Mentions: Medikinale Int., Parma, Itala; Red Cross and Health Filmfest Varna, Bulgaria, Prädikat: "wertvoll"