Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Jean-Gabriel Périot's A German Youth (2016), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from October 27 - November 26, 2017 as a Special Discovery.I’ll never accept the tendency of the late capitalistic society, which leads us straight to fascism. You just have to look at what’s happening in the USA.—Gudrun EnsslinIn the last analysis, terrorism is an idea generated by capitalism to justify better defense measures to safeguard capitalism.—Rainer Werner FassbinderWhen fascists began getting punched this summer, and an excited wave of schadenfreude took hold, briefly, of the social-media trashcan, out came the liberal cavalry: in force. Punching Nazis, so went the cry, is at best the first step to moral oblivion and, at worst, already as bad as the people who want you dead. They are nothing if not predictable,...
- 10/27/2017
- MUBI
Christian Petzold's The State I Am In (2000) and Christoph Hochhäusler's The City Below (2010) will be showing in September and October, 2017 on Mubi in most countries around the world.Christian Petzold (left) and Christoph Hochhäusler (right) on the set of Dreileben. Photo by Felix von Böhm.We meet in Christian Petzold’s office in Berlin-Kreuzberg. A giant wall of whispering books, almost like a Borgesian brain of fiction, encircles the table at which Christoph Hochhäusler, myself and the owner take place to discuss their films. The idea of the interview was to get Petzold’s take on Hochhäusler’s The City Below (2010) and Hochhäusler’s take on Petzold’s The State I Am In (2000). In the end, both filmmakers ended up talking about a lot more, as cinema for them has always been something that shines most brightly when remembering it, discussing it and loving it. The fictions proposed...
- 9/20/2017
- MUBI
Berlin Panorama darling Bruce Labruce returns with The Misandrists, a playful provocation about a lesbian separatist terrorist cell called the Female Liberation Army, plotting to topple the patriarchy and using porn as their chief propaganda tool. Despite name-checking Schopenhauer and Ulrike Meinhof, and including a brief lecture on parthenogenesis, the movie is far more silly than subversive. At first, there's a certain cheesy charm to the Eurotrash '70s aesthetic, with a cast of minimally skilled actors spouting lines like, "Young lady, have you seen anything queer in the area?" But any resemblance to a coherent thesis is purely coincidental.
Canadian...
Canadian...
- 2/14/2017
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Zabaltegi strand of the festival will feature 24 titles.Scroll down for full list
The 63rd San Sebastian Film Festival (Sept 18-26) has unveiled the features that will comprise its Zabaltegi programme, including Spanish premieres of new films from Laurie Anderson, Eric Khoo, Corneliu Porumboiu, Walter Salles and Alexander Sokurov.
The non-competitive strand includes features, documentaries, animation and shorts, and the first screening of all films in the section will run at the Tabakalera centre for contemporary culture and creation, the hub of Zabaltegi activities from this year.
Titles in the section that played at this year’s Cannes include Porumboiu’s black comedy The Treasure, which won the Un Certain Regard Talent Prize; Tambutti documentary Beyond My Grandfather Allende, winner of the L’Oeil d’Or award for best documentary; and Magnus Von Horn’s debut The Here After, which played in Directors’ Fornight.
Films that will first be seen at Venice (Sept 2-12) include Francofonia, from Russian...
The 63rd San Sebastian Film Festival (Sept 18-26) has unveiled the features that will comprise its Zabaltegi programme, including Spanish premieres of new films from Laurie Anderson, Eric Khoo, Corneliu Porumboiu, Walter Salles and Alexander Sokurov.
The non-competitive strand includes features, documentaries, animation and shorts, and the first screening of all films in the section will run at the Tabakalera centre for contemporary culture and creation, the hub of Zabaltegi activities from this year.
Titles in the section that played at this year’s Cannes include Porumboiu’s black comedy The Treasure, which won the Un Certain Regard Talent Prize; Tambutti documentary Beyond My Grandfather Allende, winner of the L’Oeil d’Or award for best documentary; and Magnus Von Horn’s debut The Here After, which played in Directors’ Fornight.
Films that will first be seen at Venice (Sept 2-12) include Francofonia, from Russian...
- 8/10/2015
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
The Skin I Live In (15)
(Pedro Almodóvar, 2011, Spa) Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet, Marisa Paredes. 120 mins.
Almodóvar's silky skills and supreme confidence tempt respectable audiences into an elegantly twisted tale of surgical obsession that few others could pull off. It's best not to spell things out too much about this; suffice to say Banderas's project to create a new form of skin, with Anaya his captive guinea pig, doesn't go where you'd expect.
As usual, there's a lot going on beneath the surface.
One Day (12A)
(Lone Scherfig, 2011, Us) Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Rafe Spall. 108 mins.
Fans might not have had Hathaway's migratory trans-Pennine accent in mind when they fell in love with David Nicholls's calendar-crossing odd-couple romance on paper, and the equally wayward period details detract even further. A pity, given the promising material, but Grazia readers will lap it up just the same.
Conan The Barbarian (15)
(Marcus Nispel,...
(Pedro Almodóvar, 2011, Spa) Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet, Marisa Paredes. 120 mins.
Almodóvar's silky skills and supreme confidence tempt respectable audiences into an elegantly twisted tale of surgical obsession that few others could pull off. It's best not to spell things out too much about this; suffice to say Banderas's project to create a new form of skin, with Anaya his captive guinea pig, doesn't go where you'd expect.
As usual, there's a lot going on beneath the surface.
One Day (12A)
(Lone Scherfig, 2011, Us) Anne Hathaway, Jim Sturgess, Rafe Spall. 108 mins.
Fans might not have had Hathaway's migratory trans-Pennine accent in mind when they fell in love with David Nicholls's calendar-crossing odd-couple romance on paper, and the equally wayward period details detract even further. A pity, given the promising material, but Grazia readers will lap it up just the same.
Conan The Barbarian (15)
(Marcus Nispel,...
- 8/26/2011
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Shane O'Sullivan's new film revisits the story of Germany's infamous terror group, but brings in the Japanese Red Army to offer a fresh comparison and insight into the terrorist psyche
Some chapters are never closed. Take the Baader-Meinhof gang. Roughly speaking, the story of Germany's infamous left-wing terror group began with the shooting of a young activist by the Berlin police in 1967, and ended 10 years later with the deaths of its remaining leaders in Stuttgart's Stammheim prison. But interest in the events that took place between never dims, news stories continue to throw new light on them, and invitations to return to the era are legion – an unsettling "walking art" project called Eamon and Ulrike Compliant currently lets you assume the identity of the group's intellectual figurehead, Ulrike Meinhof, both at large and under interrogation.
And then there are the films. Even before Stammheim, German cinema was wrestling with...
Some chapters are never closed. Take the Baader-Meinhof gang. Roughly speaking, the story of Germany's infamous left-wing terror group began with the shooting of a young activist by the Berlin police in 1967, and ended 10 years later with the deaths of its remaining leaders in Stuttgart's Stammheim prison. But interest in the events that took place between never dims, news stories continue to throw new light on them, and invitations to return to the era are legion – an unsettling "walking art" project called Eamon and Ulrike Compliant currently lets you assume the identity of the group's intellectual figurehead, Ulrike Meinhof, both at large and under interrogation.
And then there are the films. Even before Stammheim, German cinema was wrestling with...
- 8/26/2011
- by Danny Leigh
- The Guardian - Film News
Islamist extremists simply don't have enough idiot poster girls to make good movies, argues John Patterson
Why have film-makers recently become – if it's the right word – nostalgic for the old-school political terrorism of the 1970s? Movies are popping up everywhere about the glamour boys and girls of such deformed and often demented political groupings as West Germany's Red Army Faction and the Japanese United Red Army. Now there's Carlos, Olivier Assayas's five-hour globetrotting epic about the life of peripatetic assassin, kidnapper, Opec hostage-taker and ideologically addled playboy terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sánchez, Aka Carlos the jackal.
Me, I blame al-Qaida, with their nihilism and grotesque misogyny, their stated preference for death over life and, worst of all, their world-beating humourlessness. (It took Chris Morris, in Four Lions, to find the laffs in Islamofascism.)
Jeez, lighten up, fellas. Watching these guys dropping new fatwa videos and declarations of total war on,...
Why have film-makers recently become – if it's the right word – nostalgic for the old-school political terrorism of the 1970s? Movies are popping up everywhere about the glamour boys and girls of such deformed and often demented political groupings as West Germany's Red Army Faction and the Japanese United Red Army. Now there's Carlos, Olivier Assayas's five-hour globetrotting epic about the life of peripatetic assassin, kidnapper, Opec hostage-taker and ideologically addled playboy terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sánchez, Aka Carlos the jackal.
Me, I blame al-Qaida, with their nihilism and grotesque misogyny, their stated preference for death over life and, worst of all, their world-beating humourlessness. (It took Chris Morris, in Four Lions, to find the laffs in Islamofascism.)
Jeez, lighten up, fellas. Watching these guys dropping new fatwa videos and declarations of total war on,...
- 10/15/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
"If you throw one stone, it's punishable offense. If 1000 stones are thrown, it's political action."
Once upon a revolution, lefty journalist-turned-terrorist Ulrike Meinhof typed those words as an observation of the thin (perhaps in her mind non-existent) border between crime and campaign. It's a border that The Baader Meinhof Complex continually approaches, trespasses, and dallies around. As the chips fall one by one, we're left wondering just what these characters are truly after. Is it the radical change so often invoked by the youths of that generation, or is it just the intoxicating rush of the outlaw lifestyle?
The film traces a decade in Germany when the notorious Red Army Faction was at their peak in headline-grabbing, from their pre-formation in 1967 to the 1977 symbolic death of the group, marked by literal ones. In those ten years, the group butchered many law enforcement and political figures in cold blood, insistant in...
Once upon a revolution, lefty journalist-turned-terrorist Ulrike Meinhof typed those words as an observation of the thin (perhaps in her mind non-existent) border between crime and campaign. It's a border that The Baader Meinhof Complex continually approaches, trespasses, and dallies around. As the chips fall one by one, we're left wondering just what these characters are truly after. Is it the radical change so often invoked by the youths of that generation, or is it just the intoxicating rush of the outlaw lifestyle?
The film traces a decade in Germany when the notorious Red Army Faction was at their peak in headline-grabbing, from their pre-formation in 1967 to the 1977 symbolic death of the group, marked by literal ones. In those ten years, the group butchered many law enforcement and political figures in cold blood, insistant in...
- 4/20/2010
- by Arya Ponto
- JustPressPlay.net
The graphic novel, One Model Nation by C. Allbritton Taylor and Jim Rugg, the fictional, industrial rock band of the same name becomes the voice for rebellion in post-war Germany, 1977. The story follows the quartet, resembling a militarized version of The Beatles, while embedding them in the fabric of a politically-divided German society. They become linked to the Raf (the Red Army Faction), a group of leftist ‘urban terrorists’, who in their earliest incarnation were referred to as the Baader-Meinhof Group. Historian, Donovan Leitch, culls significant details from this tumultuous period in history, providing Taylor with enough material to weave a mesh of reality and fictional drama. One band member, Sebastian, becomes a figure of interest as he appears to have had a relationship with Ulrike Meinhof. A casual, heartfelt interaction between Ulrike and Sebastian precedes a depiction of Ulrike’s participation in the escape ...
- 12/8/2009
- by Jason Rosas
- BuzzFocus.com
Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week to look for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent, this week we’re heading to… Germany! This may come as a shock to some of you, but I don't know everything. The range of what I don't know is actually fairly impressive in it's own right and includes (but is not limited to) the solution to the Hodge conjecture, what another word for 'synonym' is, the justification behind pea soup, the location of the Holy Grail, and much, much more. My ignorance is most notable (and most shameful) though when it comes to historical events. I blame the Catholics and their close-minded school system, but many Americans are in the same boat when it comes to being unaware of even recent historical events outside of our borders. For...
- 10/22/2009
- by Rob Hunter
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Oh, what a riveting mess! This sprawling portrait of the Red Army Faction, which literally terrorized West Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is neither an apologetic for the anarchist gang nor a condemnation of it, but rather a fascinating exploration of the shift in the zeitgeist of that era, not only in Europe but, by unspoken extension, across the Western world as well as in the Middle East. Radical journalist Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck: The Good Shepherd) is slowly wooed over to the violent ways of urban bomber Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu: Speed Racer), eventually throwing her lot in with him and his girlfriend/partner-in-crime Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) as they attempt to push back against global imperialism, particularly as represented by Germany’s complicity in the American war in Vietnam, by bombing U.S. army bases, police stations, and other targets of official governmental authority: as...
- 9/21/2009
- by MaryAnn Johanson
- www.flickfilosopher.com
West Germany’s Baader Meinhof group (also known as the Red Army Faction or Raf) was formed in the late 1960s and named after two of its ringleaders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhoff. With its logo of a gun set against a red star, the Raf was a terrorist organization made up of young left-wing revolutionaries who railed against a current political establishment with bombings, bank robberies, and murder and is the subject of the ambitious new movie The Baader Meinhoff Complex. Director Uli Eddels’s film is a long but engrossing look at a fascinating chapter of recent German history.
Based on a nonfiction book by Stefan Aust, The Baader Meinhoff Complex takes a look at the origins and heyday of the Raf and the violent acts they carry out, each more bold than the last: the bombing of a newspaper office, murders of prominent judges and prosecutors, the...
Based on a nonfiction book by Stefan Aust, The Baader Meinhoff Complex takes a look at the origins and heyday of the Raf and the violent acts they carry out, each more bold than the last: the bombing of a newspaper office, murders of prominent judges and prosecutors, the...
- 9/18/2009
- by Tom
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
From MTV.Com: "The Baader Meinhof Complex" is a smart and explosively powerful movie about a German student terrorist gang of the 1970s, and the wave of arson, robbery, kidnappings and murder with which they shook their country's government — in the process triggering exactly the sort of right-wing repression against which they claimed to be crusading. The picture was a deserving Oscar nominee earlier this year for Best Foreign Language Film, and in its weaving-together of the intricacies of social ferment and the bullet-riddled reality of what the gang wrought, it's a fascinating achievement.
The Baader Meinhof Group, as the gang was called in the press (they styled themselves the Red Army Faction, or Raf), was actually led by Gudren Ensslin (played here by Johanna Wokalek), a blonde parson's daughter turned steely-willed Marxist revolutionary, along with her highly charismatic boyfriend, Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), a petty thief and intellectual primitive...
The Baader Meinhof Group, as the gang was called in the press (they styled themselves the Red Army Faction, or Raf), was actually led by Gudren Ensslin (played here by Johanna Wokalek), a blonde parson's daughter turned steely-willed Marxist revolutionary, along with her highly charismatic boyfriend, Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), a petty thief and intellectual primitive...
- 9/11/2009
- by Kurt Loder
- MTV Movies Blog
Filmmaker Uli Edel.
Talkin’ Terrorism with Uli Edel
by Jon Zelazny
Director Uli Edel and writer-producer Bernd Eichinger met at the Munich Film School in the late sixties, and went on to collaborate on two gritty cult classics, the German Christiane F. (1981) and Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989).
In 2008, they reunited for The Baader Meinhof Complex, a chronicle of the domestic terrorism that plagued West Germany in the 1970’s. It was nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award, and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The Constantin/Vitagraph Films release opens this Friday, August 21st, in New York and on August 28th in Los Angeles.
Uli Edel and I met at his home in West Los Angeles.
The terrorist movement in Western Europe essentially began in 1968. What was that year like for you?
Uli Edel: I was just starting my studies in Munich. And when I came there,...
Talkin’ Terrorism with Uli Edel
by Jon Zelazny
Director Uli Edel and writer-producer Bernd Eichinger met at the Munich Film School in the late sixties, and went on to collaborate on two gritty cult classics, the German Christiane F. (1981) and Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989).
In 2008, they reunited for The Baader Meinhof Complex, a chronicle of the domestic terrorism that plagued West Germany in the 1970’s. It was nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award, and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The Constantin/Vitagraph Films release opens this Friday, August 21st, in New York and on August 28th in Los Angeles.
Uli Edel and I met at his home in West Los Angeles.
The terrorist movement in Western Europe essentially began in 1968. What was that year like for you?
Uli Edel: I was just starting my studies in Munich. And when I came there,...
- 9/9/2009
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Christopher Roth's "Baader" is the worse sort of terrorist chic. Turning back the clock more than a quarter of a century, the movie traces the exploits of one of the West's first glamour terrorists. West Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang set fires, robbed banks, stole BMWs and killed people from 1967-72. Murderers that they were, there is something now almost quaint in their nonsensical actions, confused ideology, stylish dress and arrogant blunders.
But Roth makes blunders of his own. The film lacks any point of view, letting the story unfold in a pseudo-documentary style that offers neither explanations nor context. Further, the film makes no attempt to reach an audience beyond national borders. Names, dates and references will be unfamiliar to most non-Germans. So despite the world's dramatically increased interest in the subject matter, "Baader"'s insularity dooms it to limited distribution.
Roth indulges in more than a little sensationalism without giving his subject any rigorous examination. Yet even with a "neutral" approach, the movie can't help making this treacherous gang appear foolish. Whether dropping acid during kaffeeklatsches or sunbathing nude in a Jordanian terrorist camp, the Baader-Meinhof crew comes off more as feebleminded anarchists than the tough revolutionaries they aspire to be.
Yet many Germans of that era, especially students and left-wingers, admired them. The movie never delves into what inspired this admiration. Instead Roth keeps you in the cocoon of the gang and their pursuers, led by a fictional police official named Kurt Krone (Vadim Glowna).
The latter is the movie's most remarkable character. A middle-aged leftist, Krone believes in many of the things group co-leader Andreas Baader does. Only he sees means to achieve such political goals without violence. The ambivalent policeman tracks his quarry, gets inside Baader's mind and in one implausible episode shares a late-night smoke with his foe on a deserted country road.
Frank Giering does little to interpret Baader, preferring to cloak this nearly mythological figure in a cloud of tobacco smoke, sunglasses and the street strut of a car thief, which was indeed his criminal career before discovering radical politics. Laura Tonke plays his lover Gudrun as a young woman who believes that she has hooked up with the coolest dude in the West.
But it's mind-boggling how Roth ignores Ulrike Meinhof (Birge Schade), the journalist who turned in her typewriter for a gun. This is, after all, the Baader-Meinhof gang. She is the group's theoretician; Baader is simply its organizational thug. How can you ignore her?
While sticking close to known facts for most of his movie, Roth unaccountably goes for a "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" finale in which Baader goes out with guns blazing instead of his murder or suicide -- to this day most people are not sure which -- in prison.
The picture sparked condemnation from many sides at the festival for its deliberate invention and glorification of Baader. The jury's decision to honor "Baader" with an award for "particular innovation" was greeted with a chorus of boos and whistles.
In truth, Roth adds nothing to what is already known about the gang. Certainly, better films have been made about terrorism in the 1970s by such German filmmakers as R.W. Fassbinder and Volker Schlondorff.
Production values are so-so. The colors have a drab, washed-out look, possibly to emulate German films of that era. Rock numbers, including a bit of techno rock, do give an edgy suspense to the overlong and often repetitive drama.
BAADER
72 Film
Producers: Stephan Fruth, Mark Glaser, Christopher Roth
Director: Christopher Roth
Screenwriters: Christopher Roth, Moritz von Uslar
Directors of photography: Jutta Pohlmann, Bella Halben
Production designers: Attila Saygel, Oliver Kronke, Tobiaas Nolte
Costume designer: Nicole Fischnaller
Editor: Barbara Gies
Color/stereo
Cast:
Andreas Baader: Frank Giering
Gudrun Ensslin: Laura Tonke
Kurt Krone: Vadim Glowna
Ulrike Meinhof: Birge Schade
Karin: Jana Pallaske
Kurt Wagner: Michael Sideris
Running time -- 129 minutes
No MPAA rating...
But Roth makes blunders of his own. The film lacks any point of view, letting the story unfold in a pseudo-documentary style that offers neither explanations nor context. Further, the film makes no attempt to reach an audience beyond national borders. Names, dates and references will be unfamiliar to most non-Germans. So despite the world's dramatically increased interest in the subject matter, "Baader"'s insularity dooms it to limited distribution.
Roth indulges in more than a little sensationalism without giving his subject any rigorous examination. Yet even with a "neutral" approach, the movie can't help making this treacherous gang appear foolish. Whether dropping acid during kaffeeklatsches or sunbathing nude in a Jordanian terrorist camp, the Baader-Meinhof crew comes off more as feebleminded anarchists than the tough revolutionaries they aspire to be.
Yet many Germans of that era, especially students and left-wingers, admired them. The movie never delves into what inspired this admiration. Instead Roth keeps you in the cocoon of the gang and their pursuers, led by a fictional police official named Kurt Krone (Vadim Glowna).
The latter is the movie's most remarkable character. A middle-aged leftist, Krone believes in many of the things group co-leader Andreas Baader does. Only he sees means to achieve such political goals without violence. The ambivalent policeman tracks his quarry, gets inside Baader's mind and in one implausible episode shares a late-night smoke with his foe on a deserted country road.
Frank Giering does little to interpret Baader, preferring to cloak this nearly mythological figure in a cloud of tobacco smoke, sunglasses and the street strut of a car thief, which was indeed his criminal career before discovering radical politics. Laura Tonke plays his lover Gudrun as a young woman who believes that she has hooked up with the coolest dude in the West.
But it's mind-boggling how Roth ignores Ulrike Meinhof (Birge Schade), the journalist who turned in her typewriter for a gun. This is, after all, the Baader-Meinhof gang. She is the group's theoretician; Baader is simply its organizational thug. How can you ignore her?
While sticking close to known facts for most of his movie, Roth unaccountably goes for a "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" finale in which Baader goes out with guns blazing instead of his murder or suicide -- to this day most people are not sure which -- in prison.
The picture sparked condemnation from many sides at the festival for its deliberate invention and glorification of Baader. The jury's decision to honor "Baader" with an award for "particular innovation" was greeted with a chorus of boos and whistles.
In truth, Roth adds nothing to what is already known about the gang. Certainly, better films have been made about terrorism in the 1970s by such German filmmakers as R.W. Fassbinder and Volker Schlondorff.
Production values are so-so. The colors have a drab, washed-out look, possibly to emulate German films of that era. Rock numbers, including a bit of techno rock, do give an edgy suspense to the overlong and often repetitive drama.
BAADER
72 Film
Producers: Stephan Fruth, Mark Glaser, Christopher Roth
Director: Christopher Roth
Screenwriters: Christopher Roth, Moritz von Uslar
Directors of photography: Jutta Pohlmann, Bella Halben
Production designers: Attila Saygel, Oliver Kronke, Tobiaas Nolte
Costume designer: Nicole Fischnaller
Editor: Barbara Gies
Color/stereo
Cast:
Andreas Baader: Frank Giering
Gudrun Ensslin: Laura Tonke
Kurt Krone: Vadim Glowna
Ulrike Meinhof: Birge Schade
Karin: Jana Pallaske
Kurt Wagner: Michael Sideris
Running time -- 129 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 2/27/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.