This film essay by Steff Gruber is a report on the exceedingly difficult work of making Werner Herzog's film COBRA VERDE in Ghana. The very personal film however is more than just a blow by blow account of the film's creation. It also focuses on the complicated relationship between the two stars Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, the walk-on players (Herzog had a thousand young Gh...
Structured like a musical collage, Der lachende Stern (The Laughing Star) is a film about the Philippines and the Third World. Its starting-point was the 1983 film festival in Manila, an event of high symbolic value for its founder, Imelda Marcos, the First Lady of the Philippines. Der lachende Stern reflects the cultural reality of the Philippines with interviews, excerpts fro...
In 1971 she was 'wanted' for political murder, because she had assassinated a Bolivian Colonel, who represented the oppressive military dictatorship in the South American country. In 1973 she was ambushed and shot by the police forces led by the notorious Klaus Barbie, former Gestapo chief in Lyons, France - see also Htel Terminus (1988). Monika had tried to abduct him to brin...
The film deals with an imigrant woman from southern Italy, who lives in Frankfurt in the 1970s. Unusual about this film is the way of the storytelling. The original plan was to make a documentary, but none of the female protagonists were willing to be seen in front of the camera. The fear to expose their own family was too big. The law of “omerta” exists in the diaspora as well...