Thomas Heise

In Bettina Büttner’s exquisitely lucid documentary Kinder (Kids), childhood dysfunction, loneliness, and pent-up emotion run wild at an all-boys group home in southern Germany. The children interned here include ten-year-olds Marvin and Tommy. Marvin, fiddling with a mini plastic Lego sword, explains matter-of-factly to the camera, “This is a knife. You use it to cut stomachs open.” Dennis, who is even younger, is seen in a hysteric fit, mimicking some pornographic scene. Boys will be boys, but innocence is disproportionately spare here. Choosing not to dwell on the harsh specifics, Büttner reveals the disconcerting manner in which traumatic episodes can manifest themselves in the mundane — a game of Lego, Hide and Seek, or Truth or Dare. Filmed in lapidary black-and-white, Büttner’s fascinating film sheds light on childhood from the boys’ characteristically disadvantaged perspective — one not yet fully cognizant — leaving much ethically to ponder over.

Solar System is a film about disappearance. It is a portrait of daily life in the indigenous community of the Kollas in Tinkunaku in the mountains of northern Argentina.

Documentary by Thomas Heise filmed in East Berlin in 1987/88.

CONSEQUENCE tracks the tiring working day between Christmas Eve and New Year at a small German crematorium operating 24/7.

Director Thomas Heise picks up the biographical pieces left by his family, and composes an epic picture of four generations of his family, of a country, of a century.

In Saxon-Anhalt, near the town of Zerbst, set away from busy roads, next to a deserted military landing strip, is the village of Straguth. An unimportant place. Lost in time. Or ahead of time. The film describes the people of this quiet place, in the past, the present and the future. A film like the digging of a hole. If one could dig in spiral form. And dig a black hole. An archaeological journey to landscape, people and things, traces of changing times and transition. Wide open landscapes and detailed drawings of people within. And on entering Otto Nathos’ modest bar, there is always talk of the war. The era of youth.

A group of young people in Halle-Neustadt moving aimlessly between the concrete blocks once built as a socialist model housing estate. Familiar certainties dissolved along with the GDR. Even though there were hardly any foreigners in Saxony-Anhalt, a dull aversion to everything that hadn’t been part of daily life until then began to spread. The general dissolution, perceived as a threat, is countered by apparently clear world views. When Thomas Heise won the “Documentary Film Prize 1992” at the Duisburger Filmwoche, the laudation ended with the assumption that the film would probably provoke disagreement. It turned out to be true.

24-hour television documentary about Berlin and its inhabitants, reporting in real time on the everyday lives of more than 50 protagonists from a wide range of professions, social classes, religions and ethnicities.