Holger Meins

Short thriller about an older woman and an escaped convict.

A concise blast of feminist film making, Sander's first film is a tense yet playful four minute short that dissects a typical urban scene at a bus stop on a busy street in Berlin.

West­ern for the SDS por­trays the de­vel­op­ment of the left as a learn­ing pro­cess among wo­m­en who shar­p­en their aware­ness in the move­ment but cont­in­ue to have no say. The con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the film is shown in the DFFB week­ly news­reel Re­quiem for a Com­pany. The West­ern was con­fis­cat­ed by the ad­min­is­tra­tion, and eigh­teen stu­dents who sid­ed with Straschek were ex­pelled from the acade­my. The film was considered lost until its rediscovery in 2018.

A look into the life of Holger Meins, the German cinematography student who became a revolutionary and a prominent voice in the Vietnam War protest movement. This film is comprised of interviews with his associates.

“Six young people move through a city in order to establish the starting point of their joint action. But they can’t agree on the topic. In the end everybody goes their own way and leaves the city.” - Hartmut Bitomsky

Gerd Conradt films men carrying a red flag in a relay race through Berlin, to hoist it on the balcony of the current Mayor’s seat. A cinematic experiment based on Eadweard Muybridge, Andy Warhol and New American Cinema. A study in men, movements and a symbol. This is the 7th part of this series of film exercises. The other 6 parts were staged by Harun Farocki (Part 1), Carlos Bustamante (Part 2), Helke Sander (Part 3), Holger Meins (Part 4), Wolfgang Petersen (Part 5), Philip Werner Sauber (Part 6).

I was on a ship – this sounds like a novel: I had just embarked for Venezuela on June 2, 1967 as the Shah of Iran was arriving in West Berlin. There were protests, a student was shot, and a new form of opposition movement came into existence. The idea for this film came to me while I was still aboard the ship. The film is structured like a commercial. The film takes a metaphor literally: words can become weapons. However, it also shows that these weapons are made of paper. The weapon spoiled everything for the Shah and his wife, they are wearing paper bags on their heads with faces drawn on them – the kind of bags worn by Iranian students during demonstrations to hide their identity from the Savak, the Iranian Secret Service. When I showed this film to the audiences in the late 60s, it was highly praised. I think people understood then that over obviousness is also a form of irony. This capacity was lost a few years later. I think it's coming back today. –HF

Five young men ride their bicycles through the city, each of them having a piece of a huge movie advertisement attached to his bike.