Elfi Mikesch

Wanda, a dominatrix who runs an S&M gallery on the Hamburg waterfront, must choose between her lesbian lover and an American trainee.

The story of a child who faces the emptiness that surrounds the figure of his parents, disappeared in Africa.

An unusual story of a triangular relationship in Vienna. A woman shares an apartment with a man named Malina. The woman meets Ivan and falls under his spell. It will be her last great passion. Her feelings are so strong and all-encompassing that Ivan can neither understand nor return them.

From feminist director and provocateur Monika Treut comes this eclectic collection of four short documentaries profiling unconventional women. One has Camille Paglia explaining her ways of thinking. One has Annie Sprinkle explaining her approach to performance art, which includes inviting audience members to view her cervix with a speculum. One interview investigates a professional woman's preoccupation with sadomasochism. The fourth documents the life adjustments of an F2M (female-to-male) sex change who looks like a dangerous biker, with slick black hair, a matching motorcycle jacket, and tattoos.

A mentally unstable woman and her son move to a sprawling mansion in Portugal to grow roses.

The life story of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a German Jew, who as a physician established the field of sexology, and fought militantly against German anti-sodomy laws in the late 19th century. The script reveals main characters in Hirschfeld's life including impossible love interest Baron von Teschenberg, and Hirschfeld's aids- young Karl Giese and guardian angel, the transvestite Dorchen, as they establish the First Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin in 1920, and follows their struggles to keep it open, up to the rise of the Third Reich in the mid 1930s.

A young woman is fed up with the usual consumer's television and begins to make her own television, or more correctly, closevision. She is now a reporter who wanders around Berlin with her camera and 'telecasting apparatus' on her back. Her livingroom has been transformed into a studio and here the different programs are assembled and aired: statements, interviews, realistic and phantastic programs.

Vicky, an out-of-work actress, struggling waitress and lesbian has her whole life thrown into turmoil when her father comes from Germany to visit. The main problem is that Vicky has told him she is a successful actress and happily married. She enlists the help of a gay friend to play her husband. Using a large range of characters—gay, lesbian, straight, transsexuals—the film creates a funny and touching view of family dynamics and sexuality.

After reading a postcard that her mother let go in the wind, a woman learns that she has a twin.

Stylized, black and white biography of Frances Farmer by author Lynne Tillman and Sheila McLauglin.

The eponymous party is hosted by Queenie and Burrs, long-term lovers who are rapidly growing apart.

The sexual fantasies of women are explored by four female directors.

Max Taurus, a sort of amateur detective, pursues the traces of general omni-present crime back to a partially demolished house. There, the remaining tenants try to gain pleasure and power from progressive abandonment in order to tear down their own conventionalities.

Nurses on the night shift roll dice to see which AIDS patient will die next. The owner of a gay bathhouse gets Kaposi's Sarcoma but tries to keep his mind on profits. An epidemic victim is harassed by a reporter on his death bed - he sticks her with a contaminated syringe. The government opens a quarantine called Hell Gay Land. Gay terrorists kidnap the Minister of Health...

Rex Gildo’s songs and musicals made him very popular. His best-known song was “Fiesta Mexicana” from 1972. Rosa von Praunheim tells the story of his life in the context of the gay pride movement, the normative pressures of the Schlager music industry, and the profound changes currently underway.

A retrospective look at the making of "World on a Wire".

Together with her bisexual friend and manager Stefan, singer Miko is working on a great career that has so far failed to materialize.

An actor and poet falls in love with a former mortuary photographer turned waitress. They find themselves caught up way over their heads in a dirty political and financial affair, an art smuggling case that touches them merely for the fact that it may separate them, be it through death or exile.

Monika Treut explores the worlds and thoughts of several female to male transgendered individuals. As with Treuts first film, Jungfrauenmaschine, Gendernauts, enters a minority sector of San Fransisco culture. The characters in this film have a lot to complain about, and they do. They are people whose physical appearance (female) does not match their inner sexual identity (male). The subject is pinpointed in the film independant of sexual orientation. Leave your conservative hats at the door, this is going to need your special attention.

Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life.

It’s the early 1950s and little Franzi is growing up in the small Austrian town of Judenburg. Her oppressive family home is dominated by her feverish and mentally ill father, who is rigid and unpredictable. Her father, who regularly delivers halves of pork for the butcher, spent several years in the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, Algeria and Syria – a period which he partly glorifies but which still also haunts him. Franzi immerses herself in this world by looking at an abundance of beguiling yet disturbing photographs taken at the time by her father. Her own childish fantasy realm of fairy tales and picture books soon intermingle with nightmares as reality merges with imagination, war, horror and beauty.

A documentary about the making of the television mini-series by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, including interviewees with the principal actors.

Half documentary, half docu-drama about a German karate champion, who used to be a successful pimp...

The authentic story of Maria Zechmeister who lived in an Upper Austrian village and was convicted of the murder of her husband. There was no evidence and no confession. Only rumors. Maria and the witnesses re-enact the trial before the camera. They tell about the marriage, the time the husband was a prisoner of war and his return from captivity. If he really had been poisoned or if she was a victim of injustice remains open. Maria Zechmeister was pardoned after serving 17 years in prison and lives in an isolated house at the outskirts of the village.