Kurt Naumann

In the last house just behind the western borders of Russia, between Paris/Texas and Korleput/Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Cindy Sherman, Dogma 95 and Duma 2000, Frank Castorf directs his virst video production "Dämonen" ("Demons") as a sort of post-Soviet-panslavistic panopticon in his own dramaturgy based on Dostojewski's "Demons" and Camus' "The Posessed". All that in set designer Bert Neumann's industrial-designed bungalow (with swimming pool) built onto forbidding landscape.

In East Berlin in the late 70s, two boys meet one evening in a disco: Thomas, who is from a working class family and is doing an apprenticeship, and Michael, a 16-year-old school pupil from an educated middle-class family. They both miss the tram home and walk together instead, ending up at Michael’s house where they discuss God and the world into the early hours. Following this encounter the two boys enter into an unusual friendship, united by their mutual desire to get away from the phoniness, the limitations and the restrictions of their parents and of society.

Melissa (38) and Nadja (23) live together in Berlin. Melissa, a tomboyish beauty, is professionally successful but privately rather frustrated and damaged by men. Nadja is an intelligent, sensitive girl who likes to hide her gentle femininity behind a facade of aggressive cheekiness, and the harmonious coexistence of the two women is disrupted by Nadja's sudden desire to have a child. The hunt for the ideal father for her "elite baby" begins. He should be strong, intelligent, sensitive and lovable. Just as they imagine the only acceptable man who has ever existed in their opinion: Albert Einstein. But unfortunately he is already dead! In the search for their "EINSTEIN", men are presented to us with their quirks and neuroses, victims of our "modern industrial society".

Anna is an only child and the child of divorced parents. Her parents get along reasonably well and are quite considerate toward Anna. One day, she discovers the dwarf, a tiny creature that she puts in her ear. When he is not asleep, he interferes in the little girl's problems. Anna has more than she can handle: living with her busy father, afternoons with her actress mother, her first day at school, her unpleasant neighbor Hermann, who falls in love with Anna. The latter was mistakenly caused by the dwarf, even though Anna is interested in Peter.

The architect Daniel Brenner is in his late thirties when he receives his first challenging and lucrative commission: to design a cultural center for a satellite town in East-Berlin. He accepts the offer under the condition that he gets to choose who he works with. This way, he reunites with former colleagues and friends - most of them architects or students of architecture who have since chosen a different profession due to personal restraint or economic confinement. Together, they develop a concept which they hope will be more appealing to the public than the conventional and dull constructions common to the German Democratic Republic. However, their ambitious plans are once and again foiled by their conservative supervisors. As frustration grows, Daniel has trouble keeping his career in balance with his family-life: his wife Wanda wants to leave for West-Germany.

Heidi M. is in her late forties and has a small store in the pulsating center of Berlin. She goes out in the evenings with her friend Jacqui, but when she is unexpectedly confronted with romantic love, old wounds are opened.