Under the Underground

This documentary about the culture of intense cinephilia in New York City reveals the impassioned world of five obsessed movie buffs. These human encyclopedias of cinema see two to five films a day, and from 600 to 2,000 films per year. This is the story of their lives, their memories, their unbending habits and the films they love.

Looks like an alien, sings like a diva - Klaus Nomi was one of the 1980s' most profoundly bizarre characters to emerge through rock music: a counter tenor who sang pop music like opera and brought opera to club audiences and made them like it. The Nomi Song is a film about fame, death, friendship, betrayal, opera, and the greatest New Wave rock star that never was!

Mia, who lends her voice to a Japanese Anime super heroine, finds reality and fiction to be interlacing more and more. Suddenly, Mia can see electricity, leap off rooftops and save people’s lives. But as Mia’s superpowers grow, so does her awareness of looming danger. Just as in the Kimiko anime, hostile powers are planning a massive electric blackout to destroy the city, maybe even humanity itself. And while Mia tries to save everybody from the imminent crisis, it's her own stability which seems to be put at stake.

Marc is a wealthy but critically ill man who is living life to the full one final time. Alongside his ordered existence as a human resources manager in Luxembourg he enjoys a bacchanalic life with young male 'companions' in the luxury hotels of major cities whose opera houses happen to be playing Mozart’s 'Don Giovanni'. This opulently filmed documentary follows Marc on his journeys, accompanies him on his visits to doctors, and allows him to expound upon his personal philosophy of power, money and control over both himself and others. Marc's life is uncompromisingly black and white. His structured routine is essential to help him "keep his head above water". But then his life begins to unravel when he falls in love with a porn actor and follows him into the world of Berlin’s HustlaBall.

Art dealer Salvatore Viviano and director Angela Christlieb embark on a search for the lost artist collective Gelitin, which since the 1990s has shattered the borders of "good taste" again and again with extravagant actions and installations. Interviews with old companions and artist friends in the U.S., Europe, and Asia are linked with anarchically montaged Gelitin archive material: intense, transgressive, experimental, gaudily colorful, funny, and virulent.

GW Pabst: film director, patriarch, "the Great Unknown". The giant of German-language cinema, at last told privately and artistically in all his in all his contradictoriness. Silent films interweave with real stories in a journey from the 1920s to today. A film about dream and trauma, about an enormous artistic, film-historical and personal heritage and about the change in the image of male pose and female power...

Early experimental film by Angela Christlieb.

Early short film by Angela Christlieb

With this hybrid composed of documentary and performance video in split-screen format, Christlieb guides the audience on a spherical journey through perfectly composed image collages that open up painterly insight into the ambivalences of artistic attitudes and the methods of contemporary music production. (Diagonale 2023)

Yi-Chun loves dancing. She attends ballet classes at her high school, with a lot of discipline, even if the exercises are painful. "Made in Taiwan" is a sensitive portrait of a 17-year-old Taiwanese girl who shares her very personal worries and joys with us. The young woman loves to eat, but every intake of food is watched suspiciously by her family; the slightest weight gain is a hindrance to her dancing career. Her voice-over tells of her school day, which is subject to a strict dramaturgy: the alarm clock rings at 5:45 am, she is often not home until 7 pm, then she does her homework, takes a shower and goes to bed - she has neither time nor energy for a boyfriend. The annual school trip to the seaside is the perfect escape from the routine: karaoke on the bus, sweets and a fairground make for a good atmosphere. Monika Treut observes the youthful hustle and bustle without judging it, always keeping a careful eye on her protagonist's face.

Species from primeval times appear from the depth, digging into the sand like aliens from another universe. Bizarre, monstrous but fragile as well. Accompanied by the scores of Radian.