Silence = Death

This film powerfully documents New York City's gay community's response to the AIDS crisis as they are forced to organize themselves after the government's failure to stem the epidemic. Activists who are interviewed include playwrite Larry Kramer, People With AIDS Coalition co-founder Michael Callen (who died of AIDS in 1994), New York filmmaker and journalist Phil Zwickler, as well as representatives from ACT-UP, Queer Nation and the Gay Men's Health Crisis.

The German homosexuals to whom the third film "Feuer unterm Arsch" is dedicated are visibly less enthusiastic about safe sex, let alone safe sex 'with Mother Earth', which Allen Ginsburg envisions for dealing with an AIDS-like contaminated earth. In Berlin, the gay capital of Germany, Praunheim encounters a party atmosphere during his research. "There's no one who thinks safe sex is good," say some of them, yet they plead for reason, "you also have to have the freedom to fuck yourself to death," is the extreme response of the boys, who do not want their painstakingly acquired identity as gays to be reduced to an AIDS identity through voluntary restrictions. Praunheim has also tracked down politically active people in Germany, but according to his observations, they are identified with the unpleasant truth and avoided according to the Cassandra principle.

Portrait on Marianne Rosenberg, underground icon Tabea Blumenschein dancing in the background.

Gay men love operas. Is that a stereotype? Markus Tiarks and Rosa von Praunheim try to find out.

Tally Brown, New York is a 1979 documentary film directed, written and produced by Rosa von Praunheim. The film is about the singing and acting career of Tally Brown, a classically trained opera and blues singer who was a star of underground films in New York City and a denizen of its underworld in the late 1960s. In this documentary, Praunheim relies on extensive interviews with Brown, as she recounts her collaboration with Andy Warhol, Taylor Mead and others, as well as her friendships with Holly Woodlawn, and Divine. Brown opens the film with a cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes” and concludes with “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide.” The film captures not only Tally Brown’s career but also a particular New York milieu in the 1970s.

In a dark and spare theatrical space, four characters use gesture, language, and movement to explore themes of desire and mortality.

A portrait of Rosa von Praunheim's neighbor, who worked for decades as a professional dominatrix in Berlin's Wilmersdorf district. While the real Lady MacLaine reflects authentically and wittily on her life and work, her life is retold in dramatized scenes.

MY WONDERFUL WEST BERLIN recounts the lives and struggles of gay men in West-Berlin. Through present-day scenes and never before seen archival footage, a fascinating picture emerges of a city, that today characterizes itself as a dream destination and place of refuge for gays.

Turned while visiting New York, down-on-her-luck Neue Deutsche Welle vampire Sylvana struggles to get by in 1980s West Berlin when she realizes none of her friends want to be bitten.

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 youth in middle of self-discovery, offending with his father, just discovering his sexuality and hiding it again. A boy who's often lonely loses a loved one and is in love with the wrong one.

Lars, a male nurse from Saarbrücken, moves to Berlin with his lover, Roland. They begin to renovate an apartment and their happiness seems almost complete. What Roland doesn’t know is that, while secretly checking out Berlin’s night life, Lars is also experimenting with a deadly poison.

It is love at first sight: elderly secretary Luzi and young, unemployed Dietmar find each other by accident in Rosa von Praunheim’s outrageous genre, social satire.

Daniel, a young gay man, tries to pursue a traditional bourgeois relationship and lifestyle with his live-in boyfriend, but after their love quickly fades, he finds himself moving through different avenues of gay subculture, in pursuit of exotic pleasures.

A fictionalized account about the lurid lives of a group of eccentric cabaret artists who have come from America to Berlin looking for social acceptance and a place to give full reign to their creative nature.

Neurosia is the autobiography of the director Rosa von Praunheim. The movie begins with Rosa presenting his autobiography in a movie theater. Before the film begins, he is shot. But - his body gets lost. A female journalist from a TV station begins researching the life of Rosa. In the course of the movie she speaks to lots of aquaintances, shows short clips from Rosas old movies. Her main aim is to provide sensational and shocking details from Rosas life. It turns out that nearly everybody had some reason to kill Rosa. At the end of the movie, she discovers Rosa at a boat where he is kept prisoner by some of his old enemies. She frees him, and the movie ends.

Pioneering gay German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim explores America’s burgeoning trans rights movement—from early leaders like Virginia Prince to contemporary activist groups like the titular Transexual Menace—in this powerful, yet sensitive documentary.

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...