Positive

Silence = Death

AIDS victims and activists cope with hardship and society’s ignorance.

Fire Under Your Ass

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.

Marianne Rosenberg

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

Survival in New York

Rosa von Praunheim follows the lives and existential struggles of three contrasting German emigrant women in New York City. The protagonists not only tell of their exciting lives in the hectic metropolis, but many dramatic events also take place during filming.

Operndiven - Operntunten

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

Neurasia

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

Thirty Years with the Whip

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.

Men, Heroes and Gay Nazis

The film focuses on gay men who align themselves with hard-core right wing views, skinheads and Nazis. Rosa von Praunheim stated of the subjects featured in the documentary, “Some may be shocked that I do not take a stand in my film and do not portray gay neo-Nazis as monsters, but as people living their lives in dramatic contradiction.”

The Bite

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.

City of Lost Souls

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.

The Einstein of Sex: Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld

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.

I Feel Like Disco

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.

Darkroom

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.

Die Bettwurst

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.

Fassbinder's Women

An essay film in which filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim interviews "the willing victims of Rainer Werner Fassbinder."

Can I Be Your Bratwurst, Please?

A newly arrived guest of a Hollywood hotel charms and amazes the regulars, and they decide to invite him to their Christmas dinner.

Transexual Menace

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.

DAS!

Every evening at 6:45 p.m. sharp, a prominent guest takes a seat on the red sofa—and DAS! provides daily updates on what's hot in the north.