Vicious Circle

Moritz Stiefel faces expulsion due to poor marks. When he is caught with an essay titled “Shame and Lust”, he is indeed kicked out – instead of classmate Melchior Gabor, who actually penned it. Gabor was drawing on his experiences with neighbourhood girl Wendla. Then Wendla turns up pregnant. Stiefel descends into despair ... Exploitation between Eros and Thanatos in this “sexual tragedy of youth” based on Frank Wedekind’s play. Setting the film in the 1920s provided a chance to explore “modern” youth culture, complete with cigarettes, jazz music, the gramophone, and a goodly bit of alcohol. Richard Oswald, a master of films of manners and young sex beginning in the 1910s, fully explores the temptations of the youthful body, even early childhood flirtatiousness. At the same time, with his target audience in mind, the film laments the bigotry and double standards of the adult world.

Film by Waschneck.

For centuries, the water supply of a mountain village has depended on an endangered, wooden water pipe. The young engineer Josi blows a channel in the rock. After initial resistance, the villagers are excited about it. The film was based on a novel by Jakob Christoph Heer.

In the Werra valley near the border is one of the five soda factories of the GDR that once belonged to the powerful Solvay group. After the war, they moved the headquarters from Berneburg to Frankfurt, but some people loyal to the groups bosses remained to sabotage the production in the now nationally owned factory.

A deranged woman artist falls in love with a young sculptor. The impossible love ends tragically.

The film tells the life story of Louise Otto Peters, who in the middle of the XIX century in Germany for the first time raised a voice of protest against the unfair treatment of women and their labor. She created the first "women's newspaper" in Germany. The daughter of a famous lawyer, Louise could have easily arranged her life by marrying the wealthy Baron Rodern. But she chose a different purpose in life - to fight for equal rights for women. Through her articles and public speeches, she won the authority and respect of ordinary people.

In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.

About the wealthy Mr Markurell and his son, Johan, who is closing in on his graduation, and their life in the city of Wadköping. German language version.

Kurt, an apprentice in a fish combine, is an ambitious loner. He wants to show what a good sailor he is at a regatta, but fails because of his recklessness and the storm. Disappointed, he seeks affection from the girl Anke, but she loves the apprentice Hannes. During a trip together with Captain Laue, who presents himself as a fatherly friend to Kurt, the boys get into an argument. However, when Laue makes an unscheduled call at Bornholm and Kurt discovers that Laue wants to sell the cutter's catch and equipment and flee, he buries his differences with Hannes. Together and with the help of the old fisherman Jens, the boys rescue the cutter.

Prim professor Immanuel Rath finds some of his students ogling racy photos of cabaret performer Lola Lola and visits a local club, The Blue Angel, in an attempt to catch them there. Seeing Lola perform, the teacher is filled with lust, eventually resigning his position at the school to marry the young woman. However, his marriage to a coquette -- whose job is to entice men -- proves to be more difficult than Rath imagined.

Based on an authentic case from the 1920s. The head country constable Heinz Lippert arrests the Polish farm worker Jakubowski on suspicion of murdering a child - his adopted son. Although he has insufficient evidence, public prosecutor Becker takes the case to court. Jakubowski is sentenced to death, the "Polish murderer" fits in with the propaganda of the time. Lippert, encouraged by the communist editor Hartmann, tries to prevent the sentence from being carried out and even investigates the real perpetrator. In vain, the death sentence was carried out prematurely. After the Nazis seized power, the public prosecutor, now an SS leader, had the men who had uncovered the true facts arrested. Lippert joins the underground resistance.

The young orphan Helga is raised by her aunt after WW II. At the age of sixteen, she turns her back to go her own way. As a rambler, Helga wanders through the night streets of Berlin and has brief acquaintances.

A recent rediscovery, master cinematographer Schüfftan’s only film as a director is a free-spirited, fast-paced ode to being young, free, hopeful... and completely broke.