Flammenzeichen

Berlin Film Fest 1984. The best place for every cinema fan. Everyone wants to be in on the festival, but that may be really difficult, if one has no accreditation. Also Journalist Matthies gets to know the rules of being in or out when he wants to see a screening and is not welcome. Thus he watches an old German silent flick which he is barely interested in. The next day the newspapers are full of reports about a newly discovered German masterpiece from the silent era. It seems that Matthies had luck. He just saw *the* film everybody is talking about now. Also everybody is speculating about its director, who remains unknown. When Matthies talks to Ackrewa, an old befriended projectionist, about the film, the latter seems to recall the name of the director. Matthies decides to research the case. An odyssey into film-history begins and if it is successful Matthies will come up with a top story.

When a German businessman causes a car accident with deadly consequences, the papers start digging into his past to find scandals. What they find causes him to reevaluate his own past during WW2 when he was in Greece.

Dr. Fabian is the good soul at the University Surgical Clinic. Nicknamed "Paulchen" by his famous boss, Professor Spalke, the demigod in white brings joy to the lives of his patients with his cheerful disposition and is also tireless in his support and advice for his students. It's no wonder that women would love to get their hands on this dream man. But Dr. Fabian remains steadfast - until he meets the attractive anaesthetist Inge.

In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.

The 13-year-old Ludwig is to have for every joke. At boarding school he cuts his stern teacher, Captain a. D. Semmelmaier, during the nap from the beard. The angry pedagogue then sends the spoiled flail back to his beloved Bavarian village. The long-suffering mother persuades the rector to resume her reforming boy at the Latin school. Everything seems to be working out for the better, but the upcoming marriage of his sister Ännchen with the Berlin beer brewer Karl Schultheiss presents Ludwig with new challenges.

At an Austrian boys' boarding school in the early 1900s, shy, intelligent Törless observes the sadistic behavior of his fellow students, doing nothing to help a victimized classmate—until the torture goes too far. Adapted from Robert Musil's acclaimed novel, Young Törless launched the New German Cinema movement and garnered the 1966 Cannes Film Festival International Critics' Prize for first-time director Volker Schlöndorff.

Mommsen Gymnasium director Taft secretly places his nephew as a spy with the difficult class of Pepe Nietnagel. During the celebration for the 100th anniversary, a simulated fire forces the school to shut down for a week. The director's attempt to get a tough teacher assigned by the department of education results in the exact opposite because of Nietnagel's intervention.

This drama is taken from Thomas Mann's 1903 semi-autobiographical novel. Tonio (Jean Claude Brialy) is an aspiring writer and the son of a rigid aristocratic father and a music-loving mother. Wandering throughout Germany and Italy to "find himself," Tonio frequently remembers his childhood experiences in a series of flashbacks. The highlight of the film is the expert lensing by cinematographer Wolf Wirth. Erika Mann, the daughter of the late poet and author, collaborated with Ennio Flaiano on the screenplay.

Hans Castorp, fresh from university and about to become a civil engineer, comes to the Sanatorium Berghof in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin Joachim, an army officer, who is recovering there from tuberculosis. Intending to remain at the Berghof for three weeks, Hans is gradually contaminated by the morbid atmosphere pervading the place. Wishing very much to be considered a patient like the others, he achieves his ends and stays in the sanatorium for ...seven years. During this time, he has enough time to take part in the furious philosophical debates pitting against each other Settembrini, a secular humanist, and Naphta, a totalitarian Jesuit. And to fall in love with the beautiful but enigmatic Clawdia Chauchat. When he is finally discharged in 1914 - along with all the other patients - it is only to plunge into the horrors of World War I.

Pepe Nietnagel and his fellow students of the Mommsen school come up with all kinds of ideas to get out of doing any actual school work. This includes simulating suicides, setting off the air-raid sirens and abusing the school director's new broadcasting system. They succeed in sending their teacher to a sanatorium and get a replacement that turns out to not be so bad after all.

The enterprising but chronically indebted factory owner Gustav Mummelmann meets the supposedly wealthy Tyrolean innkeeper Mariele through a marriage advertisement. To fund the trip, he once again takes advantage of his nephew, the record producer Peter Weigand. Peter accompanies Gustav to Tyrol to escape his persistent girlfriend Marion-Madeleine, who is pressuring him to marry her.

Sometime during the 19th century in Switzerland: After a delirious night of drinking, three herdsmen who are all alone in the alps with their kettle, create a female doll from cloth and a strangely formed wooden root. When their creation comes to life in form of an evil and beautiful female demon, they have to fear for their lives...

The story of two young lovers takes a tragic turn as the girl falls in love with the boy's father.

Pepe Notnagel (who inexplicably had his name changed from the first movie's Nietnagel) and his classmates scheme to get around doing any actual school work by cheating or sending their teachers to the sanatorium. A Swiss documentary film maker disguises himself as his brother in law, who got a position as an exchange teacher, to aid his project of making a movie about the current youth.