Kafka Goes to the Movies

Interdisciplinary studies put into practice is a plane on which HaF's interests and mine coincide. Ideas of fictional research projects in films emerge very early on, or of film as research device, allowing people from different disciplines to come together and discover something, to pursue a line of thought, or just be adventurous. These ideas correspond to a tendency we both have of accumulating knowledge from different sciences, for example so as to bring exact sciences like medicine together with subjects which aren't directly aimed at application, such as religious studies or anthropology.

Die Kommissarin is a German police TV series which aired on Das Erste. Its 66 episodes ran from 1994 till 2006. The series, which takes place in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is notable as being the first, and as yet one of the few commercially successful, German detective series to have a female lead character. The main character is Inspector Lea Sommer, played by Hannelore Elsner. Sommer is divorced with custody of her teenage son, Daniel. She is looking forward to a new relationship with her new boyfriend, Jonathan. Although Lea and Jonathan telephone each other frequently, he has never actually been seen or heard on screen. Sommer was originally paired with Nick Siegel, but in a 1996 episode, Siegel was shot to death by an escaping criminal. His last words were "Lea, ich fühle mich so kalt". Sommer's current partner officer is Jan Orlop. Die Kommissarin airs on the German Language channel German Kino Plus in the United States. In Finland it airs on YLE TV2 under the title Etsivä Lea Sommer.

Beneath the decadence of 1929 Berlin, lies an underworld city of sin. Police investigator Gereon Rath has been transferred from Cologne to the epicenter of political and social changes in the Golden Twenties.

A history of the French Revolution beginning from the decision of the king to convene the Etats-Generaux in 1789 in order to deal with France's debt problem. Part one spans the event until August 10, 1792 (when the King Louis XVI lost all authority and was imprisoned). Part two carries the story through the end of the terror in 1794.

Itinerant projection-equipment repairman Bruno Winter and depressed hitchhiker Robert Lander - a doctor who has just been through a break-up with his wife and a half-hearted suicide attempt - travel along the Western side of the East-German border in a repair truck, visiting worn-out movie theaters, learning to communicate across their differences.

Der Fahnder is a German television krimi series which was aired between 1984 and 2005. In the Netherlands the series was broadcast by the VARA from 3 October 1985.

Murder, Venice, relationships...it's a delicious concoction in the hands of crime novelist Donna Leon. Venice provides the backdrop for the lush film versions of the bestselling novels, which features the indelible Commissario Guido Brunetti, canal boat rides instead of car chases, fine cuisine and crime investigations in one of Europe’s most beautiful locations.

A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.

During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.

Adelheid und ihre Mörder was a German comedy-drama television series broadcast between 1992 and 2006 by Norddeutscher Rundfunk. 65, 50 minute episodes in five series were produced. Directors included Ulrich Stark, Arend Agthe, Claus-Michael Rhone, Stephan Meyer and Stefan Bart Mann.

A group of angels look longingly upon the life of humans. Berlin now is a very different place: unified in name but overrun with crime, corruption, and—in what turns out to be a key theme here—Americans.

Kurt Gerstein—a member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS—is appalled to discover that a poison gas he helped discover is being used to kill Jews. Driven by his conscience to alert the rest of the world, Gerstein teams up with a young Jesuit priest, Riccardo Fontana, but their protestations fall on deaf ears in the Vatican.

In 1988, Figaro magazine asked a few famous directors to direct a series of short movies to celebrate the 10 years of the revue. The movies have been released for the French revolution bicentenary. Includes: Werner Herzog's Les Gaulois, David Lynch's The Cowboy and the Frenchman, Andrzej Wajda's Proust contre la déchéance, Luigi Comencini's Pèlerinage à Agen, Jean-Luc Godard's Le dernier mot.

Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent, is given the mission to track down and kill the very old Alfred Himmelman, an ex-Nazi officer, who might still be alive. Pretending to be a tourist guide, he befriends his grandson Axel, in Israel to visit his sister Pia. The two men set out on a tour of the country, during which Axel challenges Eyal's values.

Gunman Flame and his partner Citron assassinate Nazi collaborators for the Danish resistance. Assigned targets by their Allies-connected leader, Aksel Winther, they relish the opportunity to begin targeting the Nazis themselves. When they begin to doubt the validity of their assignments, their morally complicated task becomes even more labyrinthine.