Kinder sind keine Rinder

A documentary with fictious elements. Ms. Elisabeth (Lieschen) Müller from Austria comes to Bonn, Germany to find herself a man. During the search she investigates the connections between neckties, political power and prostitution, and tries to look for the influence the german feminist movement had on the men in Germany's capital.

“Six young people move through a city in order to establish the starting point of their joint action. But they can’t agree on the topic. In the end everybody goes their own way and leaves the city.” - Hartmut Bitomsky

A sexual assault and its consequences. The 2nd of three self-contained shorts from Helke Sander's series of shorts entitled From the Reports of Security Guards & Patrol Services.

Berlin Underground-star Ulrike S. went to the Toronto-Filmfestival and then to New York - to find out something about the film business and also about her own desires, daydreams and nightmares.

I was on a ship – this sounds like a novel: I had just embarked for Venezuela on June 2, 1967 as the Shah of Iran was arriving in West Berlin. There were protests, a student was shot, and a new form of opposition movement came into existence. The idea for this film came to me while I was still aboard the ship. The film is structured like a commercial. The film takes a metaphor literally: words can become weapons. However, it also shows that these weapons are made of paper. The weapon spoiled everything for the Shah and his wife, they are wearing paper bags on their heads with faces drawn on them – the kind of bags worn by Iranian students during demonstrations to hide their identity from the Savak, the Iranian Secret Service. When I showed this film to the audiences in the late 60s, it was highly praised. I think people understood then that over obviousness is also a form of irony. This capacity was lost a few years later. I think it's coming back today. –HF

A look into the life of Holger Meins, the German cinematography student who became a revolutionary and a prominent voice in the Vietnam War protest movement. This film is comprised of interviews with his associates.

Lucy, who is already human-like, claims that the first humans were mothers: The mother built a nest to secure the child when it became too heavy to carry. This is how she invented the house. She penetrated the dense branches with her voice to maintain contact with the child. That's how she invented language. Today, Lucy shakes her head and asks: "How did you let yourself be dragged down like that?".

Ihre Zeitungen is a political film rooted in the 1968 student campaign against the Springer press group, which controlled popular dailies such as the Berliner Zeitung and the Bild Zeitung. Claiming the latter were manipulating public opinion, the students laid siege to the publisher's offices. These events made a strong impression on the German collective conscience, and it's in this context that Farocki made this "agit-prop" film.

Anna, an artist, is obsessed with the invasion of alien doubles bent on total destruction. Her schizophrenia is reflected in the juxtapositions of long movie camera takes with violently edited montages: private with public spaces; black & white with colour, still photographs with video, earsplitting sounds with disruptive camera angles. Anna uses her body like a map; after a devastating quarrel with her lover, she paints red stitches on herself. Watching their scenes together, we realize how seldom, if ever before, the details of sexual intimacy have been shown in film from the point of view from a woman. Export privileges rupture over unity and never settles for one-dimensional solutions

Jenny is on the road in her film producer's Rolls-Royce, which she has to drive to a film shoot and a wedding. When she gets lost at night, she finds a wrecked car in the ditch and rescues a skinhead.

An austere treatise on the military-industrial complex that produces napalm.

A woman threatens to jump off a crane with her two young children in order to secure affordable housing.

When an ordinary-looking man tries to buy a mirror in an upscale shop, class conflicts arise. The third part of the short film series.

Story concerns two friends, Freya and Irmtraut and their relationships with the same man, Traugott, who finds it impossible to choose between the two women.

A concise blast of feminist film making, Sander's first film is a tense yet playful four minute short that dissects a typical urban scene at a bus stop on a busy street in Berlin.

A young German soldier named Paul goes AWOL and returns to his childhood home in the countryside. Over a few summer days, Paul evades the responsibilities of everyday life and falls in love with his brother’s girlfriend, disrupting the lives of everyone in his circle.