I Am My Own Woman

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

Tally Brown, New York is a 1979 documentary film directed, written and produced by Rosa von Praunheim. The film is about the singing and acting career of Tally Brown, a classically trained opera and blues singer who was a star of underground films in New York City and a denizen of its underworld in the late 1960s. In this documentary, Praunheim relies on extensive interviews with Brown, as she recounts her collaboration with Andy Warhol, Taylor Mead and others, as well as her friendships with Holly Woodlawn, and Divine. Brown opens the film with a cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes” and concludes with “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide.” The film captures not only Tally Brown’s career but also a particular New York milieu in the 1970s.

Shocking, often hilarious, and always controversial, Rosa von Praunheim delivers a radical treatise on heterosexuality in Red Love by intertwining statements of an outspoken, middle aged advocate of free love, with a melodramatic reenactment of a feminist novel by Alexandra Kollontai, Lenin's first Minister of Culture. Frau Helga Goetze, who at the age of 46 left her seven children and husband of 30 years, describes in detail the progress of her sexual liberation. Now 55 years old, she conservatively estimates the number of her lovers over the last few years at 200.

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

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.

MY WONDERFUL WEST BERLIN recounts the lives and struggles of gay men in West-Berlin. Through present-day scenes and never before seen archival footage, a fascinating picture emerges of a city, that today characterizes itself as a dream destination and place of refuge for gays.

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.

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.

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.

Daniel, a young gay man, tries to pursue a traditional bourgeois relationship and lifestyle with his live-in boyfriend, but after their love quickly fades, he finds himself moving through different avenues of gay subculture, in pursuit of exotic pleasures.

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.

Documentary about the current hustler scene in Berlin. Based on interviews with former and active prostitutes, the realities of male prostitutes in Berlin are treated. The film is objective, and records the hustler scene as a social Submilieu, which is characterized by both tragic fates, as well as everyday things and routines. Not only the direct sale of sexual services is discussed, but also other aspects associated with male prostitution: poverty, drug addiction, AIDS, crime, migration, love and partnership.

Neurosia is the autobiography of the director Rosa von Praunheim. The movie begins with Rosa presenting his autobiography in a movie theater. Before the film begins, he is shot. But - his body gets lost. A female journalist from a TV station begins researching the life of Rosa. In the course of the movie she speaks to lots of aquaintances, shows short clips from Rosas old movies. Her main aim is to provide sensational and shocking details from Rosas life. It turns out that nearly everybody had some reason to kill Rosa. At the end of the movie, she discovers Rosa at a boat where he is kept prisoner by some of his old enemies. She frees him, and the movie ends.

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.

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

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.