Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein

Marmorera (2007)

The psychiatrist Simon embarks with his newly wed Paula on a wedding trip to Marmorera, the home of his ancestors. The body of a young woman is found on the shore of the reservoir. A little later, the same woman - alive but without an identity - was taken ...

Poem: I Set My Foot Upon the Air and It Carried Me (2003)

A series of poems. ...

Pilgrimage (2001)

Accompanied only by music the film alternates between shots of pilgrims near the tomb of Saint Sergei in Sergiyev Posad, Russia and pilgrims at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico. ...

The Transformation of the World Into Music (1996)

This film was prepared as a introduction to a series of opera broadcasts on German television. It depicts the behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings in preparation for the annual opera festival in Bayreuth. ...

Bells from the Deep (1993)

A group of pilgrims lie down on the thin ice of the lake Svetloyar and begin to look for the city of Kitesh. According to the legend, God saved the city from the Mongolian prince Batyi's soldiers by letting it sink to the bottom of the lake. If you listen ...

Night on Fire (1992)

Enquiries into the murder of a young woman take the private investigator Peter Keller to the idyllic village of Schwant in Emmental. But, the more entangled Keller gets in the treads of the apparently clearcut case of sex murder, the more obvious the flaws ...

Echoes from a Sombre Empire (1990)

Documentary examining Bokassa's rule in the Central African Republic using the testimony of witnesses and visits to key sites. ...

Bavaria Blue (1989)

A German-born director of an American television station travels through Bavaria with a folk music impresario to do research for a show to be broadcast directly to the United States. He comes into contact with all kinds of people and all kinds of different ...

Wodaabe: Herdsmen of the Sun (1989)

Herzog's documentary of the Wodaabe people of the Sahara/Sahel region. Particular attention is given to the tribe's spectacular courtship rituals and 'beauty pageants', where eligible young men strive to outshine each other and attract mates by means of la ...

Der alte Rebell und sein Gold (1989)

Documentary directed by Sylvio Heufelder ...

The Gauls (1988)

Two segments make up this short film. The first portion called "The French" has two men taste testing some delicious wine, and the other, titled "The Gauls", is of men playing rugby. This short by Werner Herzog is part of the "The French as Seen By…" se ...

Zimmer 36 (1988)

Fred is a journalist who investigates the death of a man in room 36. He interviews the man's widow and her deranged mother for clues as to how the man died in a hotel room that is rented by the hour. Also under suspicion is a stranger named Becker who live ...

Triumph der Gerechten (1987)

Der Nachbar (1986)

A former police officer accidentally killed a bystander while hunting criminals. Now he lives alone, continues to search for the criminal and spies on a young neighbor. His relationship with her becomes dangerous for both of them. ...

Portrait: Werner Herzog (1986)

An autobiographical short film by Werner Herzog made in 1986. Herzog tells stories about his life and career. The film contains excerpts and commentary on several Herzog films, including Signs of Life, Heart of Glass, Fata Morgana, Aguirre, the Wrath of G ...

The Practice of Love (1985)

Judith is a maverick reporter who is also seeking a satisfying relationship with various men. She finds corruption and power-games everywhere. ...

Where the Green Ants Dream (1984)

The Australian Aborigines (in this film anyway) believe that this is the place where the green ants go to dream, and that if their dreams are disturbed, it will bring down disaster on us all. The Aborigines' belief is not shared by a giant mining company, ...

Rita Ritter (1984)

A writer tries unsuccessfully to sell his screenplays and plays. He marries a television editor, but she only wants to fuck him and thinks nothing of his work. He then remembers his old Parisian lover Rita, calls himself Rita from then on and becomes her w ...

The Olympic Champion (1983)

Dentist Adi has an extraordinary dream: a boy appears to him and asks to become his father. The unknown boy has chosen the most beautiful woman in Munich - sportswoman Ilona - as his mother. She has ambitions to win an Olympic title. Adi's reality is diffe ...

The Ghost (1982)

Jesus returns to present-day Bavaria, walks around Munich in a somewhat dazed manner and strikes up an affair with a nun, arguing that they are married anyway. Therefore, he refers to himself as "Ober" (waiter), obviously the male form of "Oberin" (Mother ...

Liebeskonzil (1982)

Oskar Panizza's The Council of Love (1895) is a blasphemous play set in 1495, during the first recorded outbreak of syphilis, which Panizza satirically presents as the punishment from Satan for sexually active humans. As a result, Panizza was imprisoned fo ...

Land of Look Behind (1982)

Vignettes portraying the Rastafarians in Jamaica feature the 1981 funeral of musician Bob Marley. ...

Longing for Something Completely Different (1981)

A young woman strolls through the night, then boards a train. Seeking closeness to others she chooses an unusual method by searching through people's luggage. ...

The Candidate (1980)

Made with an eye to the autumn of 1980 when the German parliamentary elections took place, The Candidate examines Germany's history past and present and Franz Josef Strauß, the man who, as the CDU/CSU candidate, aspires to be elected to the most important ...

The Patriotic Woman (1979)

Gabi Teichert, a history teacher, is unhappy with the way history is portrayed in textbooks and is looking for an alternative, more practical approach to 'uncovering' the past, quite literally digging with the spade and dissecting books with hammers and dr ...

Der Komantsche (1979)

After several years in a coma, the Comanche, an Indian, wakes up in a Bavarian hospital. But reality does not match the dreams he had of it during his coma: it seems bleak and barren to him. The Comanche shows the audience his view of everyday life in Germ ...

Woyzeck (1979)

Having fathered an illegitimate child with his lover, Marie, feckless soldier Franz Woyzeck takes odd jobs around his small town to provide some extra money for them. One job is volunteering for experiments conducted by a local doctor, who puts Woyzeck on ...

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

A real estate agent leaves behind his beautiful wife to go to Transylvania to visit the mysterious Count Dracula and formalize the purchase of a property in Wismar. ...

New Year's Eve (1978)

A short film made by Sirk at the end of his life with one of his students. An adaptation of Schnitzler, with Hanna Schygulla: a night of New Year's Eve, when the family meal is finished, Hanna is in a window while a young man entertains her and talks of th ...

Germany in Autumn (1978)

Nine fictitious documentaries and films reflect the mood of late 1970s Germany, particularly the two-month period in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped by the RAF (Red Army Faction). The kidnap had been made to orchestrate the release of the original le ...

Bye-Bye Bavaria! (1978)

A renowned and sensitive poet and writer is fed up with the crudenesses of his native Bavaria and, in a well-publicized move, says he refuses even to die there. ...

La Soufrière: Waiting for an Inevitable Catastrophe (1977)

Werner Herzog takes a film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that the volcano on the island is going to erupt. Everyone has left, except for one old man who refuses to leave. ...

People Preparing the Staufer Anniversary (1977)

Alexander Kluge documents the preparations for an exhibition on the Staufer dynasty. ...

Ob's stürmt oder schneit (1977)

On December 12, 1945 Maria Stadler got (as one of the first from the American occupying power) the license to operate a movie theater. At first she ran a traveling cinema, which went so well that she opened on 30 October 1953 Maria's Kino in Bad Endorf, wh ...

Beer Chase (1977)

A man who is dissatisfied with his senseless existence in his family-life and social status steals the uniform of a policeman and then enters the Oktoberfest. Now he is somebody, he is important, he can help, people respect him, etc. His wife, other relati ...

Nachrichten von den Staufern (1977)

Alexander Kluge reflects on the medieval Staufer dynasty and draws a line from Emperor Barbarossa to Operation Barbarossa. ...

There Is a Criminal Touch to Art (1976)

A documentation of the live Action Ulay performed in Berlin in 1976. It shows step by step his arranged "art theft" of Carl Spitzweg's painting "The Poor Poet" from the Neue Nationalgalerie and his reception in commentaries and reactions from the press. ...

Heart of Glass (1976)

A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obsse ...

The Atlantic Swimmers (1976)

Munich Heinz and Herbert wants to escape the torturous confines of their home by swimming across the Atlantic. ...

No One Will Play with Me (1976)

A darkly humorous short documentary about a preschool-age boy ostracised from interactions with his classmates until a girl who has become interested in his pet crow provides the link to social acceptance. ...

Das Andechser Gefühl (1975)

An anxious teacher (played, as is the lead role in all his films, by the director) sits in a beer garden on the hill of the Andechs monastery. While flies drown in his mug of beer, he confronts a life of failure: the wife he ignored, the child he neglected ...

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

The film follows Kaspar Hauser, who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him. ...

The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974)

A study of the psychology of a champion ski-flyer, whose full-time occupation is carpentry. ...

Rolf und Susanne gehen ins Hallenbad (1974)

Rolf and Susanne visit an indoor swimming pool. They learn how to buy tickets at the ticket office, how to find and use the changing rooms and showers and how to behave correctly in the pools for swimmers and non-swimmers. ...

Fata Morgana (1972)

Shot under extreme conditions and inspired by Mayan creation theory, the film contemplates the illusion of reality and the possibility of capturing for the camera something which is not there. It is about the mirages of nature—and the nature of mirage. ...

Land of Silence and Darkness (1971)

Through examining Fini Straubinger, an old woman who has been deaf and blind since her teens, and her work on behalf of other deaf-blind people, this film shows how the deaf-blind struggle to understand and accept a world from which they are almost wholly ...

Handicapped Future (1971)

A documentary by Werner Herzog exploring the different treatment accorded to the disabled in Germany and the USA. ...

Precautions Against Fanatics (1969)

The film features several horse trainers and other track workers talking about their roles at the track, always eventually interrupted by an older man who claims to be the true authority, and demands that they be thrown out. One recurring young man, the fi ...

Wilder Reiter GmbH (1967)

Georg Maltus wants to make a career as an editor in Munich, but has to make do with a job as publicity manager for pop singer Kim Calder. Kim lives on the outskirts of the city in a wooden house with bum types who are involved in his "Wilder Reiter GmbH". ...

La Soufrière: Waiting for an Inevitable Catastrophe (1977)

Werner Herzog takes a film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that the volcano on the island is going to erupt. Everyone has left, except for one old man who refuses to leave. ...