Werner Schroeter

This Night (2009)

Werner Schroeter directed this dark and surreal tale of a man determined to save a lost lover from a grim fate at the hands of a violent mob. The city of Santa Maria is falling into chaos as an armed military faction is poised to take power in a coup d'eta ...

Deux (2002)

After reading a postcard that her mother let go in the wind, a woman learns that she has a twin. ...

The Queen – Marianne Hoppe (2000)

Werner Schroeter's lovely and touching portrait of the great German actress Marianne Hoppe, whose career spanned from the glory days of the Weimar era through the Nazi years to a postwar return to the stage in Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and experimen ...

Love’s Debris (1996)

German director Werner Schroeter invited his favourite opera singers to a 13th century abbey near Paris. There was no pre-planned action. There was no script, no continuity. On the other hand, there were precise constraints that provided the rules of the g ...

Malina (1991)

An unusual story of a triangular relationship in Vienna. A woman shares an apartment with a man named Malina. The woman meets Ivan and falls under his spell. It will be her last great passion. Her feelings are so strong and all-encompassing that Ivan can n ...

Auf der Suche nach der Sonne (1987)

Schroeter casts his tutored eye on Mnouchkine, the legendary founder of the avant-garde Théâtre du Soleil, with whom he shared an affinity for collage and pastiche, improvisation and distillation, ancient Greek drama, commedia dell'arte, opera, and Asian ...

The Rose King (1986)

A mentally unstable woman and her son move to a sprawling mansion in Portugal to grow roses. ...

For Example, Argentina (1985)

Documentary on State terrorism during the last military dictatorship in Argentina, made in its aftermath. Invited by the Goethe-Institut to hold a workshop with young film students, Schroeter contrasts the official statements of the regime with the testimo ...

The Laughing Star (1983)

One of the most caustic and personal essay films ever made, Werner Schroeter's account of the 1983 Manila Film Festival, presided over by Imelda Marcos, chronicles the legacy of American and Spanish imperialism as it presents a "kaleidoscope of a ravaged c ...

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 ...

Day of the Idiots (1981)

A woman experiences psychic disintegration and ends up in a psychiatric hospital. ...

Dress Rehearsal (1980)

An exhilarating, essayistic documentary about the 1980 festival of experimental theatre in the French city of Nancy. Werner Schroeter's favourite of his own films. ...

White Journey (1980)

One of Werner Schroeter's most important and inventive works, this threadbare evocation of Jean Genet's notorious Querelle depicts the erotic adventures of two sailors through the world's seaports in the manner of a cut-rate silent movie. ...

Palermo or Wolfsburg (1980)

An impoverished young man from Sicily travels to Wolfsburg, West Germany to find work. He takes a job in the Volkswagen factory after he travels through Northern Italy by train. ...

Army of Lovers or Revolt of the Perverts (1979)

Personal diary-style documentary of German Gay rights activist Von Praunheim's sojourn in the US. ...

The Kingdom of Naples (1978)

Thirty years of Neapolitan history (from 1942 to 1972) through the ups and downs of the Cavioli and Pagano families. ...

Gold Flakes (1976)

Werner Schroeter's rhapsody of excess leaps from 1949 Cuba to contemporary France to points in between, while its feverishly shifting visual style evokes and parodies everything from kitschy Mexican telenovelas to silent French art films. ...

Joan's Dream (1975)

With the ascetic grandeur of Carl Th. Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, Schroeter evokes the visions of Saint Joan, partly through unused footage of Darling and Caven pantomiming in his 1972 film The Death of Maria Malibran. ...

The Black Angel (1974)

Two women, one from Boston and one from Germany, flee their empty lives to seek fulfillment in Mexico. The Black Angel is a transitional film; on one hand, it is a companion piece to Willow Springs, featuring two Schroeter regulars as characters far from h ...

Willow Springs (1973)

Living together in an isolated house, three women go to murderous lengths to keep strangers out of their private retreat. ...

Grotesk – Burlesk – Pittoresk (1972)

Short film directed by Rosa von Praunheim and Werner Schroeter. Considered lost. ...

The Death of Maria Malibran (1972)

A series of tableaux illustrating the life and death of a celebrated 19th century German opera singer. ...

Salome (1971)

Schroeter's virtuosic staging of the Oscar Wilde tragedy is a complex montage of image and sound, filmed on the grand steps of Baalbeck, the ancient Roman temple in Lebanon, and interweaving Lebanese and German folk songs with the music of Verdi, Wagner, S ...

Der Bomberpilot (1970)

Schroeter's film is a chronicle of Germany from the Nazi era until the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, centering on three women who search for a career as singers and dancers. ...

Eika Katappa (1969)

Collage of dramatic scenes, some exaggerated to comic effect, with asynchronous sound from well known classic, operatic, and rock and roll music – with different approaches to love, suffering, and death. ...

Neurasia (1969)

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

Argila (1969)

Werner Schroeter's stunning split-screen short deals with what the director called "archaic, fundamental themes" of love and mourning. ...

Aggression (1968)

Aggression, Schroeter's first 16mm film, is the fictive portrait of a woman who is oppressed by her (unseen) boyfriend. ...

Himmel hoch (1968)

A love triangle, accompanied by traditional German Christmas songs. ...

Paula – « Je reviens » (1968)

One of Schroeter's first experiments in choreography, as he stages actors in an empty room. ...

Carla (1968)

Carla is a different form of homage, in which Carla Aulaulu sings a song by Gitta Linds. ...

Maria Callas singt 1957 Rezitativ und Arie der Elvira aus Ernani 1844 von Giuseppe Verdi (1968)

"Of all the female interpreters I know, Maria Callas was the one who, in her expressive power, could let time stand so long until all fear disappeared, including that of death itself, and reached a state similar to what should be called happiness has been. ...

Mona Lisa (1968)

"My camera was silent, and so I started to compose wild sound collages for my films from my records with the help of tape, for example with my favorite Callas arias. I even got her to sing with herself that way. I also contrasted Schlager scraps of the Cat ...

Maria Callas Porträt (1968)

Animated stills of Maria Callas and overlaid with a soundtrack of her singing. ...

Callas – Text mit Doppelbeleuchtung (1968)

Rosas Welt – 70 neue Filme von Rosa von Praunheim (2012)

Rosa von Praunheim is an icon in the scene: gay activist, loving provocateur and a very special filmmaker from Berlin for decades. His curiosity for people and their fates runs through his extensive film work. For his 70th birthday he has now made 70 new s ...

We Must Save Him! (interview with Werner Schroeter) (2012)

Petite intrusion dans l’univers incandescent de Werner Schroeter (2012)

Mondo Lux: The Visual Worlds of Werner Schroeter (2011)

Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter's films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vi ...

Vivre à Naples et Mourir (Entretien avec Werner Schroeter) (2011)

"On the occasion of the premiere of Nel Regno di Napoli in Cannes in 1978, Werner Schroeter gave me an audio interview about this film and about his work in general. Our meeting took place on the terrace of the Hotel Majestic, in the midst of excitement of ...

Vivre à Naples et Mourir (Entretien avec Werner Schroeter) (2011)

Vivre à Naples et Mourir (Entretien avec Werner Schroeter) is the sound recording of this informal meeting, which took place on 20 May 1978 and which, as the filmmaker wished, is closer to a casual conversation than to an interview in the strict sense of ...

Werner et Nenad (2010)

Daniel Schmid: Le Chat Qui Pense (2010)

When director Daniel Schmid grew up, his parents ran a hotel in the Alps, and this singular setting was to influence his film. Rather by coincidence, he came to Berlin in the early 1960s and became part of the new German wave. Schmid worked with, among oth ...

Begegnung mit Werner Schroeter (2009)

A meeting with Werner Schroeter. An sequence originally featured in Wyborny's Das letzte Jahr extended here to its own short film. ...

The Last Year (2009)

Klaus Wyborny's Das letzte Jahr is a take on Ovid's "Fasti" in three parts. Yet, "a character as confused as our protagonist hardly would have been able to write the first three. For that it needs a clearer head, and thus one essentially would have to be e ...

So lange ich fliehen noch kann, da schütze ich mich (1990)

Documentary film about a young actor from the GDR who lives in West Germany after moving there. It deals with his close relationship with his mother, his fears, and his sex life. Narcissistically open, radical in his dealings with himself and others, enthu ...

The Ministries of Art (1989)

Philippe Garrel's documentary on France's second wave of masterful filmmakers. Featuring Jean Eustache, Chantal Akerman, André Téchiné, Leos Carax, Jacques Doillon and Benoit Jacquot. ...

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 ...

White Journey (1980)

One of Werner Schroeter's most important and inventive works, this threadbare evocation of Jean Genet's notorious Querelle depicts the erotic adventures of two sailors through the world's seaports in the manner of a cut-rate silent movie. ...

Beware of a Holy Whore (1971)

Film director Jeff and his lead actor are taking their time getting to set. In their absence, the crew lack a purposeful way to spend their time waiting, so they drink heavily. However, as booze is downed and frustration sets in, morale hits rock bottom. ...

Der Bomberpilot (1970)

Schroeter's film is a chronicle of Germany from the Nazi era until the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, centering on three women who search for a career as singers and dancers. ...

Eika Katappa (1969)

Collage of dramatic scenes, some exaggerated to comic effect, with asynchronous sound from well known classic, operatic, and rock and roll music – with different approaches to love, suffering, and death. ...

Sisters of Revolution (1969)

Feminist short film set in West Berlin. A militant group of homosexuals who campaign for women's liberation. Dietmar, who reenacts the oppression and helplessness of women, can only express his protest in one sentence: I don't want to be the Easter Bunny, ...

Alabama (2000 Light Years) (1969)

"The film starts with a shot of a cassette recorder, and it has a juke box in it. There's always music in it. When I was asked by some critics at a festival press conference what the film was all about, I said 'it's about the song All Along The Watchtower, ...

Paula – « Je reviens » (1968)

One of Schroeter's first experiments in choreography, as he stages actors in an empty room. ...

Maria Callas singt 1957 Rezitativ und Arie der Elvira aus Ernani 1844 von Giuseppe Verdi (1968)

"Of all the female interpreters I know, Maria Callas was the one who, in her expressive power, could let time stand so long until all fear disappeared, including that of death itself, and reached a state similar to what should be called happiness has been. ...