BEFORE ME THE SOUTH 

Vor mir der Süden

director: Pepe Danquart

feature documentary, 90min

In "Before Me the South", documentary filmmaker Pepe Danquart travels over 4000 km through Italy, with an old Fiat Millecento inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini. A film about tourism, migration and globalization.

AFRICAN STATES, GATEKEEPERS OF EUROPE 

Türsteher Europas

director: Jan M. Schäfer

tv, documentary, 52min

The documentary explores in 12 countries how Europe is moving its borders through Africa today. Billions of dollars are used to establish African states as new border guards. Development aid is subject to conditions: only those who assist Europe in migration control receive money. Profiteers of this policy are defense and security companies.

THE CONGO TRIBUNAL

Das Kongo Tribunal

director: Milo Rau

cinema documentary, 90min

Triggered by the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the Congo War has claimed up to six million lives. Due to the direct and indirect involvement of all great powers of our time, the war is also referred to as the ‘Third World War’. Many observers do not only see it as a fight about political predominance in Central Africa, but also one of the most decisive economic division battles in the era of globalization. Not only the number of rebel armies involved may be unclear, but also the operations of the arms dealers operating in the supply lines, the role of foreign diplomats and humanitarian relief organizations as well as the involvement of multinational mining companies. Will one of the biggest and bloodiest economic wars of human history decide the future order of the global community?

In the form of a three-day tribunal with an international cast and filmed on-location in Eastern Congo, the film THE CONGO TRIBUNAL examines the causes and backgrounds for a war now ongoing for almost 20 years in the Great Lakes region. The result is a humanly harrowing, profound analytic tableau of the neo-colonial world order. 

Dieses bunte Deutschland

director: Jan Tenhaven

tv documentary, 90min

Die Dokumentation DIESES BUNTE DEUTSCHLAND – ÜBER DEN MUT NACH DER FLUCHT begleitet Flüchtlinge über ein Jahr lang und zeigt ihr neues Leben in Deutschland, geprägt von Willkommenskultur und „Wir schaffen das“, von offener Ablehnung und Hilfslosigkeit sowie deutscher Bürokratie und Heimweh. DIESES BUNTE DEUTSCHLAND – ÜBER DEN MUT NACH DER FLUCHT ist mehr als eine Momentaufnahme. Jenseits der Schlagzeilen geht der Film in die Tiefe und beobachtet, wie sich die Dinge über einen längeren Zeitraum weiterentwickeln – zwischen begeisterter Willkommenskultur und blankem Hass.

Begleitet von einem umfassenden multimedialen Angebot zeigt der Film, wie dramatisch sich sowohl das Leben der Neuen als auch unser Land verändern werden. Für DIESES BUNTE DEUTSCHLAND – ÜBER DEN MUT NACH DER FLUCHT widmen sich mehrere renommierte Dokumentarfilm-Autoren unter der Projektregie von Jan Tenhaven („Herbstgold“) der Beobachtung ausgewählter Protagonisten: Eine angehende Ingenieurin aus Syrien startet im Allgäu auf Umwegen in ihr neues Leben; eine streng gläubige Tschetschenin wartet in einem brandenburgischen Dorf auf den Asylbescheid; ein afghanischer Jugendlicher trotz dem offenen Fremdenhass in Sachsen; und ein syrischer Familienvater kämpft in Berlin darum, seine Kinder aus dem Kriegsland nach Deutschland zu holen.

Deutschland Schlagerland

director: Arne Birkenstock

tv documentary, 90min

“Schlager” (traditional German-language pop music) might be the most hard-to-kill phenomenon in German pop culture. Whatever crisis the genre went through in the course of modernization, it always came out on its feet – usually stronger than before. But what are the stories behind the scenes of the impeccable “Schlager” world? In how far are its stars real artists and what turns these German songs into commercial evergreens? The 90 minute documentary “Deutschland Schlagerland“ explores the personal stories behind the music, travels to provincial stages and major cities, talks to producers and performers. The aim is ambitious: to explain and to understand the socio-cultural phenomenon “Schlager” as a whole.

1917 - The true october

1917 - Der wahre Oktober

director: Katrin Rothe

tv and cinema documentary, 80min

A cut-out animation on Russia in 1917.

Petersburg, 1917: Russian artists in the year of two revolutions. The Tsar resigns and everything seems possible. Eight months between the burgeois-democratic February Revolution and the Bolsheviks’ coming into power in October. An experimental approach to these events through film, inspired by the avant-garde aesthetics of this era and told from the perspective of artists involved, whose names were already globally known then or will be in the future.

My brothers and sisters in the north

Meine Brüder und Schwestern im Norden

director: Sung-Hyung Cho

cinema documentary, 106min

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a country with a very strong social cohesion and the unprecedented admiration of the people for their leader, which is absolutely unique and incomprehensible especially from a Western point of view. The native Korean director Sung-Hyung Cho tries to understand this by accompanying several Koreans from different backgrounds in their daily lives. The film shows the country and its people in a way, as it is rarely done in Western media, non-judgmental and respectful towards the people. More information - website

The night of all nights

Die Nacht der Nächte

director: Yasemin Samdereli

dop: Marcus Winterbauer

2nd DoP and 1. AC

cinema documentary, 90min

The film of Yasemin and Nesrin Samdereli portrays five couples from Germany, Turkey, India, USA and Brazil. All of them have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary together. Married couples who “made it” and accomplished something that today seems almost impossible: Staying together for a lifetime, in good times and in bad. When these people were “young” many rules of etiquette still existed that strongly dictated how “respectable” men and women were meant to behave. “Male and female” role models were clearly defined and breaking from the mold was hardly possible. While different in every society, the “rules” of proposing to a woman were often similarly “strict”. It was not possible to “just meet up”. Holding hands was considered scandalous. The wedding night was for most couples at that time the first sexual encounter with each other.

Our light-hearted and humorous Documentary goes deeply into the secrets of partnership and love. How can couples manage to stay together for a lifetime, when they hardly knew each other in the first place. What can we learn from them in a time where Facebook tells us almost everything from each other, even before the first date?

We also step back into those strange era, when our protagonist were young and when man and woman met and married almost anonymously. Award winning animation artist Izabela Plucinska will bring these times back to us thorugh her fantastic animations.

From 18! Two voices of Korea

 Ab 18! Zwei Stimmen aus Korea

director: Sung-Hyung Cho

tv documentary, 30min

Gye - Young ( 22 ) from North Korea studied pro-regis at Pyöngyanger music school and want to be like the wife of Kim Yong II . Sun - Kyung ( 21 ) studied international relations in Seoul and played in a punk band . Both are ambitious , but have not done the last step in the " Asian tiger " . The functionary daughter Gye - Young can according to their teachers not quite credibly sing the hungry , and her South Korean counterpart has it defies a youth between school and tutoring failed one of the elite universities.

Pretty Ugly

Schön kann Jeder

director: Jan Tenhaven

ARTE, 52min

What is beautiful? What is ugly? These timeless questions have reached a new dimension. It has never been easier to manipulate appearances to meet the ideal criteria for a perfect immaculate body than in the era of plastic surgery, Botox and Photoshop.

PRETTY UGLY is trying to answer these questions by following Del Keens, the ugliest model of the world, who humorously leads us through the cosmos of imperfectness. Born and bred in a working class environment in East London, his classmates made fun of his big teeth and his crooked face. Del made himself comfortable in the role of an outcast until one day an advertising photographer discovered something special in his face and hired Del – as a photomodel. In the 90ies, he was booked for major campaigns like Diesel, Calvin Klein and Levi‘s. But his success didn’t last very long. He now lives on benefits in Berlin, but Del has found a new goal: He wants to establish the first character model agency in Germany, named Misfit Models. Following Del on his mission, we realize that Del’s struggles reflect our own daily struggle to fit into a world dominated by ideals and expectations nobody can fulfill.  Del has developed his own sense of humour that helps him dealing with his looks. Once you get to know him a little better, you soon forget about the uneven face and the bad teeth and, instead, see the beautiful energy and strength beneath it. 

In love. Engaged. Lost.

Verliebt. Verlobt. Verloren

director: Sung-Hyung Cho

cinema documentary, 90min

 www.verliebtverlobtverloren.de

In 1952, North Korean students were sent to other Socialist states for higher education. On return, the students should use the knowledge they gained to re-build the country that had been destroyed during the war. Most of them were sent to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) where young German women met them and fell in love with them. Their personal love and life story began without caring about the bigger political picture. In the 1960ies, most of the North Koreans were forced to return home and leave behind their girlfriends, wives and families in Germany. LOVE IN THE TIMES OF THE WALL portrays the personal story of these families who haven’t seen each other in decades and are now trying to find a way to see each other again – or at least find out what happened to their love or their parent. 

MAKE LOVE

director: Tristan Milewski, Janina Hahn

doku TV series, MDR und SWR

Season 1 - 5, 18 x 45min

If IT doesn’t work – how to find words for the most natural thing on earth

Generations after Beate Uhse and Oswalt Kolle, one would think that Germans were sexually educated, particularly in the time of the internet where satisfaction seems only one click away. The Internet evokes an image of an open-minded society, but are people truly happy with themselves, their relationships, and their sexuality? Have they found a way to communicate about it? 

Not really, says Ann-Marlene Henning, couple therapist, sexologist and author of the novel MAKE LOVE, published in May 2012. Her research revealed how astonishingly little men and women know about their own sexuality, not to mention that of their partners. Lack of communication, especially about sex, is a very common reason to end a relationship. 

Since its publication, MAKE LOVE has remained on the Amazon bestsellers list and has been translated into 20 languages. There is a large desire to talk AND learn more about sexuality, love and relationships. In current times, when one out of five German lives alone, when children watch porn, when humans live to be older and more active, dialogue about sexuality and relationships is found more and more important. 

Together with host and sex and relationship expert Ann-Marlene Henning we created a classy, spirited and natural TV-format. It works trimedially and is augmented by internet and radio material. Finding a language for the most natural thing on earth is our central goal. MAKE LOVE creates a unique, exciting and emotional experience which is relevant and which many people can relate to. You can learn how to make love. High-quality, visually aesthetic, documentary, poetic, entertaining and close to people’s realities. 

For over 40 years, Wolfgang Beltracchi detected gaps in the works of great artists, added to their oeuvres with “new” works of art and placed these on the art market as originals with the help of his wife Helene. Armed with talent, knowledge of art history and good craftsmanship, Beltracchi fooled renowned experts, appraisers, curators, art dealers, gallery owners and collectors all over the world. Beltracchi’s works were auctioned off by auctioneers such as Christies, Sotheby’s or the Kunsthaus Lempertz. “His” painting known as the “Red Picture with Horses, 1914” in the style of Heinrich Campendonk sold for a record price of 2.8 million Euro, experts considered it a “key work of the modern trend” and important museums have already sent inquiries for it. It was this painting that blew the cover off of the forgery scandal. 

In our film, Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi tell us – exclusively – about their adventurous story which, at the same time, is a parable of the insensible greed at overheated markets, and provides answers on the question of original and fake. In addition, this film tells the story of an art crime, a thriller in which many people were cheated out of very much money. Arne Birkenstock also interviews people who were victims of the Beltracchis, as well as the inspectors in Berlin who exposed the whole scandal. 

GOLD - You can do more than you think

GOLD - Du kannst mehr als du denkst

director: Michael Hammon

dop: Marcus Winterbauer, Michael Hammon, Thomas Schneider

cinema documentary

90min, HD, ALEXA, RED Epic, C300

The movie is the emotional story about three outstanding top Athletes. Henry Wanyoike, a blind Marathon runner from Kenya, Kirsten Bruhn, paralyzed Swimmer from Germany and Kurt Fearnley, Australian Wheelchair racer. 

For over a year, the film team around Michael Hammon followed these three Athletes on their daily routines. They gained a deep inside view into the private and professional lives and understood why they receive so much recognition in their countries and serve as role models within the educated society. They push to the limit every day, they support where there is need and they show us that inside each one of us lies something larger than life, something very valuable. 

The movie reaches its peak at the Paralympics in London 2012. The whole city celebrates the Athletes that have gathered from all around the world. People of all nations emphasize and cheer with the Athletes in front of their television sets at home. For 10 days London was in a state of pure excitement and taken up by a storm of the pure love for life which nobody could escape. This spirit turned GOLD into more than just a movie about exceptional Athletes. This documentary reminds you, that you can achieve much more than you think and that GOLD is in each and every one of us. 

Autumn Gold

Herbstgold

director: Jan Tenhaven

dop: Markus Winterbauer

Highspeedoperator, 1. assistent camera

cinema documentary, 90min, HD, PDW 700, Phantom Highspeed-camera

AUTUMN GOLD tells the life-affirming story of five athletes as they prepare for the Track and Field World Championships. Their toughest challenge is their age: These potential world champions are between 80 and 100 years old. With ambition and a good portion of humour, they accept the task. At the finishing line of their lives, they seek one more ultimate challenge and give their best on the way to a gold medal in Finland. True to the motto: ‘We can still rest after death.’ 

Alfred, the 100-year-old discus thrower from Vienna and passionate painter of nudes, had an artificial knee implanted just six months prior to the finals in Finland. He wants to keep going ‘somehow’ and feels too young to sit in a rocking chair. Will he be up for it when the competition starts? Jiří, the 82-year-old high jumper from Czech Republic, trains his stamina in the staircase of his apartment building. The former horse breeder dreams of making the one-meter mark for one last time in his life. His wife massages his crooked back and asks him to take it easy: ‘Be careful, you don’t have to be a hero anymore!’ Ilse, the 82-year-old shot putter from the German town of Kiel, has excelled to new heights since her husband died and she moved to a new city; Herbert (93), from Stockholm, races against his loneliness and the missing sexual component in his life as a widower; Gabre, from Italy, announces with feigned outrage that she won’t let anyone know her age – just before a fellow sportswoman reveals it to the camera. 

It is a competition against age and other hurdles of life. They want to stand on the podium for one last time. Who will make it to Finland? Who will retire in dignity? Who will fight to the bitter end? A story of winning and losing, of setbacks and triumphs. AUTUMN GOLD is an homage to life how it can be: Not smooth and wrinkle-free, but full of humour and determination.  

Kopfkino

Kopfkino

director: Lene Berg

art documentary, 75min

In a lavish old theatre in Berlin, eight women sit at a long banquet table in the dramatic outfits of their trade – from corsetry to a riding uniform – dining and telling anecdotes from their work fulfilling clients' sexual fantasies. The fascinating stories and debates provide great insight into power and the psychology of desire in this feminist film from director Lene Berg. 

Sound of Heimat - Germany sings!

Sound of Heimat

director: Arne Birkenstock

dop: Marcus Winterbauer

Second camera, 1. Assistent camera

cinema documentary, 90min

For SOUND OF HEIMAT, Hayden Chisholm embarks on an expedition across Germany, during which he meets old and young, traditional and modern folk musicians. On his journey, he does not only encounter all possible kinds of regional musical specialties but also, time and time again, the widespread German ambivalence when it comes to homeland and folk music. 

Hayden visits an old bandonion player in the Ore Mountains, enrolls in a course called “yodeling and hiking” in the Bavarian region of Allgau and accompanies the young, wild, Balkan-influenced brass band “Antistadl” in Bamberg. He goes to a bar in Cologne, where there is singing every Sunday, drives to the “Stelzenfest” (stilt festival) at a huge barn in the Vogtland together with the Gewandhaus Chorus Leipzig. He visits the Well-family in Bavaria, where he learns the Wellküren (Well-kyries), Biermösl Blosn and the Well-Buam (Well-Boys), and dances to their music at a folk dance. Hayden visits a sexy-folk-song-singing-event at the dance and folk festival in Rudolstadt and a bandonion factory in Klingenthal. At a church near Wittenberge, he meets the rock musician Bobo, who newly sets old folk songs, and in Cologne, he goes to see a multi-cultural secondary-school choir who fervently sing Colognian songs. 

With over a thousand cattle trotting behind him during the “Viehscheid” in Gunzesried (the ceremonial driving of cattle down from the mountain pastures into the valley in autumn), Hayden marches ahead along with the marching band “Biehlerdorf Ofterschwang”. Under a Rhine bridge, he meets with teenagers who have made hip-hop versions out of old songs from the Colognian resistance group “Edelweißpiraten” (“Edelweiss Pirates”) and adapted them to their times. 

Hayden also meets the former prisoner Wladislaw Kozdón at the erstwhile concentration camp at Buchenwald near Weimar and talks to him about the abuse of many folk songs during the Third Reich, which has its effect to this day. For wherever he goes, he senses the ambivalence within our country when it comes to folk music. Finally, Hayden embarks on a sailing trip to Denmark together with Rainer Prüss and hears about how the group Liederjan arose from an Irish folk band, when – during the seventies – the musicians remembered the plattdeutsch (low German) songs and dances of their childhoods, and decided to remake and update them. 

At the end, Hayden finds something we Germans are still looking for, in part: Exoticism behind the next milk churn, beautiful melodies and touching lyrics. – In short: a piece of homeland in the melodies and lyrics of our songs and dances. 

Kopfsprung

Kopfsprung

director: Leonie Krippendorff and Thomas Schneider

short documentary, 12min

Monotonous breathing. Sound ofwater. For the 15-years-old André water is not only an element, but his life. He keeps himself to himself, only a few people are allowed to enter his world. One of these people is his girlfriend Joyce who’s a swimmer, too. But it’s not only the swimming that they have in common; both are disabled. Sometimes Joyce would like to able to know what André is thinking, particularly when his thoughts seem to be far away. André is training for the next Paralympics. He will be one of the first mentally challenged swimmers. His girlfriend and his family support him to fulfill his dream.

Wollen/Müssen

director: Marlene Blumert

short documentary

10min, Kodak 16mm, 1:1,37

An experimental film about stress and burn out with inner voices.