Christoph Schlingensief

Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.

Germany, right after the re-unification. The people are out of control, blind hatred towards immigrants is common sense. In this time, a social-worker, with the mission to bring a Polish family to their destination (an immigration camp in a little provincial town called Rassau), gets kidnapped just as the family. Chief inspector Koern and his girl-friend start to investigate in this matter in Rassau, exploring a world of obsessive sex, mislead lust and an over-whelming irrational love to the German nation, infiltrating anyone's mind. Rascism doesn't start with shaved hair and boots but rather in the middle of society itself...

FOREIGNERS OUT! SCHLINGENSIEFS CONTAINER is a thrilling, insightful, funny chronicle and reflection of one of he biggest public pranks and acts of art terrorism ever committed. Austria 2000: Right after the FPÖ under Jörg Haider had become part of the government, the first time an extreme right wing party became state officials after WW2, infamous German shock director Christoph Schlingensief showed a very unique form of protest. Realising public xenophobia and the new hate politics in the most drastic ways possible, he installed a public concentration camp right in the middle of Vienna's touristic heart, right beside the picturesque opera where hundreds of tourists and locals pass by daily. And it was no concentration camp you had ever feared to return from the old times, but one that cynically reflected our new multimedia culture. Satirising reality TV shows, "Big Brother" especially, a dozen asylum seekers were surveilled by a multitude of cameras, could be fed and watched by.

A docudrama about the eventful life of Domenica Niehoff, a high-class prostitute from Hamburg who later became a social worker: Domenica’s mother leaves Italy and her abusive husband, makes her way to Germany with her two children, but ends up in prison, and Domenica and her brother are placed in an orphanage, where they are raised by nuns. At 17, Domenica meets the older, equally violent brothel owner Joseph Rothenberg, who for ten years...

A sparkling documentary portrait of Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, now retired in Blankenese, following his witty daily routines, reflections on past roles (Prussian disciplinarian, Hitler parodist, public prosecutor, quirky supporting actor), and memories of Brigitte, whose room and presence still linger.

Çocukken bir Katolik piskoposun tacizine uğradığını iddia eden bir adam Avusturya'nın Salzburg kentinde ölür. Dul eşi ve eksantrik dedektif Simon Brenner dışında herkes susar ve adamın intihar ettiğine inanır.

Axel is 14 years old, male prostitute, living in Düsseldorf. His mother drinks and her friends abuses him. He is sent to a bar to pick up customers. There he meets Karl-Heinz, and a loving relationship begins.

A provocative and ironic pamphleteering documentary about the making of Christoph Schlingensief’s Nazi-'Hamlet’ (2001). Both a media event and a form of political action Schlingensief let ex-neo-Nazis play themselves. His provocation in so-called Nazi-free Switzerland was not appreciated and when he added fuel to the flames by calling for the local political party SVP to be banned, his media offensive made front-page news far beyond Switzerland.

A young Berlin couple travel to a friend's place for the celebration of Silvester and New Year's Eve. During that period, we witness today's juvenile sub-culture, especially the ways of keeping a partnership - or breaking it up in between.

In his first 16mm film, Christoph Schlingensief plays the German national anthem on the trumpet! An expression of a deep life crisis after being rejected by the Munich Film Academy.

Documentary satire about a project by Christoph Schlingensief: Ten years after his TV project "Talk 2000", Schlingensief started to work on a new talk show – at least that was what he claimed. But in reality, it was obvious that the pilot episodes he produced would never be broadcasted. Nevertheless, all celebrities from the political and cultural sphere, Schlingensief had requested, accepted his invitation, including the filmmaker Oskar Roehler, the televangelist Jürgen Fliege, the politician Claudia Roth, or the rapper Sido. It is beyond question, that the talk show panel took an unconventional course directly from the start – and was soon threatening to turn into an uproar.

Using rich archive material, this documentary looks back at Christoph Schlingensief and his cross-border art project for the 1998 Bundestag elections.

An early declaration of war on narrative cinema, using a barrage of visual and acoustic elements while at the same time juggling ironically - as he still does - with the term 'avant-garde'. A number of other preferences and obsessions were evident at an early stage, e.g. the mind-numbing habit of having his people stumbling and screaming around: life as a race track. His films likewise feature a lot of theatrical and cryptic outpourings. No wonder that they failed at the box office. No wonder either, however, that Schlingensief was attracted to theatre.

A mockumentary - after suffering a tragic accident on a shoot in Tuscany, Udo Kier is about to die. Alfred Edel is sent in to film an obituary.

Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz 1992-2017. The end of the GDR gave rise to new artistic freedoms in reunited Berlin. Shortly after the fall of the Wall, rebel director Frank Castorf was appointed artistic director of the Volksbühne. His way of working altered the public’s perception of this theater. The chronological history of the Castorf era between 1992 and 2017 is told here in excerpts from the productions and in a series of conversations conducted on the long sofa in the theater's foyer.

A study of Alexander Kluge that also emulates his technique of seeking and linking. Kluge reads aloud, Kluge recounts, including stories from his childhood and youth, from the bombing of Halberstadt, his home town. “What you don’t understand as a child you will contemplate for the rest of your life.” Kluge does this as the author of films, books, TV programs. He has always had several professions at once. He is a legal advisor, director, author, founder of the television production company DCTP, and person in charge of its culture magazines. But if you think that these are all different jobs, you’re mistaken.

A great mosaic, a labyrinth of scenes, dialogue splinters, interviews, portraits of people surrounding Hamlet and wanting to be part of his story.

As stated in the opening titles and at the end Freakstars 3000 is supposed to be a commentary on the problems of the non-disabled people. The more I was shocked about how the disabled were depicted in this film the more I started to realize that in every non-disabled TV counterpart of this show (German TV shows like "Popstars" or "Friedmann" or the home shopping channels) its mentally "non-handicapped" participants are treated in a completely identical way: The total prostitution of the mind in front a huge TV audience at the expense of one's most important gifts one should hang on to: dignity. On the other hand one could completely understand people who are furious about "exploiting" these handicapped persons. But that's what Schlingensief's works are all about: shock people and don't care about those who cannot or will not try to get the message (if there is one).

Interview with Christoph Schlingensief on his films. Including many film clips.

What does Che Guevara"s mythic presence represent to people at the turn of the century, and how do people define their concept of utopia?

A psychodrama based on the criminal activities of the former STASI (state security police) in the now defunct German Democratic Republic.

Feature documentary about Christoph Schlingensief's political party/art project "Chance 2000".

The Harald Schmidt Show is a German late night talk show hosted on Sky Deutschland by comedian Harald Schmidt. The show first aired from 5 December 1995 to 23 December 2003 on Sat.1. Schmidt then moved his show to Das Erste as Harald Schmidt and Schmidt & Pocher, but he returned to Sat.1 on 13 September 2011. After cancellation on Sat.1, the show continued on Sky Deutschland in September 2012.

Reinhold Beckmann hosts a weekly talk show.

Durch die Nacht mit … is a German documentary film television series produced by ZDF for Franco-German television channel ARTE. Locations are mainly in France or Germany. The title of the French version is Au cœur de la nuit. Two Celebrities spend an filmed evening together. One of them is the host who sets the location and the program. There is no moderator.

In the eight-part program U3000 (2000), broadcasted by the music station MTV, Schlingensief assumes the role of the presenter who hates himself for his self-love disguised as telegenic selflessness. Common broadcasting formats are all being ridiculed without exception. A socially needy family can qualify for participation by winning the always same outside bet, in order to make their private fate public in front of a running camera and in the presence of passengers in the moving subway. Childlike rounds of games give them the opportunity to improve social welfare, critically watched by a jury made up of the handicapped actors from Schlingensief's ensemble. Aged show stars like Maria and Margot Hellwig, Christian Anders or Roberto Blanco are used in a talk-show wagon as cheap fodder and are forced to show compassion with such victims of the market economy. The bands of the MTV generation (Atari Teenage Riot, Surrogat, Söhne Mannheims and others) play in the dance wagon.