Writing
Eugen Berthold Friedrich "Bertolt" Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director of the 20th century.
Documentary about Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble.
Archive footage of bomb detonations during the Second World War combined with abstract graphic elements which show the destructive potential of modern nuclear missiles. Together the images are a silent warning of armament and war.
A behind-the-scenes look at The Public Theater's production of Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage" that examines the playwright's life and ideas.
"Cause of Death Unknown" - Carola Neher (1900-1942) actress, singer and feminist. Brecht wrote the role Polly Peachum for her. She practiced boxing with Marlene Dietrich. After Hitler seized power, thousands of German communists and anti-fascists fled to the Soviet Union, the "fatherland of the working people". The tragedy of German communism is that the vast majority of them perished or were lost during Stalin's "cleansing". Carola Neher is one of the fate figures of that time. In the 20s, she belonged to the narrow circle of Brecht actresses. The film accompanies her son Georg Becker in search of his mother's traces in the sinking Soviet Union.
He wanted to revolutionize theater practice and at the same time social awareness: Today Brecht, who was born in Augsburg in 1898 and died in East Berlin in 1956, is one of the most important playwrights of the 20th century.
The Seven Deadly Sins tells the story of two sisters, Anna I and Anna II. The sisters set out from the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana to find their fortune in the big cities, intending to send their family enough money to build a little house on the river. Along the way they encounter the seven deadly sins. Meanwhile, the fleshpots of Mahagonny attract many visitors, but prove disappointing and expensive; God orders the inhabitants to hell, but they revolt, claiming they are there already"
Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”
During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.
Germany 1939. Hans and Lene marry the day before the war breaks out, and Hans is sent to the Eastern front. During a bombing raid their daughter Anna is born. The house is destroyed and Lene and Anna moves in with relatives in Berlin. Hans survives the war but he is not the same person as in 1939, and he and Lene find it difficult to live together again.
Baal is an amoral poetic genius who, after a life of debauchery, betrayal and violence, is about to cut his ties to the world and meet his doom. A high society party is where the end begins.
The hardships faced by a woman trying to survive a bloody civil war while caring for the abandoned child of the deposed former ruler.