Herbert Achternbusch | WatchedThis
Herbert Achternbusch
Directing
Biography
Writer, actor, and German filmmaker born in Munich in 1938. He spent his childhood and youth in Bavaria, region which remains until today its major source of artistic inspiration. Their activity is very diverse: he has composed pieces for theater and radio scripts, translator, painter and sculptor. As different as his artistic activities is his work, and therefore difficult to classify. In the world of cinema, his career fits approaches independent, mostly defined by a position too personalistic, provocative, that has left a deep imprint on works eminently conceptual and avant-garde, as well as suggesting in criticism of the subjects addressed (religion, society, geographical framework in which wandering people, etc.). His films just transcend the commercial sector; It is one of the most followed by seekers of original, stories of passes in areas interested in film culture. His anarchist surrealistic films are not known to a wide audience in Germany, although one of them, Das Gespenst (The Ghost), caused a scandal in 1983 because of its alleged blasphemous content. Werner Herzog, a director of the New German Cinema, based his film Heart of Glass on a story by Achternbusch.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Der Depp
Voted for in Sight & Sound's 2022 Greatest Films of all time poll.
Musen, Macht und Glamour - Die Welt der Maximilianstraße
Documentary about the Maximilianstraße in Munich.
Attwenger Film
A portrait of Attwenger, the duo from Upper Austria (Markus Binder and Hans-Peter Falkner). The attempt to unite the worlds of Austrian folk music and hip-hop has already succeeded in the music of Attwenger.
Achternbusch
Director Andi Niessner was production manager on Achternbusch's last two major feature films in 1996 and 1998. In conversation, Niessner manages to reveal the universal artist in a previously unknown intimacy and openness: Achternbusch talks about his parents, his childhood in Lower Bavaria and Munich, and his early days as a writer and filmmaker. We learn who and what influenced him, what his relationship with Bavaria is like, how his attitude toward the church has changed, and what his life is like today.
Heal Hitler!
Stalingrad, 1942: just as he is complaining about the "blockheads" who are in control, a German named Herbert gets hit. Fast forward forty years after the war to Munich's Hofgarten, where in front of the patched-up ruins of the Army Museum, Herbert reappears, mistakenly believing he is still in Stalingrad, which the victorious Germans have destroyed and rebuilt in the image of Munich.
Beer Chase
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 relatives and some friends start to follow him while he gets some new acquaintances.
The Ghost
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 Superior). He occasionally transforms into a snake when being afraid and is finally carried up into the sky by the nun, who transforms into a bird of prey.
Das Andechser Gefühl
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 teaching duties he has shirked, and his doomed efforts at winning tenure from school officials. Only a dream from the past-the memory of a former liaison with a film star with whom he shared "the Andechs feeling, a feeling that we are not alone" - provides sustenance. Despite an unexpected series of events, longing in Achternbusch's world ultimately remains stronger than fulfilment and thirst better than beer.
Production
Heart of Glass
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 obssessed with the lost secret.
Beer Chase
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 relatives and some friends start to follow him while he gets some new acquaintances.
Heal Hitler!
Stalingrad, 1942: just as he is complaining about the "blockheads" who are in control, a German named Herbert gets hit. Fast forward forty years after the war to Munich's Hofgarten, where in front of the patched-up ruins of the Army Museum, Herbert reappears, mistakenly believing he is still in Stalingrad, which the victorious Germans have destroyed and rebuilt in the image of Munich.
Heal Hitler!
Stalingrad, 1942: just as he is complaining about the "blockheads" who are in control, a German named Herbert gets hit. Fast forward forty years after the war to Munich's Hofgarten, where in front of the patched-up ruins of the Army Museum, Herbert reappears, mistakenly believing he is still in Stalingrad, which the victorious Germans have destroyed and rebuilt in the image of Munich.
Heal Hitler!
Stalingrad, 1942: just as he is complaining about the "blockheads" who are in control, a German named Herbert gets hit. Fast forward forty years after the war to Munich's Hofgarten, where in front of the patched-up ruins of the Army Museum, Herbert reappears, mistakenly believing he is still in Stalingrad, which the victorious Germans have destroyed and rebuilt in the image of Munich.
Heal Hitler!
Stalingrad, 1942: just as he is complaining about the "blockheads" who are in control, a German named Herbert gets hit. Fast forward forty years after the war to Munich's Hofgarten, where in front of the patched-up ruins of the Army Museum, Herbert reappears, mistakenly believing he is still in Stalingrad, which the victorious Germans have destroyed and rebuilt in the image of Munich.
Beer Chase
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 relatives and some friends start to follow him while he gets some new acquaintances.
Picasso in Munich
In this surrealist film director Picasso can awaken from the dead. He steals a paintings painted by himself of a couple of wealthy psychiatrists. When Picasso meets Takla Bash, a patient of the psychiatrists, Picasso falls in love. Although it is his own daughter, he remembers an incredible love affair, in which a film with a blue cow plays a role. In the majority of the paintings shown in the film are works of Herbert Achternbusch.
Bye-Bye Bavaria!
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.
The Ghost
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 Superior). He occasionally transforms into a snake when being afraid and is finally carried up into the sky by the nun, who transforms into a bird of prey.
Gallery
