Lothar Lambert

Directing

Lothar Lambert

Born 1944-06-24 · Rudolstadt, Germany

No one in Germany can more justifiably call himself an independent filmmaker than Lothar Lambert: 41 films to date since 1971, almost all financed out of his own pocket, as producer, director, screenwriter, actor and, time and again, as editor, cameraman, sound man and distributor. Cinema about sex and longings, self-realization and psychological deformities, desires, the weal and woe of the little-noticed in the (initially only West) Berlin urban jungle. And it is as authentic, shocking and tragicomic as you rarely find in this country. Because they were unusually weird and "dirty" in terms of content and form - especially for the well-behaved German standards - Lambert's works were quickly classified as "underground" in the seventies. And have recently been increasingly ignored by critics and film historians. Having long since become documents of the zeitgeist and thus of contemporary history, it is long overdue to (re)discover these works.

Acting credits

A Fairy for Dessert poster
4.0

Julchen is the "feminine" (transvestite) and definitely motherly half of a couple of homosexual men, the "co-fathers" of a pleasant part-Moroccan girl. The girl has been told that her mother is dead, but Julchen knows this is not true.

A Fairy for Dessert

1992

The Nightmare Woman poster
9.0

A Berlin woman in her early thirties is trying to handle her psychological problems and childhood trauma with the help of her psychiatrist. She is ashamed and overwhelmed by her masochistic sex fantasies.

The Nightmare Woman

1981

No artwork available
7.0

The story of a short but intense friendship between two very different women in Berlin. Mascha, in her mid-30’s, worked as a television editor for years before dropping out to make two self-financed and unexpectedly successful theatrical films. At the moment, she is taking a break – she’s run out of ideas. Her plight is made worse by her boyfriend Frank’s unsympathetic attitude. He is a head of production, from a working class background, an unscrupulous career man, and won’t tolerate an unsuccessful woman around him. In the midst of this exasperating mess, Mascha meets the ‘’wolf girl’’, Dennis, a young black rebel who works as a cleaner in a theater. The girl fascinates Mascha and she finally breaks her long, loveless relationship with frank so she can spend more time with Dennis. The two women move in together: Mascha because she wants to turn the simple ‘’wild’’ Dennis into a more sedate person, and Dennis because she has secret hopes of finding human warmth and shelter.

Wolfgirl

1984

No artwork available
8.0

No synopsis available yet.

Kobay

1986

Fucking City poster
3.3

The edgy, quirky, nearly disposable life of marginal Berliners. Four mediocre existences are on an increasingly desperate quest for love and sexual satisfaction in the urban jungle of West Berlin.

Fucking City

1982

Kismet Kismet poster
8.0

Director İsmet Elçi tells the semi-autobiographical story of Kemal (played by Elçi himself), who negotiates his identity between two cultures (Turkey and Germany), struggling to find a future as a director in the German film industry.

Kismet Kismet

1987

Carl Andersens Underground der Liebe poster
NR

Depicts Carl Andersens uncommon art and life. Born in Vienna, the capital of Austria in 1958, he participated in the development of Viennas subculture through his bar called "Fun Factory". It was a unique place to have some cheap drinks, see strange movies and join concerts in the cellar. He also influenced the Viennese film community by bringing art house and underground movies, like "Liquid Sky" (1982), or "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1973) in uncut versions to the theaters. As he was a film maniac he started to direct movies by himself. His first two movies "I was a Teenage Zabbadoing" (1988) and "Mondo Weirdo - a Trip to Paranoia Paradise"(1990) became underground classics. In the late 80's Andersen went to Berlin. There he directed and produced more than 10 No-Budget movies. Diffic ult relationships and the process of filmmaking itself were his main themes. He got lost in alcoholism and committed suicide in August 2012.

Carl Andersens Underground der Liebe

2015

From Here to Vanity poster
8.0

Anyone who is keen to capture Berlin’s most original characters on film is bound to end up at Sylvia Heidemann’s door. Sylvia has saved up every penny of her reparation money to appear just once in her life on the silver screen like Greta Garbo. It just so happens that the Viennese filmmaker Andersch and Madame Heidemann are staying at the same hotel and it’s not long before the two strike a bargain.

From Here to Vanity

2000

Blonde to the Bone poster
7.0

The actor Holger Miesbach can no longer pursue this or any other profession, for psychological reasons and despite ongoing psychiatric treatment. While his mother offers telephone sex, where she pretends to be a minor and always forgets to get paid, he devotes himself to painting, but above all to his childhood passion for collecting autographs. When the actress Gloria Mundi, who had celebrated success as a teenager with revealing scenes, but who had killed her mother and her lover in Hollywood in 1961, returns to Berlin, Holger's penchant for the washed-up star becomes obsessive.

Blonde to the Bone

1997

A Touch of Longing: His Fight poster
9.0

A simple tax collector suffers from a deep depression. He flies from his dominant mother to a dangerous company in violent left-wing circles. And discovers a cure for his impotence.

A Touch of Longing: His Fight

1973

Late Show poster
3.0

A man tries to liberate himself from a puritan-minded sister, mother, and girlfriend. The movies are his way out -- and at one late show he sees himself on the screen and begins to mix fantasy with reality.

Late Show

1977

1 Berlin-Harlem poster
3.0

An African-American GI retires from the US Army in West Berlin to live with his white girlfriend, who already has a baby with another black man. After an argument with her family, she deserts him as well. Despite finding a job and a new place to live, he keeps running into racism, which also manifests itself in sexual intimidation.

1 Berlin-Harlem

1974

You Elvis, Me Monroe poster
8.5

A Turkish woman with a Marilyn Monroe obsession hooks up with her new neighbor, an Arab. Although the young man occasionally intones Elvis Presley songs to the guitar, as requested by her, the relationship soon falls into crisis, especially since the fun-loving single mother also begins an affair with a blonde who bears a vague resemblance to Monroe. The love potions are watched curiously and commented on by other residents of the Kreuzberg apartment building.

You Elvis, Me Monroe

1990

Dirty Daughters oder Die Hure und der Hurensohn poster
8.0

Rita, the prostitute, meets the Lebanese worker Hossein. He need working papers. She needs love.

Dirty Daughters oder Die Hure und der Hurensohn

1982

Utopia poster
6.3

A treatise on love and desire tainted by harsh reality of capitalism, in which submission to the laws of lust-as-commerce is played out by five prostitutes and their pimp, who pits them against one another so that they are incapable of standing up to him collectively.

Utopia

1983

Now or Never poster
10.0

Half-travelogue half Lambert’s fictional attempt to find his identity in the gay crowd in Central Park, Harlem, and Brooklyn.

Now or Never

1979

Lost and Found in Underground: Lothar Lambert's Psycho City poster
NR

Life, work, art and struggle of Berlin's radical enfant terrible Lothar Lambert, an underground filmmaker for 40 years now, who mainly focuses society's misfits, the gays, lesbians, transvestites and transsexuals of his Berlin neighborhood with no-budget films on loss, fear and fury. His films are reflected by critics as art, trash and experimental films and are often misinterpreted and rejected. This documentary shows him and his unapologetic way of working, visits him in his surroundings, speaks to friends and 'victims', enemies and members of the notorious 'Lambert-Family', enlightens his dark past and his reasons for remaining off-stream. Beyond all the cheap humor, the explicit sexual performances and the amateur acting in his features lies his deep wish to eventually break all taboos for more rights.

Lost and Found in Underground: Lothar Lambert's Psycho City

2012

Love/Hate Lola poster
5.3

Lola L., a washed-up travesty star, is extremely taken with the shy, young Turk Hasim when he comes into her dressing room and wants to get to know the famous artist. While her main aim is to lure him into her lottery bed, he remains steadfast and is only interested in Lola helping him with his career. Soon enough, he outflanks her, and the deregistered Lola is forced to realize that jealousies and intrigues have now caused the situation in her travesty theater microcosm to spiral out of control.

Love/Hate Lola

1996

Behind the camera

The Nightmare Woman poster
9.0

A Berlin woman in her early thirties is trying to handle her psychological problems and childhood trauma with the help of her psychiatrist. She is ashamed and overwhelmed by her masochistic sex fantasies.

The Nightmare Woman

1981

The Nightmare Woman poster
9.0

A Berlin woman in her early thirties is trying to handle her psychological problems and childhood trauma with the help of her psychiatrist. She is ashamed and overwhelmed by her masochistic sex fantasies.

The Nightmare Woman

1981

The Nightmare Woman poster
9.0

A Berlin woman in her early thirties is trying to handle her psychological problems and childhood trauma with the help of her psychiatrist. She is ashamed and overwhelmed by her masochistic sex fantasies.

The Nightmare Woman

1981

Fräulein Berlin poster
8.0

Berlin Underground-star Ulrike S. went to the Toronto-Filmfestival and then to New York - to find out something about the film business and also about her own desires, daydreams and nightmares.

Fräulein Berlin

1984

Fräulein Berlin poster
8.0

Berlin Underground-star Ulrike S. went to the Toronto-Filmfestival and then to New York - to find out something about the film business and also about her own desires, daydreams and nightmares.

Fräulein Berlin

1984

Paso Doble poster
8.0

A West Berlin couple hopes to solve their marital problems while on vacation in Spain. Instead, the tensions between the neglected and misunderstood woman and her annoyed and otherwise unsatisfied husband escalate soon afterwards. She starts an affair with her Persian masseur, he falls in love with a mute toilet attendant, whom he brings back to Berlin and takes in with himself and his two pubescent children, while the woman moves in with her masseur. But even the new constellations quickly get into crisis.

Paso Doble

1984

Paso Doble poster
8.0

A West Berlin couple hopes to solve their marital problems while on vacation in Spain. Instead, the tensions between the neglected and misunderstood woman and her annoyed and otherwise unsatisfied husband escalate soon afterwards. She starts an affair with her Persian masseur, he falls in love with a mute toilet attendant, whom he brings back to Berlin and takes in with himself and his two pubescent children, while the woman moves in with her masseur. But even the new constellations quickly get into crisis.

Paso Doble

1984

No artwork available
8.0

The two brothers Alfred and Hans are very different, one, a mummy's boy, still hopes for the great love at 35, the other enjoys life as a womanizer. When their mother dies, their lives change. Mama's boy Alfred and Don Juan Hans fall in love with the same woman. Their beloved is called Angelika who is in her mid-30s, works in a travel agency and considers herself emancipated. She has not married the father of her now 18-year-old daughter. All parties involved change as a result of the courtship of Angelika. The sad Alfred becomes a radiant lover, the womanizer starts thinking and Angelika herself feels younger and younger.

Der sexte Sinn

1987

No artwork available
8.0

The two brothers Alfred and Hans are very different, one, a mummy's boy, still hopes for the great love at 35, the other enjoys life as a womanizer. When their mother dies, their lives change. Mama's boy Alfred and Don Juan Hans fall in love with the same woman. Their beloved is called Angelika who is in her mid-30s, works in a travel agency and considers herself emancipated. She has not married the father of her now 18-year-old daughter. All parties involved change as a result of the courtship of Angelika. The sad Alfred becomes a radiant lover, the womanizer starts thinking and Angelika herself feels younger and younger.

Der sexte Sinn

1987

Fucking City poster
3.3

The edgy, quirky, nearly disposable life of marginal Berliners. Four mediocre existences are on an increasingly desperate quest for love and sexual satisfaction in the urban jungle of West Berlin.

Fucking City

1982

Fucking City poster
3.3

The edgy, quirky, nearly disposable life of marginal Berliners. Four mediocre existences are on an increasingly desperate quest for love and sexual satisfaction in the urban jungle of West Berlin.

Fucking City

1982

Fucking City poster
3.3

The edgy, quirky, nearly disposable life of marginal Berliners. Four mediocre existences are on an increasingly desperate quest for love and sexual satisfaction in the urban jungle of West Berlin.

Fucking City

1982

Thank God I’m in the Film Business! poster
9.0

Eva Ebner is a Berliner who gives the appearance of being rather eccentric. She knows the film business inside out – regardless of whether she’s work- ing behind the camera as an assistant director or in front of it as an actor. Her name is closely associated with a series of now-legendary adaptations of Edgar Wallace’s crime novels which were made in Germany during the 1960s. Upcoming young directors from local film schools have also profited from Ms. Ebner’s unbroken enthusiasm and passion for film. However, this eighty-year-old has a more than broken relationship to the events of her childhood and youth in Gdansk – a time when her life was characterised by an anti-Semitic step-mother and the dangers posed by the Nazi regime. This film portrait does not eschew any of the long dark shadows of that era, nor does it sidestep any friction between portrayer and his subject. (Lothar Lambert)

Thank God I’m in the Film Business!

2003

Thank God I’m in the Film Business! poster
9.0

Eva Ebner is a Berliner who gives the appearance of being rather eccentric. She knows the film business inside out – regardless of whether she’s work- ing behind the camera as an assistant director or in front of it as an actor. Her name is closely associated with a series of now-legendary adaptations of Edgar Wallace’s crime novels which were made in Germany during the 1960s. Upcoming young directors from local film schools have also profited from Ms. Ebner’s unbroken enthusiasm and passion for film. However, this eighty-year-old has a more than broken relationship to the events of her childhood and youth in Gdansk – a time when her life was characterised by an anti-Semitic step-mother and the dangers posed by the Nazi regime. This film portrait does not eschew any of the long dark shadows of that era, nor does it sidestep any friction between portrayer and his subject. (Lothar Lambert)

Thank God I’m in the Film Business!

2003

No artwork available
9.0

Four women in a therapeutic shared apartment adore their therapist and defend their hero with all available means, including sexual ones, when a strange woman breaks into their world. Doreen comes from the East and is looking for an apartment.

What You Never Wanted to Know About Women

1992

No artwork available
7.0

Eight short episodes about the psychological and sexual hardships and joys of people in West Berlin at the time: two old-school bourgeois women chat with each other on the street, between the Theater des Westens and a peep show. A woman's session with her psychotherapist takes an unexpected turn. Two men spontaneously arrange to meet for a tête-à-tête, but are in for a surprise. A vagrant tells of her recent experiences and longings. Two young women become unprofessional while watching a porn movie. Two foreigners make a discovery while having sex with each other. A painter finds new inspiration in an unconventional way. Dieter Schidor and Ingrid Caven chat with each other on the street, between the Theater des Westens and a (former) peep show about sex in the age of AIDS.

Forbidden to Forbid

1988

Tiergarten poster
10.0

Prostitutes, drunks, gays, senior citizens, and children, pass through one of the world's most famous parks.

Tiergarten

1979

Tiergarten poster
10.0

Prostitutes, drunks, gays, senior citizens, and children, pass through one of the world's most famous parks.

Tiergarten

1979

Tiergarten poster
10.0

Prostitutes, drunks, gays, senior citizens, and children, pass through one of the world's most famous parks.

Tiergarten

1979

From Here to Vanity poster
8.0

Anyone who is keen to capture Berlin’s most original characters on film is bound to end up at Sylvia Heidemann’s door. Sylvia has saved up every penny of her reparation money to appear just once in her life on the silver screen like Greta Garbo. It just so happens that the Viennese filmmaker Andersch and Madame Heidemann are staying at the same hotel and it’s not long before the two strike a bargain.

From Here to Vanity

2000

From Here to Vanity poster
8.0

Anyone who is keen to capture Berlin’s most original characters on film is bound to end up at Sylvia Heidemann’s door. Sylvia has saved up every penny of her reparation money to appear just once in her life on the silver screen like Greta Garbo. It just so happens that the Viennese filmmaker Andersch and Madame Heidemann are staying at the same hotel and it’s not long before the two strike a bargain.

From Here to Vanity

2000

From Here to Vanity poster
8.0

Anyone who is keen to capture Berlin’s most original characters on film is bound to end up at Sylvia Heidemann’s door. Sylvia has saved up every penny of her reparation money to appear just once in her life on the silver screen like Greta Garbo. It just so happens that the Viennese filmmaker Andersch and Madame Heidemann are staying at the same hotel and it’s not long before the two strike a bargain.

From Here to Vanity

2000

Blonde to the Bone poster
7.0

The actor Holger Miesbach can no longer pursue this or any other profession, for psychological reasons and despite ongoing psychiatric treatment. While his mother offers telephone sex, where she pretends to be a minor and always forgets to get paid, he devotes himself to painting, but above all to his childhood passion for collecting autographs. When the actress Gloria Mundi, who had celebrated success as a teenager with revealing scenes, but who had killed her mother and her lover in Hollywood in 1961, returns to Berlin, Holger's penchant for the washed-up star becomes obsessive.

Blonde to the Bone

1997

A Touch of Longing: His Fight poster
9.0

A simple tax collector suffers from a deep depression. He flies from his dominant mother to a dangerous company in violent left-wing circles. And discovers a cure for his impotence.

A Touch of Longing: His Fight

1973