Werner Dütsch

Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.

Interviews with six of the mass murderers from Sabra and Shatilla. The faces are in black and are not identifiable.

German TV Documentary for WDR about Fritz Lang

Excerpts from the novel Donna di Messina (1949 and 1964, 1967) by Elio Vittorini (1908-1966).

An experimental film portraying different skies in very long takes.

How should one define the relationship of documentary film to reality? Does it aim at authenticity or is it rather an “exile of reality”, a “foreign homeland of reality”, where the pre-filmic, stripped of its immediacy, comes to its own right in the first place? Where in its mis-en-scène would be the line drawn to a fictional film, if drawing a line would succeed at all? These are the kind of questions this film essay on the history and aesthetics of documentary film deals with in its seven chapters.

Historically, the cinema close-up was initially employed to convey emotions through facial expressions. But soon filmmakers also began focusing their attention on hands. Using film extracts, Farocki explores this visual language, its symbolism, Freudian slips, automatisms and its music. Often, hands betray an emotion which the face tries to dissimulate. They can also function as a conduit (exchanging money) or witness to a form of competence (work).

Television essay about Jean Renoir and his films, in which, among other things, the filming conditions of Partie de campagne are discussed.

The film documents a debate about early 20th century films, mainly 1910 to 1920, from short news reels to excerpts from full-length movies. At Amsterdam's Film Museum, film directors, students, and film researchers and archivists look at the moving images and discuss their meaning, in the social and technical contexts. Moody live music was added to the edited film.

A documentary, a drama, a story of myth and murder. Wanted is a weird, wilderness, western, set in the Dakota Badlands, where the last herd of buffalo cross the paths of beat-up pick up trucks smuggling bootleg whiskey onto the rez'. This is the mysterious world of the tribal cop, where DNA and dreams are accorded equal value in the hunt for a killer, where mere facts are not enough. This is the story of their loves, lives, work and the mysterious case of the Rapid Creek deaths.

An essay on Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau produced on the occasion of his 100th birthday.

Documentary about the first German foreign deployment of German soldiers in Kosovo since the Second World War in 1995.

What venture capital or VC for short actually means is explained in the film itself. Banks only lend money against collateral. Those who have none have to turn to VC companies and pay interest of 40%.

Film critic and scholar analyzes Jean Renoir's two films "Le Testament du docteur Cordelier" and "Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe".

Film critic and scholar Helmut Färber recounts the life and work of Robert Bresson

TV documentary about the bicycle sequence in Ozu`s Banshun (Late Spring)

In Italy, immediately subsequent to the war, a group of people who lost all they possessed during the conflict, settle in a village in ruins. They intend to restore the city from the rubble and re-start life, in imitation of the women of Messina who rebuilt their city, destroyed as it was by an earthquake. Oscillating between respect and suspicion, co-existence between group members is tense. Things become complicated when an envoy from the government arrives to say that nothing there belongs to them. The film is a free adaptation of fragments of the novella ‘The Women of Messina’, by Sicilian writer Elio Vittorini.

Film critic and scholar Helmut Färber recounts the the life and work of Erich von Stroheim

Documentary about the films of John Ford.

Film critic and scholar Helmut Färber analyzes the final scene of Eisensteins "October: Ten Days That Shook the World"

Helmut Färber makes connections between architecture and film

Film scholar Helmut Färber discusses Griffith' A CORNER IN WHEAT.