Michael Sittner

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)

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.