
Acting
Margit Carstensen
Born 1940-02-29 · Kiel, Germany
Margit Carstensen (29 February 1940 – 1 June 2023) was a German theatre and film actress, best known outside Germany for roles in the works of film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Carstensen was born and raised in the northern German city of Kiel. Upon graduation from the local high school in 1958, she studied acting at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. This education led to her first stage appearances in Kleve, Heilbronn, Münster, and Braunschweig. In 1965, Carstensen began a four-year engagement with the German Playhouse in Hamburg. In 1969, she gained a local profile for her work in the Theater am Goetheplatz in Bremen, where she first met director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She then worked under his direction in a comedy by the 18th-century Venetian Carlo Goldoni, The Coffee Shop (which was recorded for television in 1970), bringing her national attention in West Germany. She subsequently played the role of serial murderess Geesche Gottfried in the premiere of Fassbinder's own play Bremen Freedom (also televised, in 1972), and then in the title role of his Henrik Ibsen adaptation Nora Helmer (televised in 1974) derived from A Doll's House. Outside of theatre, Carstensen played leading roles in the Fassbinder films The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), her best-known role for him; Martha (1974), analysing a traditional marriage in a contemporary setting; Fear of Fear (1975); Mother Küsters' Trip to Heaven (1975); Satan's Brew (1976); Chinese Roulette (1976) and Women in New York (1977). She also appeared in episodes of two Fassbinder television productions: Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (1972), and Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980). From 1973 to 1976, Carstensen held a steady acting engagement in Darmstadt. In 1977, she moved to West Berlin where she performed on the highly regarded Staatliche Schauspielbühnen. In 1982, she moved to Stuttgart in order to work with director Hansgünther Heyme, where she appeared in a series of plays directed by him. During this time, Carstensen also worked in international film productions, such as Andrzej Żuławski's Possession (1981) and Agnieszka Holland's Angry Harvest (1985); the latter was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. By the late 1980s, she had developed ongoing working relationships with German directors Werner Schroeter, Christoph Schlingensief, and Leander Haußmann. For the 2003–04 season, Carstensen appeared in the Vienna Burgtheater, in the premiere of Elfriede Jelinek's play Bambiland under the direction of Schlingensief. During the 2007–08 season Carstensen assisted with the Austrian-German TV documentary Mr. Karl – A Person for People, directed by Kurt Mayer. In 2016, she was still on television, appearing in the long-running series Tatort. Carstensen received many awards in her career. Among these were the 1973 German Film Awards (Gold), for her acting in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and the 2002 Bavarian Film Award, for her acting in Scherbentanz. In 1972 she was chosen by the German Film Critics Guild as Best Actress of the Year. In 2019, she was awarded the Götz-George-Preis for her life's work. Description above from the Wikipedia article Margit Carstensen, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Acting credits
7.3A young woman left her family for an unspecified reason. The husband determines to find out the truth and starts following his wife. At first, he suspects that a man is involved. But gradually, he finds out more and more strange behaviors and bizarre incidents that indicate something more than a possessed love affair.
Possession
1981
7.1Ariane and Gerhard Christ, a wealthy Munich couple, plan for the weekend on separate trips, lying to the other about their trysts. However, their itineraries are complicated when they both arrive at the family's country home with their respective lovers.
Chinese Roulette
1977
6.2Focuses on three very different siblings, all searching for happiness. Hans-Jörg is a sex addicted librarian, who is interested in young students. Werner is a successful politician with a dysfunctional family. Agnes, a trans woman, works as a table dancer in a night club. The three brothers just have one thing in common: their longing for a happy life.
Agnes and His Brothers
2004
7.7Frau Emma Küsters prepares dinner late one seemingly-ordinary afternoon in her seemingly-ordinary Frankfurt kitchen. She wants to add canned sausages to the stew; her irritating daughter-in-law thinks otherwise. But the point is moot: Ernst Küsters has not only murdered the personnel director at the soap factory where he's employed but succeeded that by committing suicide.
Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven
1975
7.4Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
1972
6.7A group of kids grow up on the short, wrong (east) side of the Sonnenallee in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and West reserved for German citizens. The antics of these kids, their families, of the "West German" friends and relatives who come to visit, and of the East German border guards, all serve to illustrate the absurdity of everyday life on the Sonnenallee, and therefore throughout the former East Germany.
Sonnenallee
1999
6.4A famous poet who hasn't written a word in two years unconsciously plagiarizes the work of Stefan George, while dealing with several mistresses, his dimwitted brother, and a murder investigation.
Satan’s Brew
1976
6.5People meet and chat at Ridolfo's Coffeehouse; the conversations are mostly about money, but also about feelings, ideals, friendship, love, fidelity and respectability.
The Coffee House
1970
5.3An eccentric homage to the Rainer Werner Fassbinder days of German filmmaking.
The 120 Days of Bottrop
1997
6.0A wildly anarchic satire of guerrilla terrorism in which a band of leftist radicals inadvertently become puppets of the West German government, which uses them to justify its authoritarian policies.
The Third Generation
1979
6.4The film tells different stories in a kind of parallel Germany about love, affection and hatred.
Finsterworld
2013
NRA documentary about the life of Karlheinz Böhm from his film career to his charity activities in Ethiopia.
Mister Karl
2008
5.7A German serial killer preys on boys and young men during the so-called years of crisis between the wars. Based on the true story of Fritz Haarmann, aka the Butcher of Hanover and the Vampire of Hanover.
Tenderness of the Wolves
1973
6.2In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's now a farmer of some wealth, discovers the woman, Rosa, and hides her in his cellar. Leon's a middle-aged Catholic bachelor, tormented by his sexual drive. He doesn't tell Rosa he's seen signs her husband is alive, and he begs her to love him. Rosa offers herself to Leon if he'll help a local Jew in hiding who needs money. Leon pays, and love between Rosa and him does develop, but then Leon's peasant subservience and his limited empathy lead to tragedy. At the war's end, a ray of sunshine comes from an unexpected place.
Angry Harvest
1985
6.0Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.
Schlingensief – A Voice That Shook the Silence
2020
6.5To find a bone marrow donor for himself, fashion designer Jesko visits his upper-class family in southwest Germany where he has to confront mental illness and long-held grudges.
Shattered Glass
2002
7.0After the death of her abusive father, lonely librarian Martha finds herself caught up in a strange, sadomasochistic relationship with a monstrous husband whom she begins to suspect may be trying to murder her.
Martha
1974
3.7The Second World War is over and now begins in post-war Germany, the reconstruction. Jakob Formann sees his chance here and begins a rapid rise as an entrepreneur.
The Roaring Fifties
1983
6.3Paul, a man suffering from cerebral palsy, lives an unfulfilled life in a nursing home. Sitting in his wheelchair, he fantasizes about a life in which people understand him, women find him irresistible, and he is be a force to be reckoned with. He places this imagined self in four different sexual fantasies, each with a different woman.
It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine.
2007
4.9Germany, right after the re-unification. The people are out of control, blind hatred towards immigrants is common sense. In this time, a social-worker, with the mission to bring a Polish family to their destination (an immigration camp in a little provincial town called Rassau), gets kidnapped just as the family. Chief inspector Koern and his girl-friend start to investigate in this matter in Rassau, exploring a world of obsessive sex, mislead lust and an over-whelming irrational love to the German nation, infiltrating anyone's mind. Rascism doesn't start with shaved hair and boots but rather in the middle of society itself...
Terror 2000
1993
6.9On 30 April 1945, dictator Adolf Hitler, his wife Eva Braun, and prominent members of the Third Reich live out their final hour in the Führerbunker.
100 Years of Adolf Hitler – The Last Hour in the Führerbunker
1989
6.8Full of anticipation, ten-year-old Emma goes on vacation to her grandma Dolly in the country. Once there, however, the girl learns that old Klipperbusch has died - and his money-hungry nephew Albert is already in the process of converting the inherited estate for profit. And anything he can't use for this is thrown out without further ado. At least Emma manages to save Klipperbusch's beloved mare Mississippi from the slaughterhouse at the last minute: she persuades her grandmother to buy the horse from Albert. Emma is now a proud horse owner. She is all the more surprised when Albert turns up at her door one day and desperately wants Mississippi back. It's clear to Emma and her friends that this guy can't be up to no good...
Hands off Mississippi
2007
6.3After having her second child, a German housewife suffers from postpartum depression before inexplicably falling into a continually misdiagnosed mental state, befuddling her relatives.
Fear of Fear
1975
6.4Rainer Werner Fassbinder was probably Germany’s most significant post-war director. His swift and dramatic demise at the early age of 37 in 1982 left behind a vacuum in European filmmaking that has yet to be filled, as well as a body of unique, multi-layered, and multifarious work of astonishing consistency and rigour. From 1969 onwards, Danish director and film historian Christian Braad Thomsen maintained a close yet respectfully distanced friendship with Fassbinder. The film is based on his personal memories as well as a series of conversations and interviews he held with Fassbinder and his mother, Lilo, in the 1970s.
Fassbinder: Love Without Demands
2015