Helmut Herbst

Reel 27 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

Astronaut Mulligan sets out to find a mysterious planet.

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

A documentary about the 'critical mass', the Film Coop, a group of young filmmakers in Hamburg during the 1960s - a small group far from the Mainstream or the New German Cinema.

In conversations with his friends and colleagues, among them Bernd Upnmoor, Helmut Herbst, Alexander Kluge, Klaus Wyborny, Daniel Kothenschulte and Helge Schneider, Ulrike Pfeiffer takes us on a journey into the broad expanse of Nekes' cabinet of wonder and his cinematic works. At the same time, this documentary provides an insight into the history of experimental film in Germany.

A cloud of black dust, one of white dust, and the world.

A film drawn and dubbed by children in a 6th grade class, animated by Franz Winzentsen.

Figures in a side-scrolling landscape.

A day in a young slacker's life in Hamburg, Germany.

Astronaut Mulligan sets out to find a mysterious planet.

Astronaut Mulligan sets out to find a mysterious planet.

A man-made catastrophe depopulates entire regions. How do survivors observe this event, and how do others react?

A “film-noir” on double identity and role reversal. A man is looking for a woman to love. He finds her in a seedy bar and persuades her to marry him. The day she decides to flee… he kills her. To ward off suspicion, he moves in with the sister of the deceased.

Hollywood opening credits with crashing sea waves and expectant orchestral music opens the film. Then the viewer's gaze is carried through a room. In a mirror you see for a moment a naked girl holding the recording subjective camera under her arm, she pulls open a drawer, puts the camera inside and closes the drawer. The viewer's gaze and thus the viewer himself is caught in the darkness.

A short film by Franz Winzentsen

An animated film made from collages. With a film text by poet and left-wing essayist Peter Rühmkorf. A satire on advertising language.

An animated film made from collages. With a film text by poet and left-wing essayist Peter Rühmkorf. A satire on advertising language.

An animated film made from collages. With a film text by poet and left-wing essayist Peter Rühmkorf. A satire on advertising language.

An essayistic documentary about the action art movement that emerged in the 1960s: In interviews with various action artists, including Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys and Allan Kaprow, director Helmut Herbst illuminates the performative and participatory tendencies in art that began in the 1960s and outlines the diversity of motives and strategies.

An essayistic documentary about the action art movement that emerged in the 1960s: In interviews with various action artists, including Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys and Allan Kaprow, director Helmut Herbst illuminates the performative and participatory tendencies in art that began in the 1960s and outlines the diversity of motives and strategies.

Drawn portraits of a man with a beard.

Drawn portraits of a man with a beard.

Drawn portraits of a man with a beard.

A documentary which looks at Heartfield primarily as a political activist working in a specific historical context. It demonstrates this relationship by the use of documentary material, such as archive footage of inter-war Germany, in juxtaposition with Heartfield's works.

A documentary which looks at Heartfield primarily as a political activist working in a specific historical context. It demonstrates this relationship by the use of documentary material, such as archive footage of inter-war Germany, in juxtaposition with Heartfield's works.

The film makes fun of the superficial changes in power in their birthplaces. Herbst's painting depicts a society of excited string toys who first march to the strains of the Kaiser's anthem, whose black, white and red flag dominates the swastika, before being incorporated into the colors of a conglomerate of right-wing newspapers. Black, white, red. Three times, the Germans march organized in columns and ranks: under the colors of the Kaiser, the Führer and Axel Springer.

The film makes fun of the superficial changes in power in their birthplaces. Herbst's painting depicts a society of excited string toys who first march to the strains of the Kaiser's anthem, whose black, white and red flag dominates the swastika, before being incorporated into the colors of a conglomerate of right-wing newspapers. Black, white, red. Three times, the Germans march organized in columns and ranks: under the colors of the Kaiser, the Führer and Axel Springer.

This documentary concerns the contributions of German artists to the Dadaist movement. Created in 1916, the organizers rejected previous convention and delighted in nihilistic satire in painting, sculpture and literature. Comparisons are made between the movement and the political and social upheaval at the time of the release of this feature (1969).

This documentary concerns the contributions of German artists to the Dadaist movement. Created in 1916, the organizers rejected previous convention and delighted in nihilistic satire in painting, sculpture and literature. Comparisons are made between the movement and the political and social upheaval at the time of the release of this feature (1969).