Peter Kern

Acting

Peter Kern

Born 1949-02-13 · Wien, Austria

Iconoclastic Austrian indie director and former New German Cinema actor Peter Kern isn't just the subject of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's "Kern," but also the low-fi film's strongest creative force. He appeared in more than 70 feature films and directed a further 25. At his peak, Kern worked with the best directors of his era, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Fox and His Friends, The Stationmaster's Wife), Hans-Jurgen Syberberg (Hitler: A Film From Germany) and Wim Wenders (Wrong Move). “When I yell at you, please do not be immediately hurt. If I insult you, take it as proof of love. Remember, I'm Austrian, insane, hysterical, hypocritical and undemocratic.”

Acting credits

Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven poster
7.7

Frau 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

Wrong Move poster
6.7

Six days in the life of Wilhelm: a detached man without qualities. He wants to write, so his mother gives him a ticket to Bonn, telling him to live. On the train he meets an older man, an athlete in the 1936 Olympics, and his mute teen companion, Mignon. She's an acrobat in market squares for spare change.

Wrong Move

1975

Fox and His Friends poster
7.2

Fox, a former circus performer, wins the lottery of DM 500,000 and can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. He enters an abusive relationship with wealthy industrialist Eugen in an attempt to climb the social ladder. His desperation for love and affection soon spirals into tragedy.

Fox and His Friends

1975

Malina poster
6.2

An unusual story of a triangular relationship in Vienna. A woman shares an apartment with a man named Malina. The woman meets Ivan and falls under his spell. It will be her last great passion. Her feelings are so strong and all-encompassing that Ivan can neither understand nor return them.

Malina

1991

Despair poster
6.5

Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.

Despair

1978

Flaming Hearts poster
5.8

When Peter Huber the proprietor of a Bavarian corner newsstand, wins a free trip to New York City in a magazine contest, he is overjoyed. Filled with romantic ideas from the movies, his actual encounter with the gritty realities of the Big Apple are sobering. Nonetheless, he is in for the adventure of his life. First, he meets Karola Faber, the German wife of a U.S. G.I. who has found life in the States not all it's cracked up to be: she has left her husband and makes her living through prostitution. Peter and Karola visit the local German emigré community's Oktoberfest, and win the festival's King and Queen crown. Their prize is a cow, which accompanies them on their further journeys in New York City.

Flaming Hearts

1978

Street Kid poster
4.6

Axel is 14 years old, male prostitute, living in Düsseldorf. His mother drinks and her friends abuses him. He is sent to a bar to pick up customers. There he meets Karl-Heinz, and a loving relationship begins.

Street Kid

1992

Kleinhoff Hotel poster
6.0

Pascale, married to an architect, misses her flight to London and is forced to stay in Berlin, at the Kleinhoff Hotel where she stayed as a student. Karl, a would-be revolutionary lives in the adjoining room and Pascale spies him and his ex-girl-friend through a hole. Then she follows him to a questionable place where she is arrested by the police during a revolutionists raid. When she returns to the Kleinhoff Hotel, Pascale finds Karl crying, and enters his room to console him and they have a love affair.

Kleinhoff Hotel

1977

Die Oma ist tot poster
6.0

Grandma Vera travels by bus from a small Polish town to Pinneberg to celebrate her birthday with granddaughter Linda, her husband Lothar and their two children Jan and Christina. Together with Lothar's stuffy, uptight parents, they spend a fun-filled evening. But the next morning, Grandma is dead. Although Grandma Vera actually wanted to lie next to Grandpa Pyotr in her hometown of Kovalov, the family cannot afford an expensive funeral. So there is only one option: to transport Grandma themselves.

Die Oma ist tot

1997

Hitler: A Film from Germany poster
7.2

A structure-free, four-part examination of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Each part explores a different topic, from Hitler's cult of personality in propaganda to how said propaganda was associated with pre-Nazi German cultural, spiritual, and national heritage to the Holocaust and the ideology behind it, particularly from Himmler's point of view.

Hitler: A Film from Germany

1978

Erotique poster
4.0

The sexual fantasies of women are explored by four female directors.

Erotique

1994

Mondo Lux: The Visual Worlds of Werner Schroeter poster
5.5

Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life.

Mondo Lux: The Visual Worlds of Werner Schroeter

2011

Son of Hitler poster
5.8

The leader of a right-wing German political party discovers that an illiterate woodcarver is actually the son of Adolf Hitler.

Son of Hitler

1979

Schlingensief – A Voice That Shook the Silence poster
6.0

Using 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

The Island of the Bloody Plantation poster
4.3

A women's prison on a tropical island is a hellhole where the inmates are raped, tortured and otherwise abused by the evil commandant and brutal guards. However, one of the guards falls in love with a beautiful inmate, and decides to help her and all the other prisoners escape.

The Island of the Bloody Plantation

1983

La Paloma poster
6.1

Nightclub singer La Paloma succumbs to the persistent courting of a chubby, rich admirer and marries him. Before the marriage, she was thought to be dying, but soon she is well. She believes her husband's love has cured her, but her efforts to love him begin to fade as she discovers true love with her husband's old school friend.

La Paloma

1974

The Stationmaster’s Wife poster
5.6

The lackluster and plodding Bolweiser has the (mis)fortune to be married to the town’s siren; his trusting nature leads him into serious trouble when she beds nearly every available guy.

The Stationmaster’s Wife

1977

Belief, Love, Death poster
NR

When 82-year-old Mary takes her 63-year-old disabled son on a houseboat vacation on Lake Lychen in Brandenburg, things quickly go south as the boat becomes a prison, trapping them within the difficult emotional web of their relationship.

Belief, Love, Death

2012

Daniel Schmid: Le Chat Qui Pense poster
5.8

When director Daniel Schmid grew up, his parents ran a hotel in the Alps, and this singular setting was to influence his film. Rather by coincidence, he came to Berlin in the early 1960s and became part of the new German wave. Schmid worked with, among others, Wenders and Fassbinder, for example, as an actor in Wender’s The American Friend. He met Ingrid Caven, who was to play a diva in several of his films. This is a documentation of a part of modern European film history and a good analysis of artistry and how it corresponds to the individual behind the camera. A wealth of archival footage brings us close to many directors and actors in Schmid’s circle. If you’ve never seen a Daniel Schmid film, you are sure to want to after watching this portrait of his life.

Daniel Schmid: Le Chat Qui Pense

2010

The Roaring Fifties poster
3.7

The 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

Group Portrait with a Lady poster
5.0

Leni Gruyetin, a resident of Nazi Germany, lives a tumultuous life as she bears witness to the fascist regime of the Nazis.

Group Portrait with a Lady

1977

Terror 2000 poster
4.9

Germany, 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

Seventeen and Anxious poster
5.0

Anna, a 17-year-old girl from Munich, is searching for answers about her sexuality and identity. While living in her affluent world, she feels neglected by her distant parents and her reserved boyfriend, Robert. Her curiosity leads her to unexpected experiences, including a night in a hippie commune and her first night of sex with Robert. Despite these experiences, Anna remains uncertain about her future as she tries to reconcile her family's expectations with her own desires.

Seventeen and Anxious

1970

Bella Donna poster
10.0

This film of a glitzy showbiz world by director Peter Keglevic in his first feature-length effort recounts the saga of a married torch singer whose numerous lovers are meant to steady her nerves and a saxophone player who loves her but cannot get his own act together. Singing and cinematography are pluses.

Bella Donna

1983

Behind the camera

Street Kid poster
4.6

Axel is 14 years old, male prostitute, living in Düsseldorf. His mother drinks and her friends abuses him. He is sent to a bar to pick up customers. There he meets Karl-Heinz, and a loving relationship begins.

Street Kid

1992

Street Kid poster
4.6

Axel is 14 years old, male prostitute, living in Düsseldorf. His mother drinks and her friends abuses him. He is sent to a bar to pick up customers. There he meets Karl-Heinz, and a loving relationship begins.

Street Kid

1992

Murder Sisters poster
5.0

After 20 years in prison, the former angel of death at Lainz hospital has been released, and she now works in the Prater amusement park, at a restaurant that specializes in roast knuckle of pork. Observing the guests and how they behave reawaken old emotions, and she poisons a pork knuckle to punish the happy people. The movie audience can use their remote control devices to decide who dies.

Murder Sisters

2011

Murder Sisters poster
5.0

After 20 years in prison, the former angel of death at Lainz hospital has been released, and she now works in the Prater amusement park, at a restaurant that specializes in roast knuckle of pork. Observing the guests and how they behave reawaken old emotions, and she poisons a pork knuckle to punish the happy people. The movie audience can use their remote control devices to decide who dies.

Murder Sisters

2011

Murder Sisters poster
5.0

After 20 years in prison, the former angel of death at Lainz hospital has been released, and she now works in the Prater amusement park, at a restaurant that specializes in roast knuckle of pork. Observing the guests and how they behave reawaken old emotions, and she poisons a pork knuckle to punish the happy people. The movie audience can use their remote control devices to decide who dies.

Murder Sisters

2011

The Island of the Bloody Plantation poster
4.3

A women's prison on a tropical island is a hellhole where the inmates are raped, tortured and otherwise abused by the evil commandant and brutal guards. However, one of the guards falls in love with a beautiful inmate, and decides to help her and all the other prisoners escape.

The Island of the Bloody Plantation

1983

Belief, Love, Death poster
NR

When 82-year-old Mary takes her 63-year-old disabled son on a houseboat vacation on Lake Lychen in Brandenburg, things quickly go south as the boat becomes a prison, trapping them within the difficult emotional web of their relationship.

Belief, Love, Death

2012

No artwork available
8.0

Documentary film about a young actor from the GDR who lives in West Germany after moving there. It deals with his close relationship with his mother, his fears, and his sex life. Narcissistically open, radical in his dealings with himself and others, enthusiastic about his profession, rebelling against everything he considers cheap convention.

So lange ich fliehen noch kann, da schütze ich mich

1990

Hamlet: This Is Your Family poster
8.0

A provocative and ironic pamphleteering documentary about the making of Christoph Schlingensief’s Nazi-'Hamlet’ (2001). Both a media event and a form of political action Schlingensief let ex-neo-Nazis play themselves. His provocation in so-called Nazi-free Switzerland was not appreciated and when he added fuel to the flames by calling for the local political party SVP to be banned, his media offensive made front-page news far beyond Switzerland.

Hamlet: This Is Your Family

2001

Hamlet: This Is Your Family poster
8.0

A provocative and ironic pamphleteering documentary about the making of Christoph Schlingensief’s Nazi-'Hamlet’ (2001). Both a media event and a form of political action Schlingensief let ex-neo-Nazis play themselves. His provocation in so-called Nazi-free Switzerland was not appreciated and when he added fuel to the flames by calling for the local political party SVP to be banned, his media offensive made front-page news far beyond Switzerland.

Hamlet: This Is Your Family

2001

No artwork available
9.0

Samson sells a magazine on the streets of Düsseldorf called "Fifty-Fifty". Half the proceeds from each sale go to the magazine's homeless seller. It is the run-up to Christmas and his presence is far from welcome inside the posh new department store, 'Sevens', on Düsseldorf's upmarket shopping street, the "Kö".No sooner does he enter the store than he is shown the door again. Outside in the open air, the chilliest, darkest places await him. His is a fate that has become a commonplace occurrence; it is documented in this film without sentimentality or self-pity.

Fifty-Fifty

2001

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Die Wasserlilie blüht nicht mehr - Impressionen aus Manila

1980

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Die Wasserlilie blüht nicht mehr - Impressionen aus Manila

1980

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Die Wasserlilie blüht nicht mehr - Impressionen aus Manila

1980

King Kongs Tränen poster
5.0

Peter Kern developed his film from a critic's remark, "Please stop making films." When his alter ego, Peter Gläubiger, meets a critic he unloads all the built-up desire for revenge on her. And vice versa, she is also looking for revenge too - on meaningless art.

King Kongs Tränen

2010

King Kongs Tränen poster
5.0

Peter Kern developed his film from a critic's remark, "Please stop making films." When his alter ego, Peter Gläubiger, meets a critic he unloads all the built-up desire for revenge on her. And vice versa, she is also looking for revenge too - on meaningless art.

King Kongs Tränen

2010

Diamantenfieber poster
NR

After the death of his parents Hans, 16, provides for his four brothers and his grandmother. He works as a courier for his uncle, who sells counterfeit diamonds to wealthy clients with plenty of illicit funds. Hans fights like Robin Hood against the establishment and the greed of the rich, and for justice for the poor.

Diamantenfieber

2013

Initiation poster
4.4

16-year old Axel and his clique are rioting in a residential home. There he meets the 80-year old Gustav who gains interest in the young boy, as he reminds him of his lost love.

Initiation

2009

Initiation poster
4.4

16-year old Axel and his clique are rioting in a residential home. There he meets the 80-year old Gustav who gains interest in the young boy, as he reminds him of his lost love.

Initiation

2009

The Last Summer of the Rich poster
1.0

Vienna's high society parties with sex, drugs, alcohol and young models. Hanna von Stezewitz stands in the center of it all. She's young, attractive and rich, head of a corporate group and one of Vienna's most important financers.

The Last Summer of the Rich

2014

The Last Summer of the Rich poster
1.0

Vienna's high society parties with sex, drugs, alcohol and young models. Hanna von Stezewitz stands in the center of it all. She's young, attractive and rich, head of a corporate group and one of Vienna's most important financers.

The Last Summer of the Rich

2014

Crazy Boys - A Handful of Pleasure poster
4.3

A decadent Cabaret in Hamburg is near closing down. The owner decides to make a last effort to save the place: produce a male striptease show. Many candidates answer to his newspaper ad. No matter how weird were the rehearsals, the owner would have no regrets.

Crazy Boys - A Handful of Pleasure

1987

Crazy Boys - A Handful of Pleasure poster
4.3

A decadent Cabaret in Hamburg is near closing down. The owner decides to make a last effort to save the place: produce a male striptease show. Many candidates answer to his newspaper ad. No matter how weird were the rehearsals, the owner would have no regrets.

Crazy Boys - A Handful of Pleasure

1987

Domenica. Alle kommen, keiner war da poster
8.0

A docudrama about the eventful life of Domenica Niehoff, a high-class prostitute from Hamburg who later became a social worker: Domenica’s mother leaves Italy and her abusive husband, makes her way to Germany with her two children, but ends up in prison, and Domenica and her brother are placed in an orphanage, where they are raised by nuns. At 17, Domenica meets the older, equally violent brothel owner Joseph Rothenberg, who for ten years...

Domenica. Alle kommen, keiner war da

1994