Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
to
to
Exclude
Only includes titles with the selected topics
to
In minutes
to
1-37 of 37
- A star-studded roster of interviewees (including Jerry Lewis, Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal) pay tribute to the legendary, multi-talented song-and-dance man.
- Their names were Herta, Liesel, Liselotte and Hildegard: Hundreds of thousands of women, including secretaries, nurses, housewives and concentration camp guards, put themselves in the service of Nazi ideology in the German-occupied areas from 1939 onwards. The women were not passive witnesses to a genocide committed by men, but active accomplices and murderers. In the history of the Second World War, the role of women was often only marginally recognized. Around 500,000 of them were active in the areas occupied by the Wehrmacht from 1939 - where the Holocaust was actually implemented.
- In 1982, "The Boat", a West German war film directed by Wolfgang Petersen, gained worldwide notoriety, even reaching the Oscars, where it was nominated in six categories. Nothing predestined this film to such a triumph. Its biases and the events of the shooting promised it a fate of cursed film. Inspired by a true story - the descent into hell of a German submarine and its crew during the Second World War -, the script was a risky bet from the outset: how would the public react to a claustrophobic closed-door film lasting more than three hours and featuring the wrong side?
- A documentary about the life of a German citizen abducted by the CIA in 2003.
- Two people die within 24 hours in a small village on the Swabian Alb. The resident physician assumes natural causes of death. The Undertaker Lisa, however, suspects murder and thus brings the investigation in motion.
- 11 time zones lie between Moscow and the outpost of the Russian giant empire. The Kamchatka peninsula resembles a gigantic powder keg at the eastern end of the world. On the island between the Bering Sea in the west and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east, more than 160 volcanoes, countless geyser valleys and sulphur lakes on almost 370,000 square kilometres mark the visible framework for a phenomenon that geoscientists call the heart of the "Pacific Ring of Fire". For over two million years, tectonic forces have been pushing the Pacific Plate under the edge of Eurasia by 10 centimetres every year. The result: earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shake the 1,200 kilometre long peninsula almost daily. An inferno that Kamchatka's natives have feared for almost 14,000 years as the "gateway to hell". The fishermen and reindeer herders of the Ewenen, Korjaken and Itelmen live in harmony with the elements. Almost nothing was known of all this until 1991. The Russians hermetically sealed off the peninsula mainly because of its mineral resources. During the Cold War it was a military restricted area. In the bay in front of the capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskji lay the nuclear-powered submarine fleet of the Soviet Navy. It was not until the political thaw at the beginning of the 1990s that the Iron Curtain fell. Geoscientists and ethnologists are now gradually discovering an almost untouched paradise whose uniqueness has been protected since 1996 by UNESCO in cooperation with local nature park administrations in six large reserves on a total of 3.32 million hectares as a world natural heritage site.
- They came from the East. Remains of Tatar hordes of mercenaries of the Mongol chan, highwaymen and highwaymen, but also runaway serfs of Russian princes, unfree, peasants who escaped the servitude of the Muscovite Empire. Early on, this mob of outlaws knew a common goal: to fight the Tsar's and Nogaier-Chane's henchmen in the south of the country. Their territories were feared. Hardly a caravan of traders came unscathed through the wild borderland in the Caucasus, the steppes on the Don or through the river delta of the Dnieper. From the Turktatars they adopted the name "Kazak" and already in the 15th century they caused terror and turmoil in the country. Nevertheless, they were never a people - THE Cossacks - and never will be. That belongs in the realm of legends. This film illuminates the myth of the wild warriors of the Caucasus and the Don.
- The film leads into one of Turkey's most fascinating landscapes - the highlands of Cappadocia in Central Anatolia, 150 kilometres southeast of Ankara. He accompanies the ecumenical patriarch Bartholomaios I on a journey to Mustafapasa, a former Greek rock town, and gives an insight into the everyday life of the Cappadocian shepherd Ali Sirli, who uses an old Byzantine cave church as a sheepfold. He is one of the last Cappadocians to inhabit a fairy fireplace in Uchisar and therefore has trouble with the authorities of his village Uchisar.
- At the beginning of the 1980s, a new epidemic came over the world with AIDS. Epidemics were never extinct, they spread fear and terror - in every age. The increase in scientific knowledge has not changed this. New reports are heard almost daily: deadly epidemics with Ebola viruses, new pathogens cause mad cow disease, antibiotics fail against multi-resistant bacteria. Worse still: the old "great epidemics" are returning. The cause: poverty, misery, hunger and wars, collapse of health systems in the East, spread through mass tourism, open borders and globalisation. The three-part television series "The Diseases" describes three of the classic "scourges of humanity": tuberculosis, cholera and syphilis. The films show spread, causes and historical consequences: effects of the respective disease on culture and society, dealing with the infected, scientific search for pathogens and treatment options. Tuberculosis is the most common infectious disease today. About two billion people are infected and three million die from it every year. The trend is rising. The causes are multi-resistant germs - a time bomb for the industrial nations. The danger comes, among others, from the slums of the former Soviet Union. Overcrowded prisons are often the breeding ground for the disease. The film shows the development of consumption as the most important cause of death in the last and penultimate century. How it changed in social and literary perception - from a romantically transfigured disease of the young elite to what it always was: a disease of misery. Prominent tuberculosis patients were Frédéric Chopin and Franz Kafka. The film uses their curriculum vitae to describe the symptoms of the disease and the long death of the consumptive. Almost 60 years after Robert Koch's discovery of the pathogen and the development of X-ray diagnostics, the disease was defeated with effective antibiotics - this seemed to be the case until a few years ago ...
- The sabre-shaped peninsula resembles a gigantic powder keg at the eastern end of the world. 11 time zones lie between Moscow and the last outpost of the Russian giant empire. On the island between the Bering Sea in the west and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east, more than 160 volcanoes, countless geyser valleys and sulphur lakes on almost 370,000 square kilometres mark the visible framework for a phenomenon that geoscientists call the heart of the "Pacific Ring of Fire". Every year, tectonic forces push the Pacific Plate ten centimetres below the edge of Eurasia on a broad front. Daily earthquakes and volcanic eruptions shake the 1,200 kilometre long peninsula almost daily. Grey-yellow sulphur mud, poisonous vapours and black ash - it seethes in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Where the continental plate of Africa slides under the Eurasian one, volcanism developed. Little by little, mountains of fire rose from the sea and formed islands, which today lie like a seven star off the north coast of Sicily: Lipari, Vulcano, Stromboli, Salina, Panarea, Alicudi and Filicudi. Volcanism shapes the unique landscape of this Aeolian archipelago, fire mountains determine the life of the inhabitants. Some are mute and extinct, others still active like Stromboli or Vulcano. The first settlers arrived early, attracted by the fertile soil. Greeks and Romans lived on the Aeolian islands, traded worldwide with obsidian, the valuable volcanic glass rock. Today, geoscientists, archaeologists and biologists conduct research in this region on the edge of Europe.
- Just one year after the Nazis seized power, radio and the press were switched to the same channel. The supreme control organ was the Ministry of Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. On February 10, 1933, he declared that a "good government" had to carry out "good propaganda," which was a prerequisite for a "spiritual mobilization. His most important weapon: newly founded propaganda companies. The Reichspropagandachef demands that the "slovenliness" in reporting should cease and has word reporters, cameramen and photographers trained in a specially founded Wehrmachtsschule in Potsdam. Goebbels' propaganda war was quickly as effective a weapon as the fighting troops of the infantry, navy or air force. In more than 6000 German cinemas, "Die Deutsche Wochenschau" provided a collage of constantly advancing troops in picture, sound and commentary from the beginning of the war. Whether in Poland, France or Norway: only one can win - the German soldier. Towards the end of the war, the weekly newsreel mainly delivered perseverance slogans. But even Goebbels swayed that the reality of the last days of the war was difficult to adjust. In one of the last issues, the weekly newsreel shows Hitler with his last posse in Berlin: children as cannon fodder. It does not show the wreckage of the Führer, who left behind 50 million dead and mountains of rubble and predicts that his end will also be the end of all Germans. Until the end, the following is true: reality is what you make of it. History will one day be formed from our pictures, boasted Goebbels at the beginning of the war. In the end, all that remained for the Germans was the hope of a miracle.
- At the beginning of the 1980s, a new epidemic came over the world with AIDS. Epidemics were never extinct, they spread fear and terror - in every age. The increase in scientific knowledge has not changed this. New reports are heard almost daily: deadly epidemics with Ebola viruses, new pathogens cause mad cow disease, antibiotics fail against multi-resistant bacteria. Worse still: the old "great epidemics" are returning. The cause: poverty, misery, hunger and wars, collapse of health systems in the East, spread through mass tourism, open borders and globalisation. The three-part television series "The Diseases" describes three of the classic "scourges of humanity": tuberculosis, cholera and syphilis. The films show spread, causes and historical consequences: effects of the respective disease on culture and society, dealing with the infected, scientific search for pathogens and treatment options. "Currently not to extinct !" - is the WHO's declaration of bankruptcy. Particularly in Bengal, Africa and South America, cholera claims tens of thousands of victims every year. The treatment is not a problem, as long as simple medical facilities are available - and - clean water. Conventional vaccines have lost their effectiveness - the side effects are considerable. Developing new vaccines suitable for children costs a lot of money. The pharmaceutical industry has no interest in production - the victims are not solvent, the epidemics are far away. In its cultural arrogance, the Occident felt safe from the Indian epidemic. But especially in the centres of the so-called cultural states: Berlin, Paris, London, and in the rich port cities such as Hamburg, the epidemic struck particularly relentlessly and unmasked the social grievances here. Dying of cholera is unappetizing and often takes place in public. Death often comes within hours. This simply leaves no time for a fateful transfiguration of the disease. At the beginning of the 20th century, cholera set itself in motion from the Indian subcontinent. In 1830 it was on the borders of Central Europe. Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz, the great Prussian theorist on the art of war, fails to avert the epidemic by military means. He dies of it. Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch compete to be the first to discover the pathogen. Here, too, it took 50 years to find an effective medical therapy. But as long as there is poverty, misery and war, the disease cannot be defeated.
- Nuclear power has always been marked by controversy. Passionately advocated and opposed, protected and feared. For some countries - above all Germany - it seems to be on the way to becoming a discontinued model. But is it really?
- He dreams of the summit of the biblical mountain. The place where, according to legend, Noah's Ark stranded. Little Erhan Ceven once wants to take over his uncle's job as a mountain guide at Ararat. Whether the 12-year-old nomadic boy is up to the task depends on whether he manages the 5165 metres to the summit this year. From his perspective, the film tells the story of a mountain adventure that has cost the lives of more than 100 people to date. Erhan belongs to the Jelali tribe. For centuries the Kurdish nomads have been wandering with their sheep on the slopes of the biblical mountain along the borders to Armenia and Iran. The Turks call them the "Guardians of Ararat". Western expedition troops hired them for decades as porters and leaders in search of Noah's Ark. Among them Jim Irving, the "Moonwalker" and Apollo 15 astronaut. The ark legend brought jobs, bread for Erhan's whole clan. Then the civil war broke out. Kurdish guerrilla fighters of the PKK used the Ararat as a retreat. The Turkish military declared it a restricted zone. The mountain has only been accessible again since 2001. Even today mountaineers need a special permit from the military and the authorities in the capital Ankara. Only occasionally do they dare to climb the biblical mountain again. The nomads in particular are suffering as a result. Now they hope that things will get better again to give little Erhan and the other children a perspective on Ararat.
- The second part of the ARD television series "Soldiers for Hitler" illuminates the last years of the Second World War, the decline of the 3rd Reich on all fronts. What happened to those who fought the war, the "soldiers for Hitler"? The beginning of the end began already in 1942. Without the Russian oil in the Caucasus, says Hitler in summer 1942, the war could not be won. To shield the Caucasus operation, the 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army were to advance to the Volga. Their goal: Stalingrad. Half a year later, this secondary war theatre became a symbol of the turning point in the Second World War. The suffering and dying of the 6th Army in Stalingrad has often been described, the events in the many small "Stalingrads" of the Eastern Front never received such interest. It took the Red Army two years to free the soil of the Soviet Union from the Germans. During the many retreat massacres the losses of the Wehrmacht are excessive. Everyone wanted to survive at all costs, but at that time this became a pure lottery game. The fear of Russian captivity and of their own quick courts behind the front is so great that they literally fought to the last round. But not only the inferno of the Eastern Front devours hundreds of thousands, also the other theatres of war demand bloody tribute: in North Africa as on the Atlantic, in the air war over England as on the Western Front, there above all after the beginning of the invasion by the Allies in Northwest France in June 1944. They are the last senseless victims of a fanatical leadership, which above all in the fight for Berlin shortly before the unconditional surrender literally "burns" children in the street fight.
- "The future was a dark, dark wall I couldn't see behind. I believed about what was written on the wagons: 'Victory or Siberia'. But victory was no longer in sight. Nor did I have a concrete perspective of life after the war. But I wanted to survive at all costs to see what it would be like." The young private Dieter Wellershoff - a well-known writer in Germany after the war - had to go to the front in the penultimate year of the war, "which was no longer a front". The withdrawal from Russia is associated with immeasurable hardships: hardly any food, no fuel, no ammunition. The losses of the German Wehrmacht are excessive. For some units, the "average length of stay" of the platoon leaders at the front is just ten days. Everyone wants to survive, but this has become a lottery game. In the last one and a half war years far more soldiers fall than in the whole war before. Whole regions fall victim to the increasing brutalization: "On the retreat, those were hopeless escapes, everything was set on fire. The grain, houses, everything was to become "burnt earth". The Russians were to be deprived of the opportunity to feed during the winter." Some soldiers doubted the leadership and the meaning of the whole war. Their conclusion is devastating: "What have we tried to hold the front for? For deporting hundreds of thousands behind our backs, even worse, for killing six million Jews in concentration camps. And I was involved in that. And that's what I still can't cope with today."
- Summer 1942: Day and night freight trains rattle to the east. After the debacle of the Winter War in 1941, the German troops again take up the offensive. This time in the south of the Soviet Union, 3,000 kilometres from their homeland. The soldiers often spend days at the "Waggontoaster" playing cards. Many are thrown directly from the barracks courtyard to the front: "We were completely disoriented. We also didn't know what to expect. We knew the war only from the newspaper, the newsreel or from the roar of our trainers about the heroic deaths of our predecessors. "Operation Blau", summer offensive, hardly anyone can imagine anything about it. "We arrived and were lying in the dirt with our faces. The boys always got it first." The targets: the petroleum area in the Caucasus, the Volga near Stalingrad. Half a year later, Stalin's city became a symbol of the turning point in the Second World War. An army is destroyed in the Stalingrad cauldron. "In a few days they made our whole company into a sow", traumatic experiences of the few survivors. The suffering and dying of the 6th army is spread in countless articles, books and films. The many small "Stalingrads" of the Eastern Front are hardly mentioned - they are unspectacular and yet characteristic for "the quite normal dying at the front", everyday war life. A film in eyewitness interviews and day orders of the Wehrmacht about the "quite normal madness" at the Eastern Front.
- The year is 2044 in the midst of a new world order and the European Federal State of Germany. All resources have been privatized, including the police and unemployment services. Norman Bauer, a down-and-out freelance detective is tasked with solving a murder case on the outskirts of his hometown. He finds clues to the crime in a menacing and mysterious environmental no-go area called the "Zone". Broke and bored of his everyday life, Bauer accepts the assignment despite its dangers. His investigation uncovers not only the murderer, but a confounding conspiracy involving the officials in the government that employ him. Increasingly he finds himself tangled in a web of mystery and insanity that distorts his understanding of his own consciousness. This blurs the lines of his escapist virtual, and explicit realities.