Berlin Ulysses

Prinzessinnenbad

May 2007 •German

A film about three teenagers - Klara, Mina and Tanutscha - from the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. The trio have known each other since Kindergarten and have plenty in common. The three 15-year-olds are the best of friends; they are spending the summer at Prinzenbad, a large open-air swimming pool at the heart of the district where they live. They're feeling pretty grown up, and are convinced they've now left their childhood behind.

Intersection

December 2023 •Catalan

The documentary Intersection presents the everyday life of Eduard Bigas, in his current residence in Berlin. The audiovisual piece goes into Bigas' way of looking, while he himself tells his story. And through the interviews with his closest circle, both the social and the professional one, it seeks to expose the way of doing things of this artist with surrealist roots.

Visions of Europe

May 2004 •English

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Das Märkische Viertel - Aussichten und Einblicke

January 1973 •German

Documentary about a district of Berlin

Olympia 1936. Der verratene Traum

August 2016 •German

The film chronicles the story of how the Nazis and the IOC turned, to their mutual benefit, a small sports event into the modern Olympics. The grand themes and controversial issues from the 1936 Games have continued to this day: Monumentality, budget overruns, collusion with authoritarian regimes, corruption and sometimes even bribery.

Housing against Everyone

May 2021 •Czech

The availability of housing is a big topic today. It has the strongest impact on those who participate least in the public debate – low-income households, minorities or single women. The film follows a group of activists around Martin Freund, a representative and member of the Live Brno movement, as they try to persuade politicians in the second largest Czech city about their vision of affordable housing.

Spirit of the Games

May 1996 •English

Documentary examines the history and evolution of the Olympic Games, taking a close look at the Olympic charter, oath and ideals. Also featured are rare home movies and interviews with Olympic athletes and the oldest known color footage of the Olympic Games from Berlin in 1936.

Heimatkunde

October 2008 •German

Former "Titanic" satire magazine editor Martin Sonneborn takes an undercover trip around Berlin and discovers the East-German mentality and what is left of the socialist German Democratic Republic.

Lebensdaten

October 1976 •German

Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony

February 2008 •German

Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Their artistic triumph onstage belies a dynamic and dramatic life backstage. The orchestra is a closed society that observes its own laws and traditions, and in the words of one of its musicians is, “an island, a democratic microcosm – almost without precedent in the music world - whose social structure and cohesion is not only founded on a common love for music but also informed by competition, compulsion and the pressure to perform to a high pitch of excellence... .” Never before has the Berlin Philharmonic allowed such intimate and exclusive access into its private world.

Sicko

May 2007 •English

A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.

Barbara Morgenstern – Doing It for Love

May 2025 •German

For the first time in six years, Barbara Morgenstern, pioneer of German-style electronic intimate pop, works on a new album. Her laptop sits on a shoebox, in the privacy of her home she finds first lines and harmonies: “I like to be alone,” one song begins. One by one, musicians join her. Intuitive ideas take shape. A window has opened. Arrangements, rehearsals, recordings follow. Step by step, the music enters public space, images are produced, videos, narratives. Questions arise: New beginning or back to the roots? New Biedermeier or tough political comment? The bigger the band, the riskier the booking. The more crisis-ridden the environment, the more comforting the music-making.

Destruction of the Berlin Wall

November 2014 •English

Filmed in Berlin, July 1990. Images of workers taking down the wall and street peddlers selling pieces of it to make a living.

Queens Don’t Cry

February 2002 •German

Bosom buddies BeV StroganoV, Ovo Maltine, Ichgola Androgyn and Tima die Göttliche are four Berlin drag queens who met in the mid 1980s. These four queens became Germany’s most popular drag performers and have been busy fertilizing the German cultural scene. Besides being performers, they are also political activists – in AIDS awareness, anti-gay violence, the sex workers movement and the struggle against the extreme right and racism. The film tells their story.

Peter Eisenman: Building Germany's Holocaust Memorial

February 2009 •English

This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.

Tangerine Dream - Signals from the Schwäbischen Strasse

May 1976 •German

German TV film, also shown on Spanish TV in 1976, this is a film all about TD which includes informal interviews and concert/studio footage, most of which seems to have been done exclusively for the film. The interviews are in the German language. The street name in the title refers to where Edgar Froese used to live in Berlin (apparently Klaus Schulze lived on the same street at the time) and is now the site of the TDI offices.

Berlin under Construction

December 1946 •German

Documentary short about the rebuilding of Berlin in 1946 from a Soviet perspective, showcasing the social changes that have taken place since the fall of Hitler and of Jews working side-by-side with non-Jewish counterparts.

Tunnel to Freedom

July 2021 •German

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

Becoming Black

October 2019 •German

In the 1960s, a white couple living in East Germany tells their dark-skinned child that her skin color is merely a coincidence. As a teenager, she accidentally discovers the truth. Years before, a group of African men came to study in a village nearby. Sigrid, an East German woman, fell in love with Lucien from Togo and became pregnant. But she was already married to Armin. The child is Togolese-East German filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain. In interviews with Armin and others from her childhood years, she tracks the astonishing strategies of denial her parents, striving for normality, developed following her birth. What sounds like fieldwork about social dislocation becomes an autobiographical essay film and a reflection on themes such as identity, social norms and family ties, viewed from a very personal perspective.

Freitag, der 13.

January 1989 •German

24 hours at the Berlin traffic accident standby service. The frequency of accidents on the streets of the capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) becomes apparent, including inappropriate and increased speed, pedestrian errors, failure to give way and driving under the influence of alcohol. Major Busse, the head of the Berlin Traffic Accident Investigation Unit, raises the question of whether the GDR has developed its own kind of driving. The camera provides interesting insights into the carelessness and aggressiveness of road users, which can lead to serious injuries and deaths