Archive

D.E.B.S. (short)

In the 562nd episode of a – fictional – television series, the D.E.B.S. find themselves up against a particularly tough opponent. The four schoolgirls, who also happen to be specially trained secret agents, are obliged to fight a former colleague, now bent on dominating the world. Then, the worst happens: one of the trio is kidnapped by the ex-D.E.B. and forced to have sex with her...
Angela Robinson: “I love all the comic book characters: Charli...

Daddy and the Muscle Academy

In the late 1940s, the artist Tom of Finland began turning his sexual fantasies into drawings. He gained world renown with the publication of his work in American men’s magazines. Gay men began to shape their bodies, look and entire self-image according to his idealised views of masculine-looking men dressed in leather or uniform. His drawings expressed a self-determined lust for life, liberated from any sense of guilt, which was perceived as a ...

Daniel Schmid - Le chat qui pense

Film director Daniel Schmid was born in 1941. His father was a hotelier in Flims. A talented child, he was inspired by his grandmother’s stories and soon discovered the art of being expressive. Before long, the hall of his parents’ hotel became the stage for his own storytelling – a passion which was to remain with him for the rest of his life. After studying at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the German Film and Television Academy, Schmid wen...

Danielův Svět

Daniel, a 25-year-old student of literature, lies in the bath. Off-screen we hear his voice: ‘Although I’ve never been with either a boy or a girl, I can’t say my life lacks love.’ But what is it like for a young man who loves boys; a man who, unable to ever fulfil his desire, either has to content himself with sexual fantasies or use medication to suppress his feelings? This film accompanies Daniel in his struggle to accept himself, and his despera...

Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story

When the film’s director, Julian Shaw, was 15 years old he saw a show in Sydney that was to change his life. That night, just one entertainer took to the stage – a political satirist from South Africa named Pieter-Dirk Uys. A well-known opponent of apartheid, Uys soon became a dedicated activist against Aids. Uys’ alter ego is Evita Bezuidenhout, South Africa’s ‘most famous white woman’. During his performance in Sydney, Uys railed passionately a...

Das andere Istanbul

For those in the know Istanbul is something of a European gay mecca. How is this possible in present day Turkey? During the making of this film we were able to observe that, beyond the media, the discussion about Turkey joining the EU and the adoption of an increasingly Western lifestyle, a Turkish gay community has emerged that is self-confidently beginning to stand up for its rights. One member of this community is 28-year-old Kurd Mehmet Tarha...

Das Ende des Schweins ist der Anfang der Wurst

A portrait of the writer Napoleon Seyfarth, whose books, “Schweine müssen nackt sein” (Pigs Should Be Naked) and “Schwein oder Nicht-Schwein” (To Pig or not to Pig) have achieved cult status. There are, so the books say, answers “to life” and death. Napoleon Seyfarth was an Aids activist and a flamboyant figure in Berlin’s gay scene. He died of Aids in the year 2000.

Das Geräusch Rascher Erlösung

After a flirtatious encounter, a young man finds it difficult to organise the hoped-for reunion with the object of his desire. Calls remain unanswered and he is left with only a drink, his bed and images of soldiers in combat to fill his inner void. Meanwhile, the boundaries between imagination, reality and dream dissolve, and a cinematic chess game ensues in which queer identity is pitted against patriarchal violence.
Wieland Speck’s first work...

Das Mädchen und die Spinne

Over the course of two days and one night, as Lisa moves out of the apartment she has shared with Mara and into the one where she will live alone, many things will break and some will be repaired.
Like the titular spider’s web, the film has a perfect, fragile geometry. Set almost entirely in interiors, it is also an involuntary summary of the paradoxical age of the pandemic. The transition from one abode to another, and the energy that is releas...

Das Ovo (Ovo - das Video)

Christoph Josten was Ovo Maltine. She died on 8 February, 2005 at Berlin’s Auguste Viktoria hospital, eleven weeks after suddenly being diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. She had lived with the HIV virus for 13 years. “Ovo (the egg)”– read one obituary – “lay down in Berlin’s nest of queens and brooded on a number of political projects: a hotline for gay victims of assault, Act Up, AIDS benefit events, the legalisation of marihuana, the recognition...

Dasepo Sonyeo

Fun, sex and lunacy. All hell's been let loose at No Use High School! Director E J-Yong puts a whole new curriculum together for his brilliant adaptation of an internet comic. Whilst the couple that run this somewhat unusual boarding school indulge their sado-masochistic longings, their multi-confessional pupils are busy educating themselves primarily in all kinds of sexual practices. At the centre of this off-the-wall revue of eccentric yout...

Dear John

50 years ago, director Hans Scheugl could have left Vienna and started a new live in the USA. His contact with John, his American lover of past days, has long since ended. An investigation into what was and what might have been.

Découpage

Découpage is a film about filmmaking and film viewing; about a gender encountering itself, the world and the images of this world.

Demons

Ambitious young actress Vicki lands the starring role in a promising theatre production in Singapore. What seems like the opportunity of a lifetime, however, turns out to be the beginning of a story of creeping abuse at the hands of director Daniel, for whom sadistic violence and artistic practice are inseparable. But power dynamics can change . . .
In Demons, Daniel Hui plumbs the depths of his protagonists’ emotional states in profound, intrica...

Der Boden unter den Füßen

Lola is almost thirty. A successful management consultant, she is constantly on the move between the companies she is tasked with restructuring. Her chic apartment in Vienna is more of a mailbox and a launderette than a home. A hundred working hours a week is not uncommon in addition to five sessions at the gym, expensive dinners with clients and nights spent in sterile hotels. Her career, which she is advancing with cleverness, efficiency and r...

Der Himmel auf Erden

Local representative Traugott Bellmann is a vocal critic of society’s moral decline in general and the notorious nightclub “Heaven on Earth” in particular. Just his luck that he inherits the place – along with half a million marks – and furthermore, on the day, of all days, that he is appointed president of the Moral Decency League! And just his luck that the terms of the inheritance from his deceased brother stipulate that Bellmann has to spend...

Der Knochenmann

Horvath has disappeared. The final leasing instalments on his car haven’t been paid and this is why he must be found. Brenner accepts his old friend Berti’s lousy assignment and sets off on a long journey into the country. A forwarding address leads him to a fast food restaurant where, every week, thousands of bony remains of Viennese breaded fried chicken are left behind. These leftovers are ground into bone meal and added to the chickenfeed of ...

Der Kreis

Founded in the early 1940s, the network around the magazine 'Der Kreis' ('The Circle') was the only gay organisation to survive the Nazi regime. It blossomed during the post-war years into an internationally renowned underground club. Legendary masked balls at the Theater am Neumarkt in Zurich provided 800 visitors from all over Europe with a secret and safe space to act out their 'otherness' in a self-determined way. It is...

Der letzte Sommer der Reichen

Young and attractive company executive Hanna von Stezewitz (Amira Casar) has everything, and just takes whatever she doesn’t. She’s an arrogant and unscrupulous manipulator who has politicians and banks in her pocket – she’s a perfect example of predatory capitalism whose preferred sartorial look is patent leather and leather. To avoid boredom she seeks ever more extreme kicks and sees her abuse of a young girl with hopes of a career merely as co...

Der menschliche Faktor

Jan and Nina travel with their two children to their weekend home on the Belgian coast to find some peace and quiet. But this is ruined by a mysterious break-in when the family arrives. Afterwards, Nina has a bloody nose and Zorro, their son Max’s pet rat, has disappeared. What happened? None of them is able to give the police a clear description of the intruders. Back in Germany, the successful advertising agency that this bilingual couple runs...