Christoph Schlingensief

In DEATH OF A WORLD STAR we can witness Christoph Schlingensief in his profession. As moderator of Kultur Extra he interviews Udo Kier on behalf of WDR. In between, excerpts from a home story in which Alfred Edel reports directly from the life of the passing world star.

MY 1st FILM consists of two short works that Christoph Schlingensief shot on 8mm film in 1968 at the age of 8. The films show short episodes in which the filmmaker himself figures quite naturally, stages his own work, explains the plot and motivates people to participate: “Please copy me.” (Fritz Göttler)

Episodes:
1. A short Detective Story
2. A short film with Christoph Schlingensief

In MY WIFE IN FIVE, Schlingensief composes tracks and takes to a shimmering cinematic music piece. The playlist changes constantly between the styles, as if this record had a jump – Irving Berlin's This Is The Army, Mr. Jones, an Ave Maria Variation and Jacques Offenbach's world-famous Infernal Galop can be heard. Equally to the music the pictures also have scratches.

Projector is running! As soon as the film strip – a little bumpier than usual – rolls through the projector, the protagonists step in front of the self-made camera. Schlingensief realized the film together with students of the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Offenbach. It is his last project as a lecturer at the university.

In a German film institute the last minutes of the famous silent film “Queen of the Spring” are being shown. Queen Quelly is supposed to marry the alcoholic Guff, although she doesn’t want to ... After the screening the actors decide to flee – first from the screen and then out of the movie theatre. The film continues outside the cinema; everyone wants to have Quelly for themselves ... The queen becomes the source of conflict between the opposing teams.

A family man grabs aunts, uncles, relatives and friends to make a film with them. He wants to prove that he can do it better than the professionals from film and television. But things are getting out of hand. The filming degenerates into slapstick, the mum goes off the rails ending up in a barn. A short circuit makes the chaos complete. HEY MOMMY, WE’RE MAKING A MOVIE brimming with grotesque moments. In the slapstick the film finds its way to the roots of the cinema.

An old woman who is paraplegic after a car accident propagates the return to the “simple life”. Villagers let themselves be convinced and dare to follow her instructions. From the Radio Telescope, the prince “Mr. Money” – you could also call him “Big Brother” – watches his subjects’ undertakings. He gets in touch with the old woman to put an end to the whole thing. A hard, hopeless battle begins.

MAGDALENA JUNG can fly and does so without much ado. All attempts to find out how, all imitations are doomed to failure. Film cannot and indeed should no longer be regarded as an reproduction of reality or a single idea. Film is autonomous (and multivalent)! Its principle rule is to act without rules. WHAT HAPPENED TO MAGDALENA JUNG deals playfully with the illusory power of cinema, with „film as a wonder thing“.

Along with PHANTASUS MUST CHANGE and TUNGUSKA – THE CRATES ARE HERE, the film is part of the “Trilogy on Film Criticism”.

In April 2007 Schlingensief staged Wagner’s opera in Manaus. He leaves the theatre and goes into the jungle as on the Rio Negro before going back into the Teatro Amazonas. 18 short films, he’s shooting meanwhile, will be part oft he installation TREM FANSTASMA (an opera ghost train) in São Paulo end of 2007.

Quiz 3000 was inspired by the German version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” Schlingensief frees the show from the idiot box and turns it into a live theatrical event. He plays the host, who isn't stingy with winnings and doesn't shy away from asking questions about concentration camps, conspiracy theories and weapons of mass destruction.

ART AND VEGETABLES, A. HIPLER, the first collaboration between Zimbabwean-born director Hosea Dzingirai and Christoph Schlingensief, combines the traditional stage play with an exhibition within the theatre, a succession of scenes between the fine and performing arts, tonality and atonality; between drama and dilettantism, Wagner and Schönberg; between Berlin and Harare, Lüderitz and New York, decay and renewal; first and third world; movement and inertia; black and white; sick and healthy; Volksbühne and countryside; Richard and Wolfgang, house and garden, i.e.: art and vegetables.

After working on his adaptation of Parsifal, which opened at the Bayreuth Opera House in 2004, Christoph Schlingensief developes his idea of the revolving stage further.
THE ANIMATOGRAPH is a spinning stage construction that Schlingensief frees from the confines of the theater in four editions. It is a space for projections, words, pictures and sounds that is accessible to the audience. Thus it melds everyday life, politics and art in a living cycle – and sets them spinning.

Christoph Schlingensief devoted his Fluxus Oratorio A CHURCH OF FEAR VS. THE ALIEN WITHIN (2008) to his cancer diagnosis that same year. Fear is the rock on which Schlingensief builds his church. In it he probes his relationship to God and to himself; it is a journey to himself. The church interior is modeled on that of his hometown Church of the Sacred Heart in Oberhausen. He creates images, confessions and litanies that trace the intruder and examine the fear of death.

Three avant-guarde researchers on the road to North Pole. Their plan: expose Eskimos to their films. Torture can come in many forms... Schlingensief’s feature film debut marks the first of many collaborations with New German Cinema legend Alfred Edel!

TUNGUSKA is part of the “Trilogie zur Filmkritik – Film als Neurose”, which also includes the two short films PHANTASUS MUST CHANGE and WHAT HAPPENED TO MAGDALENA JUNG.

After working on his adaptation of Parsifal, which opened at the Bayreuth Opera House in 2004, Christoph Schlingensief developes his idea of the revolving stage further.
THE ANIMATOGRAPH is a spinning stage construction that Schlingensief frees from the confines of the theater in four editions. It is a space for projections, words, pictures and sounds that is accessible to the audience. Thus it melds everyday life, politics and art in a living cycle – and sets them spinning.

Documentation about the German Edition ODINS PARSIPARK.

Jolly life on the pick-nick meadow in Mühlheim, Ruhr. The parents have fumbled out their old Nazi uniforms. It adds even more fun to the polonaise. Mama gives the starting signal for an extraordinary military parade. Her son Joe gets waked up in the middle of the night. But will he understand what they are planning to do with him? Will he be able to resist the brutal fight of the systems? Will the sperm exchange work out? Will Joe eat the raw human brain? Joe seems lost. His way leads into an abandoned shaft of the Rosendelle mine, where there is a test laboratory.

A desolate island in the baltic sea is governed by the creepy vampire-like baron Aunt Devil. Where once peace and love shaped the lives of the islanders, now hopelessness and discord rule. When suddenly a true love threatens the tristesse of his island, the baron cracks up … A torrent of desire, intrigue and murder ensues.

On 29th November 1990 THE GERMAN CHAINSAW MASSACRE hit the German cinema screens. Christoph Schlingensief had shot his radical comment to German reunification within two weeks, shortly after 3rd October 1990. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of German history, in which a 6-headed West German family from the Ruhrpott (played by Alfred Edel, Volker Spengler, Udo Kier, Susanne Bredehöft, Dietrich Kuhlbrodt and Brigitte Kausch) butchered GDR emigrants one after the other.