The Berlin Wall stands now for three years, and the illegal business of organized refugee assistance is booming. Small-time crook Bruno from East Berlin is supposed to kidnap one of the heads of the organization, a man named Fanzelau, from the west of the city on behalf of the GDR. However, he makes contact with responsible Western authorities and becomes a double agent who gets caught between the fronts of the two countries. Roland Klick convinced critics and audiences alike with LIEB VATERLAND, MAGST RUHIG SEIN.
Roland Klick
GER 1968, 87min
For the parents to attend a company party with the neighbor, their daughter Monika is supposed to look after little Katrin. But the young woman prefers to have fun with her boyfriend and leaves the child in the care of her brother Achim. In the meantime, Achim suffocates the girl with a plastic bag and dumps her body in a nearby junkyard. When the group returns drunk, a feverish search begins for the child who has disappeared without a trace.
GER 1989, 92 min
“The first steps in a new world are always difficult. There she stands, with her aluminium suitcase in which she has stored her winter clothes, in the gloomy hallway of an old building in Berlin and doesn't really know whether to trust her own courage - Gertie from Jübek (‘not Lübeck’)”. She has followed supermodel Chantal from her small village to Berlin, where she settles down in the model’s flat, which, in its scenery, turns the deceptive aspect of her fragile star existence to the outside – and thus, in a sense, brings it out in the things themselves.
GER 1965, 24min
At the beginning a man in a suit in an elevator – the office worker. On the way back up again a woman in a leopard coat who comes home by the time the other one goes to work – the prostitute. Both live in the same house, but the circumstances of their lives make it impossible for them to meet each other more than in passing by.
GER 1963, 10 min
A boy is given a lottery ticket and wanders through the streets during Christmas time. The hustle of people, shimmering and flickering lights, electric toys behind the mirrored shop windows create the vision of the literal electrified streets during Christmas. Meanwhile, the boy dreams of flying; at the beginning of the film he observed a paper airplane. “Maybe he could even buy the toy in the end, but he doesn’t convert the ticket into money, but realizes his idea of flying and folds the ticket into an airplane.” (Rudolf Worschech, epd film 9/92)
GER 1997, 177 min
Roland Klick, director of films like DEADLOCK and SUPERMARKET, is a legend and quite an exceptional director in German film history. Although he did not join the ranks nor shared the success of the New German Cinema directors who marginalized him for being too commercial, his films won six federal film awards and were internationally recognized. THE CINEMA OF ROLAND KLICK is a document of his filmmaking and work as director, fascinating until today.
GER 1966, 52 min
After work, there are the streets with all their nightclubs and pubs, through which the dock worker Jimmy, a young lad with nothing to lose, drifts. And on the other there is a girl, with long eyelashes made of beer coasters and a coat collar that big that she can put it up right under her eyes. Our protagonist talks his head off, for almost 52 minutes – the full length of the film – but there seems to be no room for romantic love on the streets of the city. Not even a ring as a gift (or payment) might help to bind them to one another, at least for one night.
“The audience had no lobby in New German Cinema. I have always said that people paid and have a right to expect me to speak to them on film. That was interpreted to me at the time as corruption, but it means the exact opposite. (...) Film and audience = cinema.”
Photo: Roland Klick (l.), Robert van Ackeren and Marquard Bohm at the shooting of "Deadlock"
GER 1983, 92 min
Berlin, 1981. Ken Barlow (Dennis Hopper), a washed up tour manager, hit his peak as a road manager for the Rolling Stones but things have been going downhill for him ever since. He has found salvation in Moody (Terrance Robay), an up and coming synth-pop artist, who he vies to take straight to the top of the pops. Obsessed by the idea that all publicity is good publicity, Barlow, together with his accomplice on the streets (David Hess, THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT) incites a violent punk riot at Moody’s first concert.
GER 1974, 84 min
Willi (Klick-discovery Charlie Wierczejewski) lives on the streets of Hamburg, always on the run. Being sheltered by a good-natured journalist who attempts to resocialize him doesn’t stop him from getting in trouble. While being involved with small-time crook Theo (Walter Kohut, A BRIDGE TOO FAR a.o.) who makes him work the streets, he falls in love with prostitute Monika (Eva Mattes, STROSZEK, ENEMY AT THE GATES, IN A YEAR WITH 13 MOONS a.o.). Willi comes up with a dangerous plan that will enable both of them to make their last great escape.
GER 2013, 80 min
Roland Klick, the director of films such as DEADLOCK and WHITE STAR has an exceptional position in German cinema. Maladjusted to the forms of New German Cinema of the 1970s, too imaginative and unconventional for commercial cinema, Klick was marginalized by the critical establishment. Although his films won several German Film Awards, were international acclaimed and achieved cult status, Klick was written out of history. His dystopian punk-rock odysseys, acid-drenched Westerns and youth-oriented crime dramas are now ripe for rediscovery.
GER 1964, 16 min
A young man (Otto Sander’s first role) cycles into the village. He passes a herd of cows and two women picking up stones from the fields with their aprons rolled up. His bike is stolen from him while he is playing soccer with some village boys. He chases the thief through the yards and barns of the village.
GER 1970, 85 min
A young man, Kid (Marquard Bohm, Ali in FEAR EATS THE SOUL, THE AMERICAN SOLDIER, KARL MAY a. o.), stumbles through the Mexican Sierra, shot and half bled to death, carrying a suitcase containing the loot from a bank robbery. Passing out from heat and blood loss, he is found by Charles Dump (Mario Adorf, THE TIN DRUM, MANHUNT), a former gold miner living on the outskirts of ghost town “Deadlock” with his daughter (Klick discovery Mascha Elm-Rabben, later to appear in Schroeter’s BOMBERPILOT and SALOME or Fassbinder’s WORLD ON A WIRE).