Long before he played the corpulent Goldfinger, German actor Gert Froebe was a scarecrow-skinny comedian. In Berliner Ballade, Froebe makes his screen debut as Otto, a feckless Everyman who tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow. Director R. A. Stemmle doesn't have to strive for pathos: he merely places his gangly star amidst the ruins of a bombed-out Berlin, and the point is made for him. Filmed in 1948, Berliner Ballade was later released in the U.S. as The Berliner.
Commissioned by the Berliner Landesbildarchiv, this movie shows countless impressions of (West) Berlin everyday life, accentuated with self-ironic commentary.
C.R. MacNamara is a managing director for Coca Cola in West Berlin during the Cold War, just before the Wall is put up. When Scarlett, the rebellious daughter of his boss, comes to West Berlin, MacNamara has to look after her, but this turns out to be a difficult task when she reveals to be married to a communist.
East Berlin, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Kurt Schröder and his family dig a tunnel to escape to West Berlin as they struggle to overcome the obstacles blocking their underground path to freedom.
A well-off couple adopt a 16-year-old boy from an orphanage in West Berlin, but their attempts to help him assimilate into his new surroundings fail. The repressive tolerance of the well-educated adoptive parents is just too much for the mischievous young boy.
Double-agent Alexander Eberlin is assigned by the British to hunt out a Russian spy, known to them as Krasnevin. Only Eberlin knows that Krasnevin is none other than himself! Accompanying him on his mission is a ruthless partner, who gradually discovers his secret as Eberlin tries to maneuver himself out of a desperate situation.
An African-American GI retires from the US Army in West Berlin to live with his (white) girlfriend, who already has a baby with another black man. After an argument with her family, she deserts him as well. Despite finding a job and a new place to live, he keeps running into racism, which also manifests itself in sexual intimidation.
The last day in the tanzclub "Dschungel" at Winterfeldplatz, Berlin-Schöneberg. Located at the bar Slumberland, GoltzStraße. 24. It documents with single frame automatic one night from evening to dawn. Sounds from The Doors and Iggy Pop. "Dschungel" moved in 1978 to Nürnberger Straße 35 and became more glamorous and hip.
Documentation on the Berlin S-Bahn, which threatened to fall into oblivion as a result of the division of the city.
A simple story of young people in the West Berlin of 1982.
Berlin-Kreuzberg in the early 1980s. The film is essentially a one-set piece, taking place in a beat-up, graffiti-decorated schoolroom where six teen-age delinquents argue and fight as they await the latest in what has been a series of terrified teachers.
A documentary about the now abandoned and very influential punk club S.O.36. A punk music club on Oranienstrasse near Heinrichplatz in the area of Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany.
A group of mercenaries is hired to spring Rudolf Hess from Spandau Prison in Berlin.
Follows the writer Günter Kunert on his return to West Berlin after his emigration from the GDR.
By the end of the seventies Tanzclub Dschungel moved from Winterfeldplatz, Berlin-Schöneberg to Nürnberger Straße, Berlin Schöneberg/Charlottenburg. A more glamorous venue.Tanzclub Dschungel at Nürnberger Straße, Berlin Schöneberg/ Charlottenburg was the place in Berlin. A relative of Studio 54 in NYC. But much more. Ask Nick Cave, Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Zazie de Paris, Mick Jagger, Prince, Grace Jones, Blixa Bargeld, Depeche Mode, Liza Minnelli, Iggy Pop, Bette Midler, Boy George, Sylvester Stallone, Hildegard Knef, David Hemmings, Michel Foucault, Claude Brasseur, Robert Mapplethorpe or Barbra Streisand.
Alex is a Finnish taxi driver in Berlin. One evening pits two men feel comfortable in his taxi with a briefcase full of money, but unfortunately for Alex's money stolen and a group of gangsters are at the nape of the two. Soon it comes to shooting, and when the two men being killed, is good advice costly for the beleaguered driver.