Suite au succès phénoménal sur les planches de L’Opéra de Quat’Sous en 1928 à Berlin, le cinéma essaie d’en produire une adaptation commerciale. Mais c’est compter sans l’auteur entêté de ce spectacle, Bertolt Brecht, qui souhaite au contraire un film sans concession, radical et engagé…

Here meet personal memory, working knowledge, research interests and anecdotes together to vivid memory about the most important German dramatist of the 20th century. When the director Peter Voigt, former assistant director of Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble in 2004, finds a wallet with pictures and captions from the American exile, he pursued this track and discovered that Brecht has always worked with photography and film. Peter Voigt puts together an exciting collage of this film and photo material. A conversation with Erdmut Wizisla, the head of Bertolt Brecht Archives, moderated by Harald Müller, forms the dramatic bond of the film.

Brecht′s 100th birthday is being celebrated on 10 February, 1998. A good enough opportunity to examine his life closely again. The film director Jutta Brueckner is mainly concerned here with the question of the kind of person Brecht was. We have known him until now as the brilliant author and theatre director, through his plays themselves; we also know him as the cultural flagship of the GDR along with his world-famous Berliner Ensemble.

He wanted to revolutionize theater practice and at the same time social awareness: Today Brecht, who was born in Augsburg in 1898 and died in East Berlin in 1956, is one of the most important playwrights of the 20th century.

Brecht's company of actors tells the story of Bertolt Brecht: his theatre, plays, poetry and his life.

À son retour en Allemagne, en 1948, après quinze années d'exil, Bertolt Brecht, accueilli par la RDA, fonde avec son épouse Helene Weigel le théâtre du Berliner Ensemble. Ce documentaire donne la mesure de cette révolution artistique.

Documentary about Brecht vs. Pabst vision of The Threepenny Opera (1931).

A portrait of a single day in the late summer of 1956, toward the end of Bertolt Brecht's life, as he prepares to leave his lakeside home, surrounded by the women who form his extended family.

Documentary by Helke Sander, in collaboration with Harun Farocki (among others), about the campaign of the West German New Left against the publishing house Springer, particularly its control and manipulation of the news.

Co-director Cornelia Geiser sits by a window on an easy chair reading aloud a few verses by Corneille, then a somewhat longer excerpt from Brecht - each writer referencing Rome but really condemning injustice in his own era.

A production of a Brecht play gets out of hands.

For the 70th anniversary of Bertolt Brecht’s birth, international Brecht experts, including directors Giorgio Strehler, Benno Besson and Juri Ljubimov, got together for a one-week Brecht Dialog at the Berliner Ensemble on Schiffbauerdamm. Participants discussed the contemporary role of Brecht, nationally and internationally; Brecht’s directorial methods; the collaboration between director and actor; and the theater ensemble’s role in society. Actress and Berliner Ensemble director Helene Weigel gave the final keynote, emphasizing the political role of theater. This short film features scenes from Brecht’s model staging of Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti, played by students at the Schauspielschule Berlin, from the Berliner Ensemble staging of Coriolanus; and from The Exception and the Rule, played by Berlin-based Arab lay actors under the direction of Syrian director Chérif Khaznadar.

“Theatre theory for film, or not: Brecht (an interrogation/performance: a ghost trio for two).” (Gidal). Taking the form of a multi-part dialogue in which Gidal’s translations of Brecht are spoken, Gidal stages an interrogation of his own practice as an experimental filmmaker and theorist via Brecht’s theatre theory. Without rehearsal (but with practice), Gidal “replied” and counter-interrogated on the night. Performance of Sorts with Brecht, Peter Gidal with Karen Mirza was presented by no.w.here as part of the series Reverberations in collaboration with Chisenhale Gallery on 8th June 2009.

Un film de Stuart Sherman

À l'aide de Sophocle, Brecht et Hölderlin, Danièle Huillet et Jean-Marie Straub s'attaquent au mythe d'Antigone, la farouche sœur de Polynice, qui opposa les raisons du cœur à la raison d’État.