Rosa von Praunheim

In this docudrama Rosa von Praunheim looks into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s sexual orientation, especially into his erotic experiences during his travels in Italy. Contrary to the common belief, von Praunheim argues that Goethe was not a heartbreaker and conqueror after all. It was only in Italy, that he had diverse sexual experiences, not least with men. Von Praunheim bases his assumption on letters written by Goethe to his friend Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi about these sexual encounters. Some of the content of these letters is re-encated in the film. At the same time, historians and linguists analyse and classify the letters into their historical context.

Julia von Heinz’s 80-year-old father dies completely unexpectedly. From his estate, the filmmaker discovers that the former reserve officer was homosexual and had led a double life. The director seeks out Rosa von Praunheim, an icon of the gay movement, to talk about it. The outcome is the portrait of an extraordinary, lonely man.

A sensual hommage to Germany's most productive queer filmmaker, Rosa von Praunheim.

A youth in middle of self-discovery, offending with his father, just discovering his sexuality and hiding it again. A boy who's often lonely loses a loved one and is in love with the wrong one.

Carla is a different form of homage, in which Carla Aulaulu sings a song by Gitta Linds.

Documentary showing the daily routine of Sander’s seven year old son, Silvo.

I Was a Jewish Sex Worker is a humorous, no-holds-barred autobiographical film about the director’s former career as a sex worker and his relationship with his Jewish family. From graphic, erotic massages to a revealing interview with his grandmother, Roth tells a unique tale and explores themes of sexual wellness, connection and self-realization. Featuring guest appearances by German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim and sexologist/performer Annie Sprinkle.

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life.

To mark the 60th birthday of the multi-talented comedian, singer and author Hape Kerkeling, the two documentary filmmakers André Schäfer and Eric Friedler have created a quiet, thoughtful and entertaining portrait of this often anarchic humorist. The film tells of his rapid rise as a teenager, his time and the blows of fate during the AIDS epidemic, the controversial forced outing, his confident exit from the show business and his new beginning. The film is a sensitive insight into the family history and a fast-paced journey through the career stages of a formative figure in German TV entertainment.

Rex Gildo’s songs and musicals made him very popular. His best-known song was “Fiesta Mexicana” from 1972. Rosa von Praunheim tells the story of his life in the context of the gay pride movement, the normative pressures of the Schlager music industry, and the profound changes currently underway.

Tally Brown, New York is a 1979 documentary film directed, written and produced by Rosa von Praunheim. The film is about the singing and acting career of Tally Brown, a classically trained opera and blues singer who was a star of underground films in New York City and a denizen of its underworld in the late 1960s. In this documentary, Praunheim relies on extensive interviews with Brown, as she recounts her collaboration with Andy Warhol, Taylor Mead and others, as well as her friendships with Holly Woodlawn, and Divine. Brown opens the film with a cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes” and concludes with “Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide.” The film captures not only Tally Brown’s career but also a particular New York milieu in the 1970s.

The film focuses on gay men who align themselves with hard-core right wing views, skinheads and Nazis. Rosa von Praunheim stated of the subjects featured in the documentary, “Some may be shocked that I do not take a stand in my film and do not portray gay neo-Nazis as monsters, but as people living their lives in dramatic contradiction.”

Turned while visiting New York, down-on-her-luck Neue Deutsche Welle vampire Sylvana struggles to get by in 1980s West Berlin when she realizes none of her friends want to be bitten.

Rosa von Praunheim, an icon of German gay cinema, talks about gay subculture, while his words are countered by statements from gay strippers in San Francisco who discuss their work and their business.

Rosa von Praunheim follows the lives and existential struggles of three contrasting German emigrant women in New York City. The protagonists not only tell of their exciting lives in the hectic metropolis, but many dramatic events also take place during filming.

Pioneering gay German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim explores America’s burgeoning trans rights movement—from early leaders like Virginia Prince to contemporary activist groups like the titular Transexual Menace—in this powerful, yet sensitive documentary.

This film powerfully documents New York City's gay community's response to the AIDS crisis as they are forced to organize themselves after the government's failure to stem the epidemic. Activists who are interviewed include playwrite Larry Kramer, People With AIDS Coalition co-founder Michael Callen (who died of AIDS in 1994), New York filmmaker and journalist Phil Zwickler, as well as representatives from ACT-UP, Queer Nation and the Gay Men's Health Crisis.

Filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim searches for his biological mother after discovering late in life that he was adopted.

From the 1950s onwards, Erika and Ulrich Gregor brought countless film historical milestones to Berlin and shaped cinema discourse in post-war Germany. A look at the life and work of the couple without whom Arsenal and the Forum wouldn’t exist.

Desire Will Set You Free is a feature film that explores life in contemporary Berlin with an often critical and sometimes humorous eye. Based on a true story, the plot follows the relationship of an American writer of Israeli/Palestinian descent and a Russian aspiring artist working as a hustler, offering access to the city's vibrant queer and underground scenes while examining the differences between expatriate and refugee life. Our characters travel through Berlin's layered history and unique subcultural landscape; on their adventures they discover influences and remnants of the Weimar Republic, WWII, the Bowie years, and punk.

You may not recognize the name Ralf König, but you probably recognize his art. One of the most commercially successful German comic book creators, he is best known for books like “SchwulComix (GayComix)” that offer a twisted take on queer culture. Equal parts Tom of Finland and R. Crumb, König’s comics are sexually charged and often politically incorrect, portraying daily routines of gay life alongside serious subjects like AIDS. King of Comics is a touching portrait of a cutting-edge artist with a wicked sense of humor. All hail the king! —Jimmy Radosta

Documentary about the current hustler scene in Berlin. Based on interviews with former and active prostitutes, the realities of male prostitutes in Berlin are treated. The film is objective, and records the hustler scene as a social Submilieu, which is characterized by both tragic fates, as well as everyday things and routines. Not only the direct sale of sexual services is discussed, but also other aspects associated with male prostitution: poverty, drug addiction, AIDS, crime, migration, love and partnership.

Documentary on the history of gay and lesbian film.

Lars, a male nurse from Saarbrücken, moves to Berlin with his lover, Roland. They begin to renovate an apartment and their happiness seems almost complete. What Roland doesn’t know is that, while secretly checking out Berlin’s night life, Lars is also experimenting with a deadly poison.

In collage sequences, the surrogate of synthetic sensuality takes form and seduces the sailors in the guise of a Hawaiian girl. In ritual punctuation, she distributes deaths which seemingly only the hardy siren Fatality can survive.

A New York film and at the same time the study of a young man suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The Berlin filmmaker Oliver Sechting (37) and his co-director Max Taubert (23) travel to New York with the idea of documenting the art scene there. However, the project is quickly overshadowed by Oliver's OCD, and the two directors fall prey to a conflict that becomes the central theme of their film. Encounters with such artists as film directors Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), Ira Sachs (Keep the Lights On), and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation) or the transmedia artist Phoebe Legere seem more and more to resemble therapy sessions. At last, Andy Warhol-Superstar Ultra Violet succeeds in opening a new door for Oliver.

A collective documentary film, from five european directors asked to witness the revolutions and dramas caused in their own countries by the pandemic. Among them, “Two Fathers”, directed by Julia von Heinz (20’). After the death of his father, Hans-Michael von Heinz, the director finds out the truth about her parent true sexual identity. In order to know more, she starts emailing persons who got to know him over the last years, among them his closest friend, director Rosa von Praunheim.

Portrait made for the 70th birthday of Rosa von Praunheim by his close collaborator.

In this film, outspokenly homosexual filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has documented his encounters with friends in the New York "underground" arts movement, the better-known of whom are William Burroughs (who says nothing for the camera), Andy Warhol (seen in the distance) and Fernando Arrabal (who is interviewed in Spanish). The emigrants named in the title are notable Germans who left the country before World War II, such as Greta Keller and Grete Mosheim. Reviewers at the time of the film's release considered it to have been a sort of paid vacation for the filmmaker rather than a serious effort. (Clarke Fountain, Rovi)

Rosa von Praunheim shows an intimate portrait of his dying friend Mario Wirz.

Rosa von Praunheim is an icon in the scene: gay activist, loving provocateur and a very special filmmaker from Berlin for decades. His curiosity for people and their fates runs through his extensive film work. For his 70th birthday he has now made 70 new short films. In the first part of the big project, he confronts Thilo Sarrazin with the mayor of Neukölln, Heinz Buschkowsky, and the Turkish lawyer and women's rights activist Seyran Ates; shows a homosexual hustler in Bucharest; gossip reporter Andreas Kurtz, who knows everything about Berlin's celebrities; Rosa's neighbors who live with her dependent brother; Esther Bauer, who survived Auschwitz, and the Berlin comedian Ades Zabel. High on the roofs of Berlin, the gay chimney sweep Alain Rappsilber tells him about his fetish leather meeting Folsom.

In modern-day Berlin (1987), Frau Kutowski goes insane, believing herself to be the (real-life) notorious Anita Berber, a nude art dancer/drug addict/scandalous figure of post-WWI Berlin. (Berber died of tuberculosis in 1928, having achieved significant success and recognition throughout the dance world.) Frau Kutowski is placed in a mental hospital, where in her own mind she acts out Berber's final days, including in her fantasies the hospital's staff and patients, to represent Anita's friends and associates.

A portrait of three remarkable women who were once celebrated figures in the German cultural scene: film star Dolly Haas, dancer Lotte Goslar and artist Maria Ley, Erwin Piscator's widow.

MY WONDERFUL WEST BERLIN recounts the lives and struggles of gay men in West-Berlin. Through present-day scenes and never before seen archival footage, a fascinating picture emerges of a city, that today characterizes itself as a dream destination and place of refuge for gays.

You say you’re interested in film and you’ve never been to the Moviemento? You are hereby put on cineastic probation – at least until you watch Bernd Sobolla’s documentary.

Nurses on the night shift roll dice to see which AIDS patient will die next. The owner of a gay bathhouse gets Kaposi's Sarcoma but tries to keep his mind on profits. An epidemic victim is harassed by a reporter on his death bed - he sticks her with a contaminated syringe. The government opens a quarantine called Hell Gay Land. Gay terrorists kidnap the Minister of Health...

"[This film] embodies (...) one of his [Hahnemann's] most mature films. Rainy rides along Schönhauser Allee, which seems to be depopulated. Past the 'Viennese Café', the meeting place par excellence. From a moving train the view of idyllic landscapes, on the horizon a castle. The camera tilts, turns, until the world is upside down. Scenes of an action with the artist friend Heike Stephan: in the sanctuary Hahnemann, black painted with a white turban, and Stephan, stack cages with rabbits on top of each other. Then TV recordings of a discussion forum with Jean-Luc Godard and Rosa von Praunheim - scenes as from another planet. From the off again and again a poem Hahnemann, recited by Peter Mario Graus. The diction is initially calm, almost factual, increases, eventually overturns, but then falls back, resigned. " (Claus Löser in "Gegenbilder")

The German homosexuals to whom the third film "Feuer unterm Arsch" is dedicated are visibly less enthusiastic about safe sex, let alone safe sex 'with Mother Earth', which Allen Ginsburg envisions for dealing with an AIDS-like contaminated earth. In Berlin, the gay capital of Germany, Praunheim encounters a party atmosphere during his research. "There's no one who thinks safe sex is good," say some of them, yet they plead for reason, "you also have to have the freedom to fuck yourself to death," is the extreme response of the boys, who do not want their painstakingly acquired identity as gays to be reduced to an AIDS identity through voluntary restrictions. Praunheim has also tracked down politically active people in Germany, but according to his observations, they are identified with the unpleasant truth and avoided according to the Cassandra principle.

AIDS victims and activists cope with hardship and society’s ignorance.

In this daring autofictional documentary, filmmaker Tim Lienhard, raised in a Catholic family in southern Germany, traces his late-in-life transformation into a provocatively performative drag persona. Now 64, he reflects on identity, sexuality, aging, and self-esteem with shameless openness and humor. His journey takes him from Berlin to the Torremolinos Porn Festival and Pride Week in Gran Canaria, where he meets OnlyFans creators, partygoers, and peers who share their stories of desire and liberation. Blending confession and celebration, Lienhard’s grotesquely sexualized drag alter ego becomes both a mirror and manifesto—a vivid plea for authenticity and sexual freedom in regressive times.

In the background, Rosa von Praunheim sings a love song in a foreign language. The sound engineer counts as the camera moves over Rosa’s black plastic jacket. Carla Aulaulu sings while a young girl (also Carla) collapses from exhaustion while climbing stairs with a shopping bag. An erotic relationship is suggested as the camera focuses on the bag swinging between the maid’s thighs. The maid struggles to make tea for the Klostermann family, who sit stiffly in evening gowns with plastic egg cups on their heads and paper in their noses. One daughter stabs the maid. The family watches the maid’s excessive dancing, amused and embarrassed. Carla collapses repeatedly, with a twitch being the last.

Five German directors celebrate the influence that famed filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has had on their careers in honor of his 70th birthday. After discussing Praunheim's inspiration, each protégé presents an original short drawn from the experience.

The filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim remembers his humble origins from the unglamorous district of Frankfurt Praunheim.

Rosa von Praunheim has made 150 films and repeatedly provoked the middle-class to homophobic majority society. But he doesn't spare his own community either by accusing many gays of being conformist soft-spoken people; and by outing some prominent homosexuals against their will, he has made many enemies. For the younger generation of LGBTIQ activists, Rosa von Praunheim is still known as a figure from the early phase of the queer movement, but as a white cis man he hardly gets a hearing there. However, Rosa does not want to argue and theorize, but above all to live out his creativity. Sometimes narcissistic, sometimes angry and combative, sometimes anxious - and always with his own style. Companions such as the comic book creator Ralf König, the producer Regina Ziegler and the New York publicist Brandon Judell pay tribute to the artist and activist Rosa von Praunheim, who calls himself a “lucky child” because he was mostly able to do what he felt like doing.

How gay, how lesbian, how trans is German cinema? A 3sat documentary looks back at 100 years of queer film history.