Archive & Distribution

In 2019, a curator drew our attention to the fact that we have what is probably the last copy of Prem Kapoor's debut BADNAM BASTI in our archive. The film is considered India's first queer film. The artfully crafted musical melodrama, an adaptation of Kamleshwar's 1957 novella of the same name, revolves around a love triangle.

The gentle portrait of cinephile Maria Stadler is the debut film by one of Germany’s most successful filmmakers, Doris Dörrie, together with Wolfgang Berndt. Despite falling audience figures and high debts, Maria Stadler (born 1914) devoted her life to running her cinema in a small Bavarian town.

Erwin Leiser was one of the first and most committed film directors to deal with the Nazi dictatorship and its crimes after the end of the Second World War. Now DEUTSCHLAND, ERWACHE! (FRG 1968), DIE FEUERPROBE - NOVEMBERPOGROM 1938 (FRG 1988) and OTTO JOHN - EINE DEUTSCHE GESCHICHTE (D 1995) have been digitally restored.

We are very happy to have the following films by indian master filmmaker Satyajit Ray now available as DCP with english subtitles: CHARULATA (The Lonely Wife), MAHANAGAR (The Big City), NAYAK (The Hero), KAPURUSH (The Coward), MAHAPURUSH (The Saint) und JAI BABA FELUNATH (The Elephant God). We do hold the screening rights for Germany, Austria and Swizerland.

In his latest documentary Daniel Kötter sketches the psychogeography of a geopolitically charged landscape and its inhabitants between extractivism, war and displacement. In the form of a journey in eastern Armenia, the film follows human and non-human actors as they make their way through the landscape, from Lake Sevan to the Sotk gold mine, occupied by Azerbaijan since the Karabakh War in 2020.

Since 1994, Cathy Lee Crane has crafted a body of work that mines the historical archive to produce lyrical films of speculative history. She received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013 in recognition for her unique re-combinations of archival and staged material.

The digital restoration of Techqua Ikachi, Land - My Life by Anka Schmid, Agnes Barmettler and James Danaqyumptewa celebrated its premiere at Berlinale Forum Special. The unique ethnographic document, a collage of film, photography and painting, tells the story of the Hopi in Arizona from their own perspective and way of thinking.

We are delighted to add Claire Simon's latest film to our distribution programme. After its premiere at the Berlinale Forum 2023, NOTRE CORPS was presented at numerous festivals worldwide and is now available to rent with German subtitles fur customers in Germany, Austria and German speaking Swizerland.

Antonio Carlos da Fontouras garish pulp construction stands for popular Brazilian cinema during the military dictatorship, whereby power relations were exaggerated in nihilistic fashion. The legendary 1930s gangster figure João Francisco dos Santos serves here as an inspiration, who is transposed into the 1970s as an early representation of queerness.