Albert Heins

FREAK ORLANDO is divided into five more-or-less distinct sections, all featuring "Freak" Orlando, a woman, played by the late Magdalena Montezuma, who appears in various guises, and deformities, throughout.

The outrageous and popular underground filmmaker Lothar Lambert has been called the "poor man's Fassbinder" (or Berlin's Andy Warhol) for films like Fucking City that go beyond and beneath the melodrama to the gutter side of family life. With Paso Doble, Lambert graduates from the "no budget" to the low budget commercial film. But he maintains his wacky comi-pathos in a relatively straight narrative about a middle class couple who, after managing to ruin an idyllic vacation in Spain, embark on an extravaganza of sordid love affairs. Their teenage kids watch with raised eyebrows as Mom and Pop--played by underground stars Ulrike S. and Albert Heins--poignantly grope their way back to each other.

The story of a short but intense friendship between two very different women in Berlin. Mascha, in her mid-30’s, worked as a television editor for years before dropping out to make two self-financed and unexpectedly successful theatrical films. At the moment, she is taking a break – she’s run out of ideas. Her plight is made worse by her boyfriend Frank’s unsympathetic attitude. He is a head of production, from a working class background, an unscrupulous career man, and won’t tolerate an unsuccessful woman around him. In the midst of this exasperating mess, Mascha meets the ‘’wolf girl’’, Dennis, a young black rebel who works as a cleaner in a theater. The girl fascinates Mascha and she finally breaks her long, loveless relationship with frank so she can spend more time with Dennis. The two women move in together: Mascha because she wants to turn the simple ‘’wild’’ Dennis into a more sedate person, and Dennis because she has secret hopes of finding human warmth and shelter.