Else Heller

One of the last great German Expressionist films of the silent era, Joe May’s Asphalt is a love story set in the traffic-strewn Berlin of the late 1920s. Starring the delectable Betty Amann in her most famous leading role, Asphalt is a luxuriously produced UFA classic where tragic liaisons and fatal encounters are shaped alongside the constant roar of traffic.

While staying with her aunt at a fashionable spa, Else receives an unexpected telegram from her mother, begging her to save her father from debtor’s jail. The only way out, it seems, is to approach an elderly acquaintance in order to borrow money from him. Through this telegram, Else is forced into the reality of a world entirely at odds with her romantic imagination – with horrific consequences.

In this realistic, unsentimental portrait of Germany’s dire economic situation, a middle-aged payroll clerk loses his job due to technological advances and, unable to find another, descends into despair. The film’s director, Marie Harder, was one of only a few women directors of the time and was also the head of the German Social Democratic Film Office. She made only two known films before her accidental death in exile in Mexico in 1936.

The film traces the individual stages in the life of Ludwig van Beethoven.

"Tropical Nights" - The young violinist Alma comes to Simbali with an orchestra led by conductor Zangiacoma, hired for a series of performances at the Schomberg hotel. Both the conductor Zangiacomo and Schomberg are obsessed with Alma. One evening, when Alma is, as usual, forced to entertain the guests she meets Mr. Heyst from his island Sourabaya, where he lives in solitude. He takes Alma to his place on the island.

Drama based on a play by Friedrich Wolf. Hete is pregnant, hoping to have soon a family with her fiancé Paul. When the factory, where she and Paul work, sacks all striking workers, she tries to find a legal way for abortion. But there is only the illegal option - the eponymous cyanide.

The Miller and His Child

Based on Honore de Balzac’s story of Madame de Langeais. Costume drama about the infamous loves of the countess.

Man schenkt sich Rosen, wenn man verliebt ist

13 German soldiers have to fight off a French regiment.

A group of German infantrymen of the First World War live out their lives in the trenches of France. They find brief entertainment and relief in a village behind the lines, but primarily terror fills their lives as the attacks on and from the French army ebb and flow. One of the men, Karl, goes home on leave only to discover the degradation forced on his family by wartime poverty. He returns to the lines in time to face an enormous attack by French tanks.