Missing Image

He was considered the “Dostoyevsky of documentary filmmaking”, his films were celebrated as a “triumph of the documentary over fiction”. Michael Mrakitsch worked as a filmmaker for several German TV stations from the1960s to the 1990s. His two dozen films are among the most exciting, demanding and challenging works created during these three decades of film and television history. This retrospective may be the first screening of the films outside the medium of television, to whose conditions of production they are inseparably linked. Mrakitsch died on March 12th, 2010.

Madhouse minutes (Drinnen, das ist wie draußen, nur anders)

D: Michael Mrakitsch, GER 1977, 97 min.

Madhouse minutes is filmed in a psychiatric clinic that was considered progressive in the 1970s. It mirrors a society whose only remedy is to subdue those no longer capable of producing their labour as a commodity.

See also:

Djibouti or the guns aren’t loaded, only by night

Wednesday, June 2, 10 pm More...

Shalom or We Have Nothing to Lose (GER 1983, 130 min)

Thursday, June 3rd, 12 am More...

Mrakitsch returned to the subject matter of all three films and their locations some 20 years later, revisiting his own films and their present realities. These will be available for viewing throughout the Forum.

A conversation between Florian Schneider and Rick Prelinger, founder of the Prelinger Archives, will take place on Sunday, June 6th, 4.30 pm.