EDUCATIONAL/TEXTBOOK VIDEOS

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REV. 10-29-09 GERMAN EDUCATIONAL/TEXTBOOK VIDEOS Fokus Deutsch (1998), Each Segment is 15 min. long OC, SAN -- This video instructional series helps college and high school classrooms and adult learners increase their fluency in German using a "story-within- a-story" approach.

VHS format both campuses Note: OC has: Level One-episodes1-4, Level 2-episodes 5-8, and Level 3-episodes 9-12. SAN has: Level one-episodes 1-4, Level two- episodes 5-8. Deutsch: Na Klar!

(2004) OC -- Deutsch: Na klar! Motivates students and stimulates interest in the culture and language through its unique approach to authentic materials that illustrate vocabulary in context, communicative functions of grammatical structures and cultural points. VHS format FEATURE MOVIES ** All feature-length movies have English subtitles, unless otherwise noted.

Advertising Rules! (Germany, 2001), 109 min. OC -- Viktor Vogel gets a huge career boost when he sneaks into a high- powered ad agency meeting and winds up as a new partner on a big- budget campaign.

VHS format Warning: Rated R, language Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Peru, 1973), 94 min. OC -- The story follows the travels of Lope de Aguirre, who leads a group of conquistadores down the Amazon River in South America in search of a lost city of gold (El Dorado). ... more. less.

Using a minimalist story and dialogue and the powerful acting of Kinski, the film creates a compelling vision of madness and folly, counter pointed by the lush but unforgiving Amazonian jungle. Note : Filmed on location below Macho Picchu. VHS format Not Rated 1 REV. 10-29-09 Before the Fall (Prague, Germany, 2004), 110 min. OC -- One of the cornerstones of Hitler's plan for world domination was a network of elite schools to groom young Germans for positions of power both at home and abroad. The National-Political Institutes of Learning - known as Napolas - were a major component of this network, using ruthless military techniques to encourage loyalty to the Reich and conformity with Nazi ideology. Set in Berlin in 1942, Dennis Gansel's intensely beautiful film, "Before the Fall," brings us inside one of these Napolas. ~ JEANNETTE CATSOULIS DVD format Not rated Beyond Silence (Germany, 1997), 107 min. OC, SAN --Given a clarinet by her free-spirited aunt, Lara is immediately consumed by a new passion for music as her parents struggle to understand her gift for music. Lara's ongoing pursuit of music threatens to tear apart her once close-knit family. VHS format both campuses Warning : Rated R Blind Spot (Munich, 2002), 87 min. OC (2), SAN --This documentary tells the story of Traudl Junge, who worked as Adolf Hitler's personal secretary from 1942 until his suicide in 1945. Breaking a 60-year silence, Junge talks about her experiences working for the Nazi regime and being one of the few witnesses to Hitler's final days in a fortified bunker. DVD Format SAN, VHS and DVD OC PG Das Boot ; The Director 9s Cut (West Germany, 1997), 209 min OC -- Autumn, 1941-43 young German sailors aboard U-96 enter war against Britain. They seek adventure, respect and heroism. For them, this voyage is for glory. For their captain, a seasoned war veteran at the young age of 30, it is a mission against enemy destroyers in a blood-red sea that can devour a ship and its crew without leaving a trace. VHS format Warning: Rated R 2 REV. 10-29-09 Dog Days (Vienna, 2001), 115 min. OC, SAN -- Set in a Viennese suburb in the humid torpor of late summer, the film follows a group of troubled citizens, including a mad young woman who spends her days accosting people in parking lots, a divorced couple who still live together in their tomb-like house, and a paranoid old control freak who carefully weighs his groceries, bitterly returning everything that doesn 9t tally. Amidst the endless strip malls and sub developments, they victimize each other beneath the baking sun, pushing and being pushed to an inevitable breaking point. ~ rick mcginnis DVD format both campuses Warning: Rated R, nudity, sex, and language Downfall (Berlin, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2005), 155 min. OC, SAN -- The first German film to broach the subject of Hitler straight-on since G.W. Pabst's 1956 "Der Letste Akt" ("The Last Act") which was told from the point of view of an ordinary German soldier. Director Hirschbiegel puts you inside Hitler's legendary bunker, rebuilt in Munich as a claustrophobic set with no removable walls or ceilings. (Exteriors were shot, ironically, in St. Petersburg, with Russian extras playing Germans.) There he recreates characters and events as faithfully and realistically as possible. DVD format both campuses Warning: Rated R, violence, disturbing images, nudity Fuehrer Ex (Berlin, 2002), 105 min. OC -- The chilling allure of neo-Nazism in this unflinching portrait of a young man 9s transformation from a sensitive teenager to a hate-filled fascist thug. DVD format Warning : Full frontal nudity, prison violence. Go for Zucker (Germany, 2004), 91 min. OC -- For obvious reasons, Go For Zucker, a German Jewish comedy (three words not often linked over the last half century), is something of a landmark. This very funny dysfunctional-families farce appeals by setting a number of people and plots in motion and then spinning them nearly (but not quite) out of control. ~James Van Maanen DVD format Not rated 3 REV. 10-29-09 Good Bye Lenin ! (East Germany, 2003) 121 min. OC, SAN -- Just as Rip Van Winkle slept through the American Revolution and woke up twenty years later to find himself a citizen of a brand new country, so Kathrin Sass, an East German woman, slips into a coma on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall only to wake up eight months later a member of a capitalist society. This is the premise of 'Good Bye Lenin,' a clever and affectionate tale about truth, love and family ties that transcends all national borders and boundaries. ~ Roland E. Zwick DVD format both campuses Warning: Rated R brief language, sexuality Hilde 9s Journey (Switzerland, 2004), 90 min. OC -- A man must choose between honoring his ex-lover's directions in his will, and his own financial future and his lifelong dream. Helping him make that choice is his ex's last lover. DVD format Not rated I am Guilty (North Rhine, Germany, 1968), 87 min. OC -- The co producer of Dogville and the producer of The Syrian Bride backed this darkly comical festival favorite about a fresh out of college teenager, Armin, with no job in sight and two nagging parents. Disaffected, he takes it upon himself to send an anonymous confession to a newspaper for a crime he didn't commit. There, the line between Armin's acts of rebellion and his violent fantasies becomes impenetrably blurred. DVD format Not Rated I was Nineteen (Bernau, Germany, 1968), 115 min. OC -- Based on the secret diary kept by acclaimed German filmmaker Konrad Wolf while he was a soldier in the Russian Army, I Was Nineteen is the director's most personal film. A highlight of the DEFA collection, Wolf examines his own past through the poetic story of a young German, Gregor Hecker, who as a child fled with his parents to the Soviet Union, but who eventually returns to Germany as a soldier after WWII with the victorious Soviet troops. An austere, independent-minded work of art, the film not only contains many stories about the last days of the war, but also tells Wolf's own story and uses actual documentary footage from the documentary Death Camp of Sachsenhausen (1946), which was one of the first post-war German films about the Nazi period. ~ First Run Features DVD format Not Rated 4 REV. 10-29-09 Kaspar Hauser (Germany, 1993), 133 min. OC -- Based on the renowned, 19th-century German legend. Who was Kaspar Hauser? Kept in a dungeon his entire childhood, Kaspar turned up in Nuremberg in 1828. He was sixteen, barely able to talk or walk, a virtual "wild child." The mystery unfolds as he quickly learns to talk, read and write, and therefore articulate his memories. As his past is uncovered, so too are theories surrounding his origins which hint that Kaspar may very well be the true heir to the Dukedom of Baden. The strange plot thickens when he's murdered just a few years later, in 1833. Why was Kaspar Hauser kept in a dungeon all those years and who murdered him? Was he truly German royalty as many believed? DVD format Not Rated Marx & Coca Cola (East/West Germany, 1995), 120 min. OC --A movie about German reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A Hamburg real estate developer takes refuge at the farm of a former dyed- in-the-wool communist youth leader. After that, they discover that ideologies don't crumple as easily as walls. VHS format Not Rated Mostly Martha (Italy/Germany, 2002), 106 min. OC, SAN --Martha is a single woman who lives for one passion: cooking. Her solitary life, however, is shaken when her niece, Lina, comes to live with her. DVD format both campuses PG Nosferatu: The Vampire (Schiedam, 1979), 107 min. OC -- c&&the most evocative series of images centered on the idea of a vampire that I have ever seen& d When Herzog announced his plan to release 11,000 rats into the streets of Delft for the scene in which Nosferatu arrives (the director wanted grey rats but could only obtain white ones, which his crew painted grey), the Delft burgermeister categorically refused and told the apparently insane German that his town had just spent months clearing the canals of their own home-grown rats and had no intention of reinfesting the area with laboratory rats from Hungary. Baffled, Herzog moved his rats to a more accommodating city, Schiedam, where he was allowed to shoot, albeit on a smaller scale. VHS Format Not Rated 5 REV. 10-29-09 Nowhere in Africa (Kenya, 2003), 140 min. OC, SAN --Based on a Stefanie Zweig's autobiographical novel, this beautiful film by Caroline Link follows an affluent Jewish family who flees Germany to escape the Holocaust, moving to a remote farm in Kenya. As the years go by and war ravages Europe, each family member uniquely adjusts to life away from the homeland. VHS format SAN, DVD OC Warning: Rated R, sexual content Paragraph 175 (Germany, 2000), 81 min. OC -- The movie opens with carefree scenes of Berlin nightlife during the Weimar Republic, when gay men and women lived openly. Everything changed with the Nazis' assumption of power and the enforcement of paragraph 175, an anti-sodomy provision of the penal code that dated from 1871. Between 1933 and 1945, 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality; some were imprisoned, others sent to the camps. Far from being Manichaean (dualistic), the directors' expert multilevel narrative reflects their attraction to the gray areas of the story. They touch on gay resistance fighters and victims, but also gay Nazis and sympathizers. The tales told are bitter, horrific in detail 4yet often leavened with irony and humor. An indelible high point is the salty recollection by irrepressible octogenarian Jewish resistance fighter Gad Beck of his first visit to a gay bar. ~Elliott Stein. VHS format Not Rated Rosa Luxemburg (Berlin, Czech Republic, 1986), 122 min. OC --This informative and measured docudrama is based on historical research and some of the more than 2,000 letters Rosa Luxemburg wrote during her active life. Luxemburg was a leader of both the German and Polish Socialist parties who advocated an anti-colonialist and pacifist stance on the issues of her day. The movie opens with a shocking prison scene: Rosa is set up for a mock execution while other prisoners are murdered around her. She is eventually released from prison to continue writing, talking, traveling, and exhorting others to join in the Socialist movement. Her lovers, her friends, and historical VIPs wind their way through her life year by year as she fulfills her destiny. Imprisoned on more than one occasion, Rosa did not escape her political enemies; she was assassinated on a January night in 1919 while walking with her friend Karl Liebknecht, who was also murdered. ~ Eleanor Mannikka VHS format Not Rated 6 REV. 10-29-09 Rosentrasse (Germany, Netherlands, 2003), 136 min. OC, SAN -- A New York woman grieving the recent death of her father travels to Germany to investigate her parents' experiences during World War II and discovers their role in the "Rosenstrasse Affair," a real-life incident in which Aryan German women protested the detention of their Jewish husbands. DVD format both campuses PG-13 Run Lola Run (Germany, 1998), 81 min. OC, SAN, OC Lib --A box-office success in Germany. Red-haired Lola is given twenty minutes to get $100,000 to her boyfriend before the Mob kills him. VHS format SAN , DVD OC Warning: Rated R Schultze Gets the Blues (Germany, Louisiana, 2005), 107 min. OC, SAN --This is a funny, touching peek into the world of a recently retired miner who, like his father before him, entertains polka audiences with his accordion. DVD format both campuses PG Sophie Scholl (Munich, Bavaria, 2005), 117 min. OC -- Munich, 1943: Sophie and Hans Scholl are members of the "Weiße Rose" (White Rose), a resistance group against the Nazi regime. When their siblings lay out fliers at the university, they are caught by the caretaker who calls the Gestapo. After their imprisonment, they are interrogated for days. In the beginning, Sophie manages to bluff the questioning official Robert Mohr, but Hans finally confesses everything. ~ fippi2000 DVD format Not Rated Trace of Stones (East Germany, 1966), 117 min. OC -- Construction foreman, Hannes Balla, is king of the building site, Schkona, and is loved and supported by his workers. Yet things change when a young female engineer and the New Party Secretary arrive, who both force Hannes to view his life in different ways. Balla 9s swaggering pose, reminiscent of Hollywood 9s Western heroes, melts away as he realizes he is in love with the engineer, Kati. DVD format Not Rated 7 REV. 10-29-09 The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Germany, 1972), 124 min. OC --Considered among Fassbinder 9s most controversial films, the story deals with the shifting power relationships among three women: a successful fashion designer, her contended assistant, and a sultry model. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is a brilliant depiction of the manipulation inherent in every relationship (even between friends and family) and the lengths to which people will go to stay with the ones they love.~ Derek Smith VHS format Not Rated The Boat is Full (Swiss-German-Austrian, 1980), 100 min. OC --A conflict of country versus conscience. It is the summer of 1942 and the Swiss government has set up such strict immigration policies to deal with the vast number of people fleeing Nazi Germany that the country has been declared ca full lifeboat d. VHS format Not Rated The Bridge (Die Brücke) (Cham, Bavaria, Germany, 1959), 102 min. OC, SAN --A powerful, deeply moving classic of German cinema. Set in 1945, seven German boys defend an insignificant bridge from an American attack. Based on the autobiographical novel of Manfred Gregor, this searing film was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe award. Its depiction of futile valor and wasted youth touched audiences the world over. VHS format both campuses Not Rated The Counterfeiters (Vienna, Monte Carlo, 2007), 99 min. OC, SAN -- The moral conundrum at the heart of Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky's "The Counterfeiters" is worthy of Kafka or Dostoevsky: What is the value of a single human life in the face of unspeakable evil? During World War II, one of Europe's greatest counterfeiters decides, for a while, that his own survival is more important, until inevitably he learns that surrendering one's soul and humanity may be worse than losing your life altogether.~ David Wiengand DVD format both campuses Warning: Rated R 8 REV. 10-29-09 The Edukators (Achenkirch, Tirol, Austria, 2004), 130 min OC, SAN -- Hans Weingartner's sleek and original thriller follows a pair of young radicals as they attempt to charm the lovely and impressionable Jule by employing her in a variety of night-time break-ins. Emboldened by their successes, the friends kidnap a wealthy businessman and soon find themselves neck-deep in danger. "...a terrific movie that boasts intelligent wit, expert storytelling, delightful characters and grown-up dialogue plus suspense and a wicked surprise ending" DVD formats both campuses Warning: Rated R some language and sexuality. The Experiment (Cologne, North Rhine - Westphalia, Germany, 2000), 119 min. OC -- This is an intense high-energy thriller about a human behavior study in a controlled environment that gets wildly and horrible out of control. DVD format Warning: Rated R, Disturbing violent situations, language and sex . The Farewell / Abshied (Poland, 2002), 91 min. OC -- The serenity of the country on this summer day of 1956 stands in marked contrast to the deep, volatile emotions of the characters. Brecht is at the center of the storm in the heaven and hell of human relationships: love and hatred, jealousy and egomania, betrayal and dashed hopes. He struggles to make plans for a future that fate was soon to end. DVD format Not rated The Lives of Others (Berlin, 2006), 119 min. OC, SAN -- At its core, "The Lives of Others" is about the different ways people live. It shows right ways and wrong ways and then, most compellingly, it puts a man who has lived his life in a desperately wrong way -- as a tormenter of innocents, as a government thug -- in the position of listening to the conversations and day-to-day interactions of a thoroughly decent man. This collision is compelling, and it lifts an already suspenseful and fascinating story about life in East Germany onto a metaphysical, universal plane. ~ Mick LaSalle. Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, East Germany 9s population was closely monitored by the State Secret police or the Stasi. The Stasi built an astonishingly widespread network of informants -- researchers estimate that out of a population of 16 million, 400,000 people actively cooperated. The Stasi kept files on up to 6 million East German citizens -- one-third of the entire population. DVD format both campuses Warning: Rated R 9 REV. 10-29-09 The Legend of Rita (Poland, 2002), 103 min. OC -- This is an excellent film. Schlöndorff continues his fascination with the Baader-Meinhof/RAF era with this film telling the story of a group member who goes into hiding in East Germany during the 1980s. The English translation of the German title is the excellent "The Silence before the Shot." For whatever reason, the American distributors chose instead to call the film the infinitely dumber "The Legend of Rita," continuing a tradition of taking interesting German titles and turning them into lame English titles.~ Richard Huffman VHS format Not rated The Nasty Girl (Munich, Bavaria, Germany, 1991), 94 min. OC, SAN -- When Sonja investigates the secret past of her home town, she uncovers more than she expected--and more than the townsfolk want revealed. Before she knows it, she is nicknamed "the nasty girl" and her trouble really begins. This provocative comedy about secrets and surprises features a fabulous performance by Lena Stolze and is based on a true story. VHS format both campuses PG-13 The Princess and the Warrior (Cornwall, England, 2001), 133 min. OC, SAN, OC Lib --From the director and star of the smash hit Run Lola Run comes a romantic drama about a shy, beautiful nurse and the small-time criminal who miraculously saves her life. VHS format SAN, DVD format OC Warning: Rated R, disturbing images, language and sex The Promise (Germany, 1995), 115 min. OC --Set in 1961 on the eastern side of a divided Germany, this film tells the story of two teenagers who have planned their escape to the west. VHS format Warning : Rated R 10 REV. 10-29-09 The Rabbit is Me (East Germany, 1965), 109 min. OC -- The Rabbit Is Me was made in 1965 to encourage discussion of the democratization of East German society. In it, a young student has an affair with a judge who once sentenced her brother for political reasons; she eventually confronts him with his opportunism and hypocrisy. It is a sardonic portrayal of the German Democratic Republic's judicial system and its social implications. The film was banned by officials as an anti- socialist, pessimistic, and revisionist attack on the state. It henceforth lent its name to all the banned films of 1965, which became known as the "Rabbit Films." After its release in 1990, The Rabbit Is Me earned critical praise as one of the most important and courageous works ever made in East Germany. ~ University of Massachusetts; Amherst University of DVD format Not rated The Second Track (East Germany, 1962), 80 min. OC -- During the Cold War years, when Germany was divided in two, Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft, or "DEFA" for short, was the German Democratic Republic's state-run movie company. The studio churned out movies for several decades, spanning genres such as Western, science fiction, and drama. This is a tightly wound tale of a bold robbery, and the eyewitness who refuses to finger the culprit. A train station inspector has witnessed a daring robbery. Despite getting a clear view of the perpetrator's face, however, he refuses to turn the man in. When the thief convinces his partner to go after the inspector's daughter, a shocking series of events threaten to make public some of the darkest secrets of the Nazi era. ~ Jason Buchanan DVD format Not rated The Tin Drum (France, Germany, 1979), 142 min. OC, SAN -- Based on Günther Grass's Nobel prize-winning allegorical novel, The Tin Drum tells the story of a boy, Oskar Matzerath, growing up in Eastern Germany before and during the Second World War. Oskar, the son of a middle-class Danzig dealer, is a gifted boy who, overwhelmed by the cruel adult world around him, throws himself down a staircase on his third birthday. This deliberate and thought-out protest stunts his growth, leaving him to become an adult in a child's body. The deformed boy acts as the film's narrator, commenting with vicious cynicism and amazing eloquence on the insanity engulfing the world and human cruelty in general. Armed with a tin drum, which he bangs incessantly, and possessing a glass- shattering scream, Oskar faces the horrors of fascism and the awful events that engulf his family. His misery is compounded when his protests fall on deaf ears. VHS format both campuses Not rated 11 REV. 10-29-09 12 The Unknown Soldier (East Germany, 2006), 97 min. OC -- The film documents the Wehrmacht Exhibition, an exhibit that made its way around Germany from 1999 to 2004 and hit the German societal nerve like a spinal tap, generating massive protests and riots wherever the exhibit played. The Wehrmacht Exhibition's incendiary display featured previously unseen war footage and repressed photographs of German- perpetrated atrocities conducted against civilian populations during World War II. Before this exhibition, the prevailing common German viewpoint of the horrors inflicted upon the innocent victims and scapegoats of the war was that the violence was conducted by the Gestapo and the S.S. But what the exhibition revealed for the first time to the German population was the revelation that it was, in fact, the regular German army soldiers who were the ones who willingly and happily participated in the slaughter.~ PAUL BRENNER DVD format Not rated Vitus (Switzerland, 2006), 123 min. OC -- The film tells the story of a highly-gifted boy whose parents have demanding and ambitious plans for him - they want him to become a pianist. However, one day the boy, Vitus, is no longer willing to comply with his parents' plans and ambitions because he wants to follow his own star. ~Christof Neracher DVD format PG What to do in Case of Fire (Berlin, 2002), 101 min. SAN, OC -- Six friends who set a bomb in an abandoned building during their radical political, younger years of the 1980s find themselves under investigation when the device finally explodes 13 years later. VHS format SAN, DVD OC Warning: Rated R, language Wings of Desire (Berlin, 1988), 110 min. SAN, OC -- Damiel, played by Bruno Ganz, is the angel who has grown tired and frustrated at his inability to affect people's lives. When he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he decides to leave the heavens and enter the mortal world. VHS format both campuses PG-13

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