criterionforum.org

Aunt Peg wrote: Thu Mar 26, 2026 11:15 pm Alexander Kluge, 94, German film director much of whom's brilliant filmography is available through Edition Filmmusuem: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/m ... man-cinema

GaryC wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2026 8:32 am I haven't seen anything of his and other than that German DVD set don't think I've ever had an opportunity to. I posted about him in the Waning Art House Titans thread. In the 1960s, Yesterday Girl and Artistes at the Top of the Big Top: Disorientated were titles to conjure with, but neither has been on VHS or disc in the UK and I can't trace any TV showings other than The Patriot on Channel 4 in 1984, which I didn't see.Maybe, now he's passed, there could be some showings at least, maybe at the BFI Southbank in London?

jlnight wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2026 5:39 pm

GaryC wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2026 8:32 am I haven't seen anything of his and other than that German DVD set don't think I've ever had an opportunity to. I posted about him in the Waning Art House Titans thread. In the 1960s, Yesterday Girl and Artistes at the Top of the Big Top: Disorientated were titles to conjure with, but neither has been on VHS or disc in the UK and I can't trace any TV showings other than The Patriot on Channel 4 in 1984, which I didn't see.Maybe, now he's passed, there could be some showings at least, maybe at the BFI Southbank in London?

I'll help you out - there was a second screening of The Patriot on Channel 4, in 1988. Meanwhile, Strongman Ferdinand apparently was broadcast on Southern TV in Jan 1981 as part of one of their Continental seasons. The only other thing that was broadcast was the multi-director film Germany in Autumn, again on Channel 4 in 1987, its sole screening.

zedz wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2009 10:02 pm Yesterday Girl is full of memorable bits and pieces, but there’s a particular sequence in the middle of the film that’s gob-smacking in its audacity and irreverence and might give you an idea of what you’re in for. In the course of about three minutes, we get the following shots, in sequence:
- A display of elaborately stylised police stunt-driving, sped up so that the headlights become blurred, spinning halos.
- A second pixillated shot of the police display, this time of marching in formation.
- Anita’s pious friend, last seen at the very beginning of the film, walking through a forest and spying something as she approaches the camera.
- A close-up of Anita, in the forest, holding up her palm, which is full of slime.
- An actor (not seen anywhere else in the film) declaiming a speech melodramatically at the camera.
- A white rabbit chomping on a carrot.
- Pan shot of a stretch of mud.
- Longer scene in which two men in a park (new to the film) offer a woman (ditto) the choice of which of her two children will undergo a lobotomy - it’s OK, you see, because she has a choice. They cart off her son.
- A shot of dozens of toy soldiers advancing in stop motion across a hilly landscape.
- A couple of extra shots of the toy soldiers in the landscape, this time unanimated, but caught with the camera circling around them.
- Sped-up footage of Anita running around a park, amongst other people who may be chasing her.
- An intertitle that reads: “Will yesterday come tomorrow?”
- More footage of Anita running through the park - now chased by the sinister lobotomising pair. She turns and fires a gun at them.
- Anita steps onto a table at which another woman is sitting and starts to walk towards us. She steps in her high heels on the woman’s thumb, which is crushed and explodes in a mess of blood and latex.