Magnificent Obsession: The Films of Werner Schroeter, Nov 8-Dec 9

Tonight, TIFF Bell Lightbox kicks off a retrospective of Werner Schroeter which hasn't happened since 1988. Magnificent Obsession: The Films of Werner Schroeter opens with his 1986 film Der Rosenkönig (The Rose King). Schroeter passed away in 2010.

One of the most revered yet little-known filmmakers of the New German Cinema, Werner Schroeter had a profound impact on such compatriots as Fassbinder, Herzog and Wenders with his luxurious, operatic odes to ecstasy and excess. Come discover the enthralling works of "one of the truly revolutionary artists of our age" (Hans-Jürgen Syberberg).

The retrospective continues until December 9 and presents 19 films by Schroeter.

http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiffbelllightbox/2012/2440000596


Films in Magnificent Obsession: The Films of Werner Schroeter

• 
  • The Rose King
  • Der Rosenkönig
  • Werner Schroeter
  • Werner Schroeter's requiem for his dying muse Magdalena Montezuma, a deliriously beautiful tale of a Gothic matron presiding over a ruinous, fog-shrouded Portuguese chateau, is a summa of the director's cinema and obsessions.

  • Thursday November 8
    6:30 PM

• 
  • Malina
  • Werner Schroeter
  • Isabelle Huppert gives a ferocious, stops-out performance as a philosophy professor driven mad by her love for two men in Werner Schroeter's literally incendiary plunge into desire, dissolution and death.

  • Friday November 9
    6:30 PM

• 
  • Eika Katappa
  • Werner Schroeter
  • By turns hilarious, moving and ravishing, Werner Schroeter's prize-winning first feature is an epic opus of the director's obsessions: opera and death, high culture and low kitsch, religious suffering, homosexual passion and the sensual attraction of the South.

  • Saturday November 10
    6:00 PM

• 
  • Mondo Lux
  • Mondo Lux - Die Bilderwelten des Werner Schroeter
  • Elfi Mikesch
  • This revelatory documentary by Werner Schroeter's long-time cinematographer Elfi Mikesch is an invaluable introduction to the work and being of the legendary director.

  • Sunday November 11
    6:00 PM

• 
  • Palermo or Wolfsburg
  • Palermo oder Wolfsburg
  • Werner Schroeter
  • A young Sicilian travels to the German industrial city of Wolfsburg and ends up on trial for murder in this award-winning three-part epic, one of Werner Schroeter's most successful and acclaimed films.

  • Monday November 12
    6:30 PM

• 
  • Dress Rehearsal
  • La répétition générale, Die Generalprobe
  • Werner Schroeter
  • This exhilarating, essayistic documentary about the 1980 festival of experimental theatre in the French city of Nancy was Werner Schroeter's favourite of his own films.

  • Friday November 16
    6:30 PM
• 
  • Deux
  • Werner Schroeter
  • Isabelle Huppert stars as a pair of twin sisters in Werner Schroeter's gorgeously composed and utterly berserk opus stuffed to overflowing with sailors, drag queens, suicides, cemeteries, doppelgängers, fickle foxes and operatic arias.

  • Saturday November 17
    7:00 PM

• 
  • The Kingdom of Naples
  • Neapolitanische Geschichten, Nel Regno di Napoli
  • Werner Schroeter
  • Werner Schroeter's Viscontian epic spans three decades as it contrasts the fates of an impoverished brother and sister in the aftermath of World War II.

  • Sunday November 18
    5:30 PM

• 
  • The Death of Maria Malibran introduced by Alexander Neef
  • Prior to the screening of The Death of Maria Malibran, Alexander Neef, the General Director of the Canadian Opera Company, offers a perspective on the use of opera in Schroeter’s work, the filmmaker’s relationship to the opera world and the idea of the "operatic" gesture in cinema.

  • Sunday November 25
    7:00 PM

• 
  • Day of the Idiots
  • Tag der Idioten
  • Werner Schroeter
  • A pre-Chanel Carole Bouquet stars in Werner Schroeter's wildly stylish, taboo-busting madhouse drama.

  • Thursday November 29
    6:30 PM

• 
  • Salome w/ Neurasia
  • Werner Schroeter's stark, ritualistic short film precedes the director's wild adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play.

  • Friday November 30
    6:30 PM

• 
  • Der Bomberpilot w/ Winter Journey
  • Two major medium-length films from Werner Schroeter, the first a grotesquely funny exploration of the legacy of Nazism, the second a marvellously inventive, Genet-inspired erotic masquerade.

  • Saturday December 1
    4:00 PM

• 
  • Flocons d'or
  • Goldflakes
  • Werner Schroeter
  • Werner Schroeter's rhapsody of excess leaps from 1949 Cuba to contemporary France to points in between, while its feverishly shifting visual style evokes and parodies everything from kitschy Mexican telenovelas to silent French art films.

  • Sunday December 2
    3:30 PM

• 
  • Willow Springs w/ Argila
  • Werner Schroeter's sublimely strange Willow Springs is paired with this stunning split-screen short.

  • Thursday December 6
    6:30 PM

• 
  • The Laughing Star
  • Der lachende Stern
  • Werner Schroeter
  • One of the most caustic and personal essay films ever made, Werner Schroeter's account of the 1983 Manila Film Festival presided over by devilish diva Imelda Marcos chronicles the legacy of American and Spanish imperialism as it presents a "kaleidoscope of a ravaged country."

  • Friday December 7
    6:30 PM

• 
  • The Queen
  • Die Königin — Marianne Hoppe
  • Werner Schroeter
  • Werner Schroeter's lovely and touching portrait of the great German actress Marianne Hoppe, whose career spanned from the glory days of the Weimar era through the Nazi years to a postwar return to the stage in Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and experimental productions by Robert Wilson and Heiner Müller.

  • Sunday December 9
    5:00 PM