About
the film Rosa Luxemburg
1986 Germany/West Germany
Running time: 122 minutes
In this informative and measured docudrama, director Margarethe
von Trotta relates the life and times of Rosa Luxemburg.
Von Trotta based her film 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.
"Rosa Luxemburg is one of the most fascinating figures in modern European
political history. She clung to Marx's teachings when Lenin was rewriting the
master to fit his own needs.
She believed in the dictatorship of the proletariat but
said that no cause could justify the taking of one innocent life.
Her death was probably as much of a relief to Lenin and
the Bolsheviks in Moscow, whom she relentlessly criticized for
their autocratic programs, as it was to her former comrades
in the Social Democratic Party, who authorized the purge
of the ultraleft Spartacists and orchestrated the cover-up
of her murder"
(Canby, New York Times)
Click here for full review.
Short Silent Film: Berlin, Symphony of a Great City
1927 Germany
Running Time: 20 minutes
Berlin offers us a literal "day in the
life",
following the life of the city as it wakes, goes to work
through the morning and into the afternoon, moves from work
to play, to sport and dancing and drinking deep into the
night. It leaps swiftly from rich to poor, from man to machine
and back again, from the grandeur of the city-scape to the
sewers beneath, and always movement, movement in every way
that can be found.