Films by Bert Schmidt

Germany 2023, 92 min
by Lucie Herrmann

A film about the love of jazz, but also about the love of the saxophone, that magical instrument. "I tell something about myself by playing and putting together sounds. That's my story," says Christof Lauer. He is one of the great jazz saxophonists in Europe, was a member of Albert Mangelsdorff's quintet and the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble. He was a soloist in the NDR Big Band in Hamburg for 25 years and has also been a soloist in the jazz ensemble of the Hessischer Rundfunk since 1970.How can t

Germany 2021, 118 min
by Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken, Michael Chauvistré

WE ARE ALL DETROIT - WHAT STAYS AND WHAT DISAPPEARS follows the explosive development of two cities on two different continents and its effect on the people who live there.These two very different cities - Bochum, in Germany's Ruhr region, and Detroit, in the US Rust Belt - have something ver important in common: both Detroit and Bochum were substantially shaped by the automobile industry. And both the beginning and the end of Bochum's auto industry can be traced to Detroit.Following the end of

2012, 89 min
by Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken

ARBEIT HEIMAT OPEL profiles six young people, aged 16 to 19, who began their apprenticeships as industrial mechanics at the Opel plant in Bochum, Germany in 2009. While they must learn to cope with a new phase in their lives, the start of their professional careers and approaching departure from the security of their parental homes, Opel itself is being sucked deeper and deeper into the maelstrom of the international financial crisis and facing ever-increasing economic pressure. We follow Jerome