Films by Jürgen Ellinghaus

Germany, France, Togo 2023, 96 min
by Jürgen Ellinghaus

Shortly before the First World War, the German 'Africa explorer' and film director Hans Schomburgk embarked on an unprecedented film expedition to West Africa to shoot adventure and documentary films in the exotic setting in the north of the then German colony of Togo. To this day, his films remain virtually unknown in Africa. Guided by the report of the actress Meg Gehrts, we travel more than a century later with a mobile cinema to original locations of Schomburgk's film adventures. Together wi

Germany, Togo, France 2021, 56 min
by Jürgen Ellinghaus

Every year the War Cemetery Memorial of Wahala / Chra in Togo (West Africa) hosts the 11th November Remembrance Day Ceremony in memory of the First World War and of the African colonial soldiers who died here in August 1914. The first German surrender in WWI was signed in Togo, on the soil of the Reich's cherished “model colony”, shortly after the Battle of Chra. It marked the end of German “Togoland”. But Wahala's history and its name point to another painful past. Wahala / Chra: a place where

Germany, France 2017, 13 min
by Jürgen Ellinghaus

From 1884 to 1914, "Togoland", a small belt of land between the British Gold Coast Colony and French-dominated Dahomey was part of the German overseas empire. "Togoland" - 100 years later: fragments of a colonial legacy marked by wars and violence...

Germany, France 2010, 54 min
by Jürgen Ellinghaus

Every two years, the small town of Beverungen, in the middle of Germany, celebrates with particular vigour its traditional Marksmen's Festival. Festivities are focused on numerous parades with marchers in uniform and a shooting contest, where the winner is declared "King". Throughout the Germanic regions, marksmen's guilds are known since the 10th century. They protected cities and rural areas against troubles, wars and looting. In Beverungen, about a quarter of the active male population is inv

France, Germany 2006, 86 min
by Jürgen Ellinghaus, Hubert Ferry

When France surrendered in 1940 and German soldiers showed up in the small village of Housseras (Vosges, Région Grand Est, Northeast of France), an unknown French infantryman burned his papers and killed himself in a farmer's barn. Four years later he was identified as "soldat Doblin, Vincent". In fact, he was none other than the mathematician Wolfgang Doeblin, son of the famous German novelist Alfred Döblin ("Berlin Alexanderplatz") who was forced to flee Germany with his family in 1933 because