Films by Rasmus Gerlach

Germany 2020, 80 min
by Rasmus Gerlach

Fehmarn 1970. Jimi Hendrix played his last festival. This music film uses super-8 and amateur film material to reconstruct the historic concert. In September 1970, the Love and Peace Festival was held at the Flügger lighthouse on Fehmarn Island in the Baltic. Planned as the German response to the legendary Woodstock festival, the chaotic event had about 25,000 visitors. Wind and rain dominated the ambience, and the star guest Jimi Hendrix initially refused to perform under those

Germany 2018, 83 min
by Rasmus Gerlach

St. Pauli’s special flair has attracted many interestingwomen who substantially help in shaping their red-light district as barkeepers, musicians or even nuns.Rasmus Gerlach met a surprising range of wonderfulwomen for his unusual portrait of St. Pauli, ranging from the burlesque performer Eve Champagne over the legendary barkeeper Ille from the bar Kiez Klause, her young counterpart Betty Kupsa, “Barmaid of the Year 2016”, to Franca Cueno, proprietor of the legendary Italian restaurant which ha

Germany 2017, 77 min
by Rasmus Gerlach

The lasting memories of the G20 summit in Hamburg are above all the pictures of destruction and escalating violence, which largely overshadowed the peaceful demonstrations. At the same time, protest performances went down very well as a new form of demonstration - like "1000 Gestalten [1000 Creatures]" in which artists with clay-painted faces wandered the streets like zombies, or the "megaphone choir" which drew attention by means of spoken art delivered via loudhailer. The Summit - Performing G

Germany 2016, 84 min
by Rasmus Gerlach

She was a female dandy and so eccentric that Spiegel magazine wrote that in comparison Joseph Beuys was a bourgeois. The artist Hanne Darboven carried her conceptual art across all available borders, translated it into composition and recalculated pictures as minimalist music. Her visionary preoccupation with the world of numbers made her a pioneering computer artist. Director Rasmus Gerlach knew Darboven, who died in 2009, personally and in 2001 filmed the performance of her organ concerto on h

Germany 2015, 67 min
by Rasmus Gerlach

At the end of 2013, three major conflicts overlapped in Hamburg: the fight for the autonomous cultural centre Rote Flora, the disputes about the right to remain of the refugees from Lampedusa and the protests against the demolition of the ESSO tower blocks. Just before Christmas, the police used violence to break up a demonstration and the situation escalated. The police then set up so-called ‘danger zones’, activists from the area of St. Pauli, which had been particularly affected by this devel

Germany 2013, 83 min
by Rasmus Gerlach

In the middle of June 2013, 300 African refugees were stranded in Hamburg. Originally from Libya, they suffered an at times very dangerous odyssey via Lampedusa to get to Hamburg. The Hamburg Senate would like to be rid of the men as soon as possible, but the two pastors of a little church in St. Pauli give 80 of the men sanctuary and the whole neighbourhood rallies round. Inhabitants of the militant autonomous Hafenstraße take on important roles in organizing aid, doormen from the sex bars on t

Germany 2012, 83 min
by Rasmus Gerlach

Hamburg, Rwanda and Shenzhen, China, are the stops of the journey undertaken by Hamburg’s documentary filmmaker Rasmus Gerlach in his attempt to trace the line of production of modern mobile phones by example of Apple's iPhone. Can a mineworker‚ ‘starvation wage’ not guarantee her family's survival? The film approaches difficult and complex questions that arise in the production procedures of the iPhone company Apple, a vast enterprise that grants the mineworkers in the tin mines of Rwanda littl

Germany 2010, 82 min
by Rasmus Gerlach, Wolfgang Neitzel, Paul Kulms

Jimi Hendrix‘ last performance was at the open air festi- val on the island of Fehmarn. Now the festival itself is to take place for the last time. Memories could not be more con- tradictory: For some it was the weekend of their lives - for others it was a total smashup and a catastrophe. In any case, the first festival in 1970 saw the tip of Fehmarn completely trashed and the odd pig slaughtered illegally. The performance by Jimi Hendrix was the only brief ray of sunshine at a festival that was

Germany 2006, 79 min
by Rasmus Gerlach

For twenty-five years peace-brigades have been active in countries, in which men and women are 'disappearing'. As unarmed bodyguards they accompany targets of political killers - sometimes around the clock. PBI has been protecting people from the threat of death squadrons in Guatemala, Haiti, Timor, El Salvador, Indonesia, Columbia and Mexico. Now teams are also being set up in Nepal and Congo. Even in places like Mexico-City the work of the peace-brigades is still necessary – because there are