Deutschland 2016, 45 min.
Deutschland 2014, 75 min.
In 'Campus Germany', Matti Bauer accompanies students in Berlin, Munich and Düsseldorf around lecture theatres, libraries and student pubs. From the perspective of those affected by the system and on the basis of the author's experiences, the film looks critically at the bachelor's system, which has little in common with the film maker's own time as a student. The film makes a strong case for the Humboldtian educational ideal, in which students aren't supposed to study in order to learn about a specific profession, but should first aim to build their personality. He shows students who are trying to rebel against the bachelor's system and the priority it makes of efficiency, and who are trying to cultivate their own interests and simply 'try things out'. 'Campus Germany' is a quiet argument for a different kind of university, in which students are allowed a few more oases of 'relaxed studying' than they are today – less bachelor's and more Humboldt.
Deutschland 2015, 43 min.
More information is coming soon.
Deutschland 2013, 44 min.
Without onions there is no good food - and for the poor it is often the last resort. Matti Bauer's film Cooking Stories: The Onion takes on a universal vegetable that is essential and is often overlooked. The film begins in Bamberg, which already in the Middle Ages has been the center of the onion cultivation. Farmer Eichelsdörfer is one of the last who still grows the "pear-shaped" onion, a regional specialty that is particularly appreciated by the locals because of its mild and sweetish taste. "When I stop cultivating it's over," he says, when he gets the Frankish blues.
Deutschland 2014, 43 min.
More information is coming soon.
Deutschland 2012, 44 min.
Daily life is sensational enough – the working creed of many a local reporter. Whether it be the nursery school summer fayre, a training session for the volunteer firemen or a meeting of the city council; it’s the journalists of the local press that keep the readers of the daily papers abreast of the important and not-so-important news specific to their region. No occurrence is so unimportant that it cannot find place in the local news section. This is where readers discover new and consolidate well-known facts about everything and everybody. But no-one writes about the people that research and compose these reports. This film takes a behind-the-scenes look at a profession that remains indispensible in the age of electronic media.
A young woman leaves her parents' farm to work as an Alpine dairymaid. Far removed from the world in the valley, she leads a simple but free life, bound only by the daily rhythm of the cattle on the mountain pasture. One with herself and the animals in her charge, Uschi milks, makes butter and cheese. For one Alpine summer, the self-assured dairymaid forgets the family farm and its unsettled future. By the following winter though, Uschi is pregnant, her boyfriend gone and the Alpine summer a thing of the distant past. At home, a tedious tug-of-war begins between Uschi and her parents over the transfer of the farm.
Matti Bauer's film tells the story of a young farm woman in the Bavarian Oberland. Over the span of nearly ten years, he shows us how Uschi's dream lives on, despite all external constraints – her dream of a free life, up on the mountain pasture.
Deutschland 2011, 44 min.
To look at him, one might think that Nico would be better suited to a movie set in the big city as to this film. But the dreadlocked 25 year-old vegetable grower from Paese in Gifthorn wants to take over his mother’s farm and thereby continue a long tradition. His mother, however, is not entirely convinced that Nico has the qualities required to make him a good farmer. She is worried that her son, with his ambitious investment plans, might put the existence of the entire family at risk. After all, Grandma and Grandpa’s livelihood has to be sustained as well. They live on the farm too and help out as they can. Grandma and Grandpa are never short of a piece of good advice for Nico. For over a year, Matti Bauer follows the difficult process of handing over the farm. He audience experiences how the different generations exasperate one another and come into conflict; how they grow apart and find each other again. In his film Home is… On the Farm, Matti Bauer tells a story that has moments of both tenderness and tragic comedy, and which never fails to move us.
Deutschland 2011, 43 min.
The Isentalers have been fighting against the proposed A-94 for 35 years. This stretch of motorway would tear through one of Bavaria’s last remaining bastions of untouched Auer countryside to join Munich with Passau. Matti Bauer tells the story of the bitter resistance that this project finds amongst those people who are prepared to fight for the integrity of their land. He takes a look back at the history of the debate: How Stoiber, the Home Secretary of the time, declared war on those opposed to the project, and also at the moving speech from Sepp Daxenberger, the since deceased leader of the green party, in which he appeals for courage on behalf of the Isentalers. In addition to valuable historical documents, the film shows the progress of the building works, how diggers and bulldozers can generate facts and figures, and how the planners in Munich seem to have a solution to every problem.
Deutschland 2011, 44 min.
Inga has made a career of her hobby and wants to prove herself in the masculine domain of horse breeding. Her parents’ stud provides her with everything she needs to obtain her goal: Horses, pasture and even an experienced trainer in the form of her father. But Inga is strong-headed and doesn’t always want to follow the advice of her father. For almost a year, we accompany the young woman – who lost her mother as a child – along the stony path to becoming a horse breeder. We experience the highs and lows of Inga’s everyday life; witness the joy as her pony foal receives a commendation, the disappointment when she and her beloved stallion make a mess of a tournament and the hope a foal is born in the middle of the night. Home is … With the Horses is the portrait of a woman devoted to horses. As well as her courage, Inga shares with us the moments of self-doubt and desperation that she experiences when her fighting spirit leaves her. The one thing that Inga never loses is her charm.
Deutschland 2011, 44 min.
In his moving film, Matti Bauer tells the story of a lost childhood and the attempt to re-find an element of it in the middle of the Norwegian mountain wilderness. Tina was abused as a child. She left home at a young age and ended up in a commune. A very personal tale about the exploitation of emotions, and the insatiable longing for freedom.
Deutschland 2009, 45 min.
In the High Alps there are only a few places where untouched nature and civilisation live as close together as on the Großglockner Mountain. Since the construction of the High Alps Route, thousands upon thousands of tourists drive to the mountain summit every year, high above the Pasterze, Austria's largest glacier, which is losing volume every year.
Matti Bauer sets off to visit people who live on the edge of the glacier: mountain guides, national park attendants, landlords and sheep farmers. They each have their own opinions of the Pasterze, which legend says used to be a green meadow. On the Banks of the River of Ice is a film about people who live on and from the Pasterze glacier and who are worried about its fate. But their worries differ from each other, sometime so fiercely that they oppose one another entirely.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Klaus Lautenbacher
sound: Gregor Kuschel
editor: Martin Sell
music: Wolfgang Netzer
commissioning editor: Johannes Pechtold
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
Interview with the director on his film ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER OF ICE during the XVI. Filmfestival della Lessinia, Italy.
Germany 2010, 45 min.
THE DAIRYMAID AND HER SON is t he last in a trilogy of films depicting the life of dairy farmer Uschi. Like many others, Uschi is forced to give up a tradition that is hundreds of years old, because she has no other choice. Using intensely atmospheric images, director Matti Bauer laconically portrays day-to-day life on a hill farm. Since taking over from her parents, the young dairymaid has run the farm single-handedly. She is supported only by her 76-year old father and her partner Tom, himself a pilot, who helps out in the stall and with the hay-making in his sparse free time. But the self-confident young woman, who Matti Bauer has already accompanied in the films USCHI, A BAVARIAN COWGIRL and INHERITING THE FARM, is about to enter a new phase of life. Uschi is pregnant and expects her second child in the summer. She makes the heart wrenching decision to give up the dairy farm, because she and her father can’t manage the work load anymore.
Uschi’s six-year old son, Jakob, is seemingly oblivious to the changes taking place and lives out his childhood on the farm and in the woods. In autumn, it will be time for him to start school. Uschi lets him have his freedom; she believes it to be the best thing that she can give him. She often has no idea where Jakob is, but trusts him to observe the boundaries that she has set him. Amongst the many things that Jakob wants to be when he grows up, he can envisage being a farmer, and he knows exactly why: So that the farm can continue. The film accompanies the dairymaid and her son a whole summer-long, in a time of great upheaval.
Deutschland 2008, 45 min.
Whoever enters the garden of Loesche, the potter, feels as if time has been turned back. Passing by Loesche´s 18th century house, you reach a garden of vegetables and herbs, in which ceramic manufactures sprout like exotic plants: spheres in various forms, colours and glazes, which are balanced on sticks like the trophies of a hunter; black-annealed jugs and bowls, hung on laces and dangling in the wind; small masterpieces besides miscarried items, which are broken in two. Collectively, they form a fascinating open-air museum in which now and then an amazed visitor gets looses his way. Loesche doesn´t mind.
He is proud of his fairy-tale garden.
The Bavarian craftsman is 83 years old, uses a cane for walking in his garden and is nevertheless the first one at the kiln every morning. The pieces are produced by three women, Karin, Manuela and Claudia. They work in the adjoining building, which the last provost of the "Augustinerchorherrenstift" had already used as a painting studio in ancient times. The furniture is covered in fine dust, making you forget that the potter´s wheel is electrically driven and the kiln is heated with gas.
"Inside the potter´s garden" is a film about a handcraft which profoundly shapes the town of Diessen. Ceramics belong to the town like Neuschwanstein belongs to Bavaria.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Klaus Lautenbacher
sound: Marcus Czernohorsky
editor: Martin Sell
commissioning editor: Johannes Pechtold
Deutschland 2008, 89 min.
The boy’s choir of the Regensburg Cathedral has been honing the art of liturgical song for more than a thousand years, and the ten year-old boys who belong to it are subjected to intensive training. A long way from their parents, they create a home for themselves at the boarding school, try to achieve recognition from their teachers and fellow pupils and battle the home sickness that is never far away. What unites them is their love of singing and their ambition to be a part of this famous concert choir that performs across the world and on the television.
For one year director Matti Bauer observed the young singers and the highs and lows of their lives as prospective members of the choir. The children in his film are not prodigies but boys on the cusp of puberty. Sometimes they’re little kids, sometimes they’re almost young men with bum-fluff who play Gameboy and are afraid of their voices breaking. Each personality comes with its own set of wishes, which through the course of the year, are repeatedly challenged. There’s Marco, who cries because he’s homesick and frequently considers giving up; Johannes, who isn’t bothered about striding ahead; Peter, who’s always in a good mood and for whom everything falls into place without much effort. And at the top of the class there’s Maxl, who regardless of his academic success at the end of the year, says: ‚You can’t feel perfect all the time. But you shouldn’t despair when you’re down. You just have to stick it out.’
And that is exactly what the young choir members in Matti Bauer’s film do. And they do it with a rare intensity. There is an intimate closeness in cameraman, Waldemar Hauschild’s images which follow the boys as they chase through the school’s hallways and dance for joy. The boys go after their goals with great strength and often unintentional humor. Audiences witnesses these efforts and the bewitching power of their singing, which if not always perfect, is constantly improving and reaches moving high points at concert choir performances. The simple, yet profound message of this film is that singing in the choir helps the boys to get over their various troubles. In an age in which we have thousands of songs on our MP3 players, but can’t sing a single one off by heart, this visual plea for singing is almost a provocation. The Domspatzen choirboys make us want to sing our hearts out. Even if not ‚Hallelujah’.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Waldemar Hauschild
sound: Gregor Kuschel
editor: Gaby Kull-Neujahr BFS
commissioning editors: Sonja Scheider, Jochen Kölsch
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
Deutschland 2007, 45 min.
Two years passed by since director Matti Bauer spend a summer with the dairymaid Uschi on a mountain pasture near Tegernsee and followed her with his camera.
A lot has happened since then, much of which Uschi did not plan. Eighteen month ago she gave birth to her son Jacob. On shaky legs, he is already exploring the farm on which his mother, too, grew up. As a single mum, Uschi bears a lot of responsibility and soon she will also take over her parents’ estate. It’s a new challenge for the young woman who has just passed her agricultural exams.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Klaus Lautenbacher
sound: Andi Eschbaumer, Sebastian Wagner
editor: Marc Haenecke
commissioning editor: Johannes Pechtold
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
Deutschland 2008, 45 min.
The story how Nicky Sabnis, a talented ayurveda-cook and author of cooking books, came to Bavaria to live and work in a monastery of nuns, the Ladies Isle.
Buch und Regie: Matti Bauer
Kamera: Rupert Heilgemeier, Sorin Dragoi,
Herbert Lehner, Isabel Theiler
Ton: John Conolly, Rolf Lorentschk
Schnitt: Hana Vogel
Redaktion: Christiane von Hahn
Deutschland 2006, 45 min.
When 60 year-old Erwin Fischer is not fishing in Spain´s Ebro reservoir, he´s at home in Teisendorf breeding birds. The fun-loving hobby fisherman was a soldier with the German armed forces until a sudden heart attack at the age of 45, forced him to make fundamental changes to his life. Seriously ailing, he was given his pension and packed off into early retirement. He attributes the fact that he is still alive today to a heart transplant. Erwin has been living with his new heart, which came from a 20 year-old motorcyclist, for ten years now. He´s a tough cookie, this man with the mischievous smile and irrepressible lust for life. And as one-time runner-up in the Bavarian wrestling championships he understands the importance of not letting a knock keep him down.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Heinz Albert Staubitz, Klaus Lautenbacher
sound: Andi Eschbaumer, Nina v. Essen
editor: Ulrike Tortora
commissioning editor: Christel Hinrichsen
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
Deutschland 2007, 45 min.
Every day 15-year old Markus goes to Farmer Ebert´s farm, the last of its kind in the village. The farm is like a romantic island which has a magic pull over Markus.
There´s a dog, chickens, pigs, a tractor and three horses. Markus is particularly drawn to the horses.
After he has done his homework, he helps the farmer with his work, whether it is harvesting potatoes, in the pigsty or in the paddock. They are an unlikely couple who benefit from one another and give the film its sunny charm.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Gustav Jacobson
sound: Nina von Essen, Harald Stuckmann
editor: Florian Siegrist
commissioning editor: Johannes Pechtold
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
Deutschland 2004, 45 min.
Uschi is in her late twenties and wants to become a farmer. This summer, like those past, the pretty young woman is drawn to the loneliness of a pasture high above Lake Tegern where she will spend four months tending a herd of 30 cows and calves, making butter and cheese and preparing for her agricultural exams. She loves the adventurous mixture of responsibility and freedom inherent in being a shepherd, and she plans to enjoy that freedom one last time before taking over her parents' farm next year - even if they think she should find a husband first.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Klaus Lautenbacher
sound: Sebastian Wagner
editor: Ulrike Tortora
[Musik: Wolfgang Netzer][1]
commissioning editor: Johannes Pechtold
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
Deutschland 2006, 45 min.
In spite of snow cannons and artificial ski slopes, a real winter is about real snow, but this year the weather has been playing crazy. Just as the inhabitants of the Tyrol village Alpbach are starting to worry about the lack of snow, the storm finally arrives.
The film paints a loving portrait of a winter sport village, which has managed to maintain much of its original character despite the ski circus which rolls up every year. Both the architecture, which is lost in time, and the people who live in Alpbach are what make the place so special.
There's the former shepherd, Hansl, who doesn't only know the secrets of the weather but is a walking oracle of pearls of wisdom.
Another character who adds colour to the place is ski instructor, Sepp, who in spite of a serious accident six years ago, still speeds down the piste on his monoski and teaches his pupils to ski. Gitti, who runs a pension for winter sport guests and lends a certain charm to the village, which regardless of the wild goings-on on the slopes, exudes an atmosphere of peace and calm. All these snow characters benefit in one way or another from the snow which has finally fallen on Alpbach.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Klaus Lautenbacher
sound: Zoltan Ravasz, Oliver Sachs
editor: Ulrike Tortora
commissioning editor: Johannes Pechtold
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
Deutschland 2004, 60 min.
In the 60ies a Brazilian music movement became world-famous and still is today: the Bossa Nova - an intriguing mixture of Brazilian Samba and Cool Jazz from Rio de Janeiro.
White musicians like António Carlos Jobim, João Gilberto, Carlos Lyra und Roberto Menescal experimented with the Samba originating in the Favelas, the slums of Rio. This new beat expressed the spirit of a whole generation -of Brazilian youth. It is linked to a period full of euphoria and awakening. Celebrating the everlasting summer of Ipanema the young musicians created the soundtrack of their time and Ipanema became the synonym for beautiful girls and falling in love.
In an intimate atmosphere the famous musicians perform in front of the camera.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Eduardo Lerina, Heinz Albert Staubitz
sound: Jim Shreim
editor: Florian Siegrist
commissioning editor: Mechtild Albus
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
1st Prize Roma Music Doc Fest 2005 Popular Music
If it were up to carpenter Sedlmayer, his son would take over his business when he retires, but although the son has completed an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker, he prefers to work as an employee in a furniture store. Consequently Sedlmayer is forced to try and sell the business, which once offered a steady and secure income to a dozen employees. Only so far his efforts to find a buyer have fallen flat. Mr Werdath, a tiling expert from Rosenheim, is also looking to retire. He has no children of his own and the assistant he had hoped would take over the business was afraid of the responsibility that would go with it. Such fear is common among tradesmen. If Werdath, whose company just tiled Gaddafi's swimming pools in Tripoli, hasn't found a buyer by the end of the year, he will be forced to close the business down and his employees will be out of a job. The saying goes "nothing comes from nothing", and in the case of tradesmen, taking risks is part of what they have to do if they want to get ahead. The older men know this only too well. They have experienced hard times and fought to keep their heads above water. Now they want to see a return on their investment in the form of a quiet retirement in the knowledge that their work will go on. But as long as the next generation is afraid of running their own business, that retirement dream is not a given. Even the banks are capable of putting a spoke in the wheels by not agreeing to grant necessary loans. The third example in the film shows how different things can be. The joiner Ludwig Erhard decided from one day to the next to set up on his own and take over Fischer's business. It seems appropriate that Erhard has the same name as the Chancellor during the time of Germany's economic miracle. What tough times call for more than anything is an entrepreneurial spirit and a belief in the future. Everyone is ultimately responsible for his or her own happiness. The film shows this in a humane and sometimes humorous way.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Klaus Lautenbacher, Waldemar Hauschild
sound: Sebastian Wagner, Eric Schäfer
editor: Hildegard Schröder
Redaktion: Johannes Pechtold
Deutschland 2003, 30 min.
Peter Sodann is a sleepwalker, who German television viewers are likely to know better as a TV Leipzig police commissar. One night, the actor woke up to find himself naked in the garage of a hotel. Since then, he has always worn a pair of training trousers when filming and sleeping away from home. Ridda Gesellensetter disastrously discovered that there is no truth to the myth that sleepwalking is safe. One night, the teacher, who often walks to the fridge in her sleep, fell out of the first floor window. Her face was badly injured and still bears the scars today. For this "37 Grad" film, Matti Bauer recorded these and other sleepwalking stories and spoke to scientists about the reasons for somnambulism. Like Peter Sodann, one percent of Germany's adult population sleepwalks on a more or less regular basis and suffers from a particular kind of "wake-up disorder" which enables human beings to complete complicated tasks without being aware of it. Sleepwalkers turn night into day. They wash dishes, lock themselves out of their apartments and cycle to school in the middle of the night. Dark Excursions is a film about the puzzling world between sleep and wakefulness which has long captured the human imagination.
Deutschland 2003, 45 min.
All over Bavaria, farming folk are looking for a life partner. But who wants to marry a farmer? There's never much choice of partner in the village and even if there were, the idea of marrying into life on a farm is not entirely attractive.
Who wants to get up at five in the morning to muck out the stables and work seven days a week to be rewarded with a couple of days' holiday once in a blue moon? Who has the passion required for life as a farmer? Who is prepared to risk losing a whole heard to a single case of BSE? For a farmer, finding the right partner can mean more than just the difference between a happy and an unhappy ever after, it can be the making or the breaking of the farm.
Matti Bauer follows the plight of farmers, male and female, who try to deal with the problem in their different ways. He listens to their disappointments, highlights their use of creativity and hard work to avoid what many perceive to be a life of loneliness, and learns how they never give up hope of one day finding Mr or Mrs Right.
director: Matti Bauer
director of photography: Sorin Dragoi
editor: Florian Siegrist commissioning
editor: Johannes Pechtold
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
Deutschland 2003, 60 min.
Directly next to Munich central station you can meet with the orient. „Little Istanbul“, this is how the people in Munich commonly call the district „Ludwigsvorstadt“. Here, people speak Turkish, Greek, Italian, Serbian or Croation, but hardly ever Bavarian.
The multi-cultural quarter with its fruit and vegetable shops, Turkish bars and secret backyards has become a home for many: the Turkish pizza-baker Selo who wants to obtain his driving licence; his driving instructor Sigi, who gives her lessons bilingual; the Albanian fugitive Lena and her sister Teranda. And for the dressmaker Karagöl, who opened the first Turkish tailoring business at a time, when there were still a lot more prostitutes in “Little Istanbul” than today.
But there are also people by whom the development of the quarter goes unnoticed. A registrar for the church, Lankes, has lived here all his life, and now feels pushed to the side. Carefully he voices his doubts and talks about “home” and “church”. Next door, in a mosque, people are praying to Allah. There’s a place for everyone in the “Halbmondviertel”, this is what the film wants to express – secretly hoping that it will stay this way.
Buch und Regie: Julia Furch, Matti Bauer
Kamera: Eddie Schneidermeier
Ton: Gregor Kuschel
Schnitt: Uwe Klimmeck, Florian Siegrist
Redaktion: Claudia Gladziejewski
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
Deutschland 2001, 45 min.
There are countless stories of ghosts, apparitions and execrated places, of poltergeists and relatives who make some kind of sign at the moment of their passing. In his film, Matti Bauer proves that spooky business is not just a British speciality, but that there are plenty of strange occurrences in Bavaria. At the Stockenfels castle in Upper Palatinate there are rumours of ghosts of crooked publicans and a devil who plays cards for the life of an innocent hunter. In Chiemgau, the ghost of an Augustine Father calls the vicar to the last anointing and in a Rosenheim lawyers office, pictures fall off the wall. People let their imaginations for myths and ghost stories run away with them, but it is hard to ignore the strange feeling which develops during the course of the film: Is it all made up or is there some truth to these stories?
Buch und Regie: Matti Bauer
Kamera: Sorin Dragoi, Michael Gööck, Klaus Lautenbacher
Ton: Gregor Kuschel
Schnitt: Florian Siegrist
Redaktion: Johannes Pechtold
Tangram Christian Bauer Filmproduktion
Deutschland 2001, 30 min.
Once a nomadic group of traders, the Yeniche people in Germany have now planted roots and are, to a large extent, an integrated part of society. Nonetheless, their past means they are continually fighting for their identity. With established settlers dubbing them gypsies and crooks, and gypsies calling them outsiders and members of the bourgeoisie, they are caught between two stools, two cultures and two traditions. For the most part, Yeniche families live in Southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Some are now fully integrated members of middle-class society, others are still stuck on the fringes, where they suffer as a result of the mainstream prejudice. We visit two Yeniche families in Germany. Two families with the same history, but two totally different models for life. We accompany both families as they go about their private and public daily lives. By portraying two different families, we show the diversity of Yeniche life in Germany and lend a voice to a little-known minority group.
Deutschland 1997, 90 min.
There are two things the city of Munich is quite well-known for: its beer and its soccer. The choice of the beer label is a question of taste. The choice of the right soccer club is a question of believe. The local derby between the two teams Bayern, the "red ones" and 1860, the "blue ones", heatens the minds in Munich like any other event.
It is the highlight of the soccer season and for many people - after the "October-Fest" the cultural event of the year. After all, The Local Derby is a film about Munich - the capital of Bavaria - in the very south of Germany: a city and its very special passions. And a city with two faces, one is red, the other is blue.
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Matti Bauer Agnesstraße 19 80798 München