Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”
Performing military service, Karel Maes decides to goes over the wall with a group of friends to participate in a cycling race. Karel, Strop and Gust are given a lift by Hans Drogelever, a Dutch soccer supporter on his way to Brussels. A young woman, whose car has broken down, joins them. It is a double triumph for Karel since not only does he win the race but he gets the girl as well.
This is a screening of Solomon Lazurin’s novel of the same name.
The engineer Georg Kurtniz invented a machine that replaces the work of many workers. Two powerful companies, headed by the billionaires Ringdal and Duk, compete for the right to own the machine. Ringdal wins. Kurtniz gets the billionaire’s daughter and a lot of money for the machine. The communist Jacob Miller calls workers fired by Ringdal to strike. Next to Jacob is the female worker Maika Kork. Workers want to destroy Kurtniz’s machine. The struggle is exacerbated when the second machine appears. It is even more sophisticated and threatens to put thousands of people out for work. This new machine is invented by the engineer Rebeck, a long-time competitor of Kurtniz both in the professional and personal life. This time, Rebeck receives a share of income and… Emilia, as Ringdal’s daughter abandons the looser Kurtniz. Workers declare a general strike which turns into an armed insurrection.
Heinrich George plays Henner who lives with his wife and child on a tugboat, going on the river to Berlin. There he meets the attractive Gescha (Betty Amann), and a story of love, betrayal and sadness ensues.
Crimea. The middle of the 19th century. A proud and brave jigit Alim Aidamak who cannot put up with the workers’ abuse, works at the leather factory of the greedy Ali-bay. One day he responds in kind. He is fired, but he takes the memories of the beautiful daughter of his ex-master, Sara, with him. Young people went their separate ways. Alim takes the revolutionary path; he and his friends go to the mountains and start an underground struggle. Only his name is enough to terrify landlords, Mirzas and civil servants. Authorities send a Cossack detachment to catch the Crimean Tatar Robin Hood.
The adventure film, which reminds an American western, was filmed based on a Crimean Tatar legend, which in 1925 was turned into a play by the repressed Crimean Tatar writer Ipchi Ümer. The shooting of the film under the script of the Ukrainian avant-garde poet Mykola Bazhan began in the autumn of 1925, when the indigenisation policy in the national republics caused demand on the national plots.
In this romantic film inspired by Mädchen in Uniform, two young, independent Amsterdam women win a trip to the Ardennes in a writing contest. Unbeknownst to them, they are followed by an attractive journalist with a camera, after which they both fall in love with him, and they compete with each other for him.
