"The Funniest Joke in the World" is a Monty Python comedy sketch revolving around a joke that is so funny that anyone who reads or hears it promptly dies from laughter. Ernest Scribbler, a British "manufacturer of jokes", writes the joke on a piece of paper only to die laughing. His mother also immediately dies laughing after reading it, as do the first constables on the scene. Eventually the joke is contained, weaponized, and deployed against Germany during World War II.
Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusual talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. His style involves avoiding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing his cast and crew into real situations mirroring those in the film they are working on.
New German Cinema is a period in German cinema which lasted from 1962 to 1982, in which a new generation of directors emerged who, working with low budgets, and influenced by the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism, gained notice by producing a number of "small" motion pictures that caught the attention of art house audiences. These filmmakers included Percy Adlon, Harun Farocki, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Fleischmann, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, Ulli Lommel, Wolfgang Petersen, Volker Schlöndorff, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Werner Schroeter, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Margarethe von Trotta and Wim Wenders. As a result of the attention they garnered, they were able to create better-financed productions which were backed by the big US studios. However, most of these larger films were commercial failures and the movement was heavily dependent on subsidies. By 1977, 80% of a budget for a typical German film was ensured by a subsidy.
Bruno Ganz was a Swiss actor whose career in German stage, television and film productions spanned nearly 60 years. He was known for his collaborations with the directors Werner Herzog, Éric Rohmer, Francis Ford Coppola, and Wim Wenders, earning widespread recognition with his roles as Jonathan Zimmerman in The American Friend (1977), Jonathan Harker in Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) and Damiel the Angel in Wings of Desire (1987).
Max Raabe is a German jazz singer. He is best known as the founder and leader of the Palast Orchester.
My Best Fiend is a 1999 German documentary film written and directed by Werner Herzog, about his tumultuous yet productive relationship with German actor Klaus Kinski. It was released on DVD in 2000 by Anchor Bay.
Bruno Schleinstein, often credited as Bruno S., was a German film actor, artist, and musician. He is known internationally for his roles in two films directed by Werner Herzog, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) and Stroszek (1976).
Peter Fleischmann was a German film director, screenwriter and producer. He worked also as an actor, cutter, sound engineer, interviewer and speaker. Fleischmann belonged to the New German Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. He is known for directing the 1969 Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern, but he produced films of many genres.
Herbert Achternbusch was a German film director, writer and painter. He began as a writer of avant-garde prose, such as the novel Die Alexanderschlacht, before turning to low-budget films. He had a love-hate relationship with Bavaria which showed itself in his work. Some of his controversial films, such as Das Gespenst, were presented at the Berlinale festival.
'Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus' is a German film editor who was a member of the New German Cinema movement and is noted particularly for her many films with director Werner Herzog. Between 1966 and 1986, she was credited on more than twenty-five feature films and feature-length documentaries.
Precautions Against Fanatics is a short film by Werner Herzog filmed at a harness racing track near Munich, Germany. It was Herzog's first film shot in color.
Portrait Werner Herzog is an autobiographical short film by Werner Herzog made in 1986. Herzog tells stories about his life and career.
Audience of One is a 2007 documentary film directed by Michael Jacobs. It was premiered on 9 March 2007 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
Margit Carstensen was a German theatre and film actress, best known outside Germany for roles in the works of film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She appeared in films of directors Christoph Schlingensief and Leander Haußmann and on television in Tatort.
Wolf Gremm was a German film director and screenwriter.
Josef "Sepp" Bierbichler is a German actor.
Joachim Kunert was a German film director and screenwriter. He directed more than 20 films between 1954 and 1989. His 1965 film The Adventures of Werner Holt was entered into the 4th Moscow International Film Festival.
Burkhard Driest was a German actor, writer and director, known for his acting work in Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle. He also wrote novels and screenplays.
Werner Nekes was a German experimental film director, and a collector of historical optical objects.
There are several major aspects of humor related to the Holocaust: humor of the Jews in Nazi Germany and in Nazi concentration and extermination camps, a specific kind of "gallows humor"; German humor on the subject during the Nazi era; the appropriateness of this kind of off-color humor in modern times; modern anti-Semitic sick humor.
