Ulrike's Brain | |
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Directed by | Bruce LaBruce |
Written by | Bruce LaBruce |
Starring | Susanne Sachsse |
Release date |
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Running time | 55 minutes |
Countries | Germany Canada |
Language | English |
Ulrike's Brain is a 2017 German-Canadian drama film directed by Bruce LaBruce. It was screened in the Forum section at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. [1]
The film, described by LaBruce in advance interviews as a sequel of sorts to his early film The Raspberry Reich , [2] stars Susanne Sachsse as Julia Feifer, an academic who possesses and can communicate with the brain of German Red Army Faction radical Ulrike Meinhof. [1] She is seeking to transplant the brain into a new body so that she can resurrect Meinhof and revive her goal of socialist and feminist revolution, but her plans are complicated when her archrival Detlev Schlesinger, an extreme right-wing ideologue, arrives with identical plans for the surviving brain of German neo-Nazi leader Michael Kühnen. [1]
The film, a spoof of the 1960s B-movie subgenre of mad scientists preserving human brains, is thematically linked with LaBruce's feature film The Misandrists , which premiered at Berlin's Panorama program in the same week. [3] Although both films were made in Germany, Ulrike's Brain received some production funding from the Canada Council for the Arts while The Misandrists did not.
The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang, was a West German far-left militant group founded in 1970 and active until 1998. The RAF described itself as a communist and anti-imperialist urban guerrilla group. It was engaged in armed resistance against what it considered a fascist state. Members of the RAF generally used the Marxist–Leninist term "faction" when they wrote in English. Early leadership included Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and Horst Mahler. The West German government considered the RAF a terrorist organization.
Ulrike Marie Meinhof was a German left-wing journalist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the reputed author of The Urban Guerilla Concept (1971). The manifesto acknowledges the RAF's "roots in the history of the student movement"; condemns "reformism" as "a brake on the anti-capitalist struggle"; and invokes Mao Zedong to define "armed struggle" as "the highest form of Marxism-Leninism".
Gudrun Ensslin was a German far-left terrorist and founder of the West German far-left militant group Red Army Faction.
Berndt Andreas Baader, was a West German communist and leader of the left-wing militant organization Red Army Faction (RAF) also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group.
Klaus Rainer Röhl was a German journalist and author, best known as founder, owner, publisher and editor-in-chief of konkret, the most influential magazine on the German political left from the 1960s to the early 1970s. He later became critical of communism and leftist tendencies.
Bruce LaBruce is a Canadian artist, writer, filmmaker, photographer, and underground director based in Toronto.
Brigitte Margret Ida Mohnhaupt is a German convicted former terrorist associated with the second generation of the Red Army Faction (RAF) members. She was also part of the Socialist Patients' Collective (SPK). From 1971 until 1982 she was active within the RAF.
The Raspberry Reich is a 2004 film by director Bruce LaBruce which explores what LaBruce calls "terrorist chic", cult dynamics, and the "innate radical potential of homosexual expression". It is about a contemporary terrorist group who set out to continue the work of the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang. The group consists of several young men and a female leader named Gudrun. All of the characters are named after either original members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang or revolutionaries such as Che Guevara.
Bambule, a term of German prison sociolect, originally refers to a form of mostly non-violent prison protest, typically effected by banging hard items against the cells' metal bars. The term is derived from the African dance Bamboule or Bamboula.
Martina Gedeck is a German actress. She achieved wider international acclaim due to her roles in films such as Mostly Martha (2001), The Lives of Others (2006), and The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008). She has won several awards, including two Deutscher Filmpreis, in 1997 for Supporting Actress in Life is All You Get, and in 2002 for Actress in Mostly Martha.
Ingrid Schubert was a West German militant and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF). She participated in the freeing of Andreas Baader from prison in May 1970 as well as several bank robberies before her arrest in October 1970. She was found dead in her cell in 1977.
Stammheim – Die Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe vor Gericht is a 1986 West German film directed by Reinhard Hauff. It tells the story of the trial in the court of Stammheim Prison of the left-wing Baader-Meinhof Group.
The Baader Meinhof Complex is a 2008 German drama film directed by Uli Edel. Written and produced by Bernd Eichinger, it stars Moritz Bleibtreu, Martina Gedeck, and Johanna Wokalek. The film is based on the 1985 German best selling non-fiction book of the same name by Stefan Aust. It retells the story of the early years of the West German far-left terrorist organisation the Rote Armee Fraktion from 1967 to 1977.
Renate Riemeck was a German historian and Christian peace activist who became known as former foster parent of the famous journalist and left-wing militant Ulrike Meinhof.
Baader is a 2002 German film directed by Christopher Roth. It is a biopic about revolutionary Andreas Baader of the notorious Red Army Faction which operated mainly in West Germany during the 1970s.
Helene Hegemann is a German writer, director, and actress. As a young writer her work was highly praised, but her first novel, Axolotl Roadkill, sparked a plagiarism controversy. The book has since been translated in various languages.
The Misandrists is a 2017 English-language German drama film directed by Bruce LaBruce. It was screened in the Panorama section at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival.
Bettina Röhl is a German journalist and author. She is best known for her writings about student radicalism of the 1960s and the terrorist kidnappings that it spawned in West Germany during the early 1970s. Röhl has written extensively about the former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's time as a left-wing militant leader. She has also researched and written at length about her own mother, journalist and Red Army Faction terrorist Ulrike Meinhof. Her assessments of the violence associated with the Red Army Faction in the 1970s are at times intensely critical.
Ticket of No Return is a German drama film, directed by Ulrike Ottinger and released in 1979. The film is considered to be the first of Ottinger's "Berlin Trilogy", alongside the later films Freak Orlando and Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press.
Irene Goergens is a former member of the West German terrorist group, the Red Army Faction (RAF).