In 1962, Edgar Reitz (HEIMAT) co-signed the Oberhausen manifesto that set the New German Cinema in motion. In 1968, Ula Stöckl emerged as Germany’s first feminist filmmaker. A year later, Stöckl and Reitz joined forces to create STORIES OF THE DUMPSTER KID, a series of 22 hilarious, irreverent short films that have been talked about – but rarely seen – for nearly 50 years. This is a documentary on the background and rediscovery of the DUMPSTER KID series, but also much more: Reitz and Stöckl are joined on-camera by Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge and others to reflect on nothing less than the future of cinema.
ROBERT FISCHER was born 1954 in Greven. He started writing about film in the mid-1970s and soon became one of Germany’s foremost film historians. For his translations of Truffaut’s complete writings into German, he was named Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French Cultural Minister Jack Lang. Together with Joe Hembus he wrote a history of the New German Cinema. After five years as Vice Director at the Munich Film Museum, where he was involved in the reconstruction of Orson Welles’ unfinished films, he switched to filmmaking in 1999. A selection of his films includes: STRANGE BEHAVIOR OF MOVING PICTURES (short, 1978), MONSIEUR TRUFFAUT MEETS MR. HITCHCOCK (1999), NEVER STOP BEGINNING – UFA STAR CAROLA HOEHN (2000), FILM IS TRUTH: MILOS FORMAN (2000), FASSBINDER IN HOLLYWOOD (2002), DALTON TRUMBO: REBEL IN HOLLYWOOD (2006), ERNST LUBITSCH IN BERLIN (2006), WORKING WITH MAX OPHULS: LOLA MONTES REVISITED (2007), STARTING OUT: THE MAKING OF JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI’S DEEP END (2011), OUTLAW BROTHERS: THE MAKING OF THE LONG RIDERS (2013), SWAN SONG: THE STORY OF BILLY WILDER’S FEDORA (2014), RETURN OF BEETHOVEN STREET: SAM FULLER IN GERMANY (2015), SUCKER PUNCH BLUES: A LOOK BACK ON JOHN HUSTON’S FAT CITY (2017), and FILM BEYOND CINEMA: THE DUMPSTER KID EXPERIMENT AND OTHER UTOPIAS (2018), among others.
Robert Fischer (photo © N. Pilters) photos © Laura Ettel/Fiction Factory Robert Fischer Filmproduktion