Alexander Kluge became the leading advocate and politician of the New German Cinema of the 1960s-70s, and his work was vital to the intellectual underpinning of the movement. This collection includes four of Kluge's earliest features and six of his shorts. Part-Time Work of a Domestic Slave tells the story of Rosewitha Bronski, a wife and mother, a local abortionist, and a factory worker turned labor activist. Kluge captures her frantic life in a cool, episodic style that makes use of voiceover and inserts to comment on Rosewitha's choices. Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed opens with circus performer Leni Peickert in a quandary after inheriting the family circus. Feeling that small-time carnivals are on their way out, she updates the show by turning it into a "reform circus" consisting of socially relevant entertainment. In The Big Mess, Kluge tackles science fiction, resulting in a vision of space exploration as a frontier of commercial exploitation and consumer fraud. In Willi Tobler and the Decline of the 6th Fleet, Kluge continues to tweak the sci-fi genre with this tale of a man who abandons his family and old way of life to join the 6th Fleet. In German with English subtitles.

Alexander Kluge---West Germany---1968-1973---359 mins.