The film series organized in the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection to mark the 100th anniversary of the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 continues: from 21 May to 17 December 2025, 14 films will be shown fortnightly in the “Cinema Surreal”, each Wednesday at 6 pm. Admission is free.
Image above: Cinema Surreal am 21.5.2025: Alraune, Arthur Maria Rabenalt, D 1952, © bpk / Hanns Hubmann.
“I believe in the future resolution of these seemingly contradictory states of dream and reality in a kind of absolute reality,” wrote André Breton in the First Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924.
The “Cinema Surreal” in the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection shows films in which this “absolute reality” can be experienced: Imagination and reality come close together and provide the necessary fuel to arrive at new, “supra-real” perceptions!
2025 has a dual thematic focus. Following on from the “Evil Flowers” exhibition, “The Flowers of Terror”, a British thriller from the 1960s about plants that threaten to destroy humanity, and Claude Chabrol’s smug social portrait “The Flower of Evil” (2003) will be shown.
On May 21, the festival kicks off with the classic “Alraune” from 1950s West Germany, starring the young Hildegard Knef, who would have celebrated her 100th birthday this year.
From August 2025, the theme will be “Surrealism and Psychology”: an American silent comedy tells the story of an insane psychologist, in “Being John Malkovich” a small employee finds a passage leading into the brain of a famous actor, and in “Dreams that Money Can Buy” – the famous compilation of experimental films on the theme of “dreams” that Hans Richter asked several artist friends to make – a man sees his own soul just by looking in the mirror.
The series of fourteen films ends on December 17, 2025 with the charming Berlin psychological comedy “Cleo”.
The film series is made financially possible by Julietta Scharf. All films will be introduced by the curator of the film series Wolfgang Davis.
PROGRAM
Wednesday, May 21, 2025, 6 – 8 pm
Alraune
by Arthur Maria Rabenalt, D 1952, 92 min, b/w; DF, with Hildegard Knef, Erich von Stroheim, Karlheinz Böhm a.o.
The mandrake is a poisonous, intoxicating plant that was already shrouded in myths in ancient times. It was said to have mysterious powers because its root can have a human-like shape. It is said that if you pull it out of the ground, it screams. And anyone who hears its cries dies on the spot.
Young Frank Braun falls in love with Alraune, the daughter of Professor Jakob ten Brinken. When he hears about the young love, he reveals that Alraune is not human. Like a sister of Frankenstein’s monster, she has grown out of an experiment in which the mad professor combined the genes of a murderer with those of a prostitute.
The film gives us a sense of the narrow-mindedness of West Germany in the 1950s and yet, thanks to Hildegard Knef’s hovering nervous restlessness, it is a small miracle. When Alraune confesses her love, she loses her magic and becomes human. But the professor cannot let go of his experiment and shoots her. He is later sentenced to death himself: an attempt to cover up this classic femicide. Hildegard Knef has always insisted on being perceived not because of her femininity, but as a person – despite her memorable beauty. And it is Hildegard Knef who makes this film a very special event.
Wednesday, June 4, 2025, 6 – 7.30 pm
Kleiner Laden voller Schrecken (Little Shop of Horrors)
by Roger Corman, USA 1960, 70 min, s/w, DF, with Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Jack Nicholson and others.
A typical 1960s comedy full of black humor by one of the most famous directors of cheap and gimmicky films, almost all of which have gone down in US film history. This B-movie by Roger Corman was also shot in just five or six days. In one famous scene, future superstar Jack Nicholson plays a masochistic mortician who enjoys having a few healthy teeth pulled out at the dentist. One of the first scenes in which Jack Nicholson shows his famous demonic grin.
Seymour, the hero of the movie, works for a run-down florist. During his work, he finds a new plant, which he names Audrey Jr. It develops magnificently and may save the flower store from ruin. In fact, buyers are queuing up as the flower becomes more and more beautiful. Until Seymour discovers that it needs human blood to grow. Audrey Jr. grows bigger and bigger as Seymour feeds her the corpse of a man he accidentally killed. He is terrified and fearful of being exposed, but one by one all the protagonists of the story become involved in their own little “accidental murders” and all their corpses end up – in Audrey Jr. The black humor runs riot until Seymour decides to put an end to the undignified spectacle and jumps into the plant himself.
Wednesday, June 18, 2025, 6 – 8 pm
Blumen des Schreckens (Day of the Triffids)
by Steve Sekely, GB 1963, 90 min, Farbe, DF, with Howard Keel and others.
Day of the Triffids is based on one of England’s most popular science fiction novels, written by John Wyndham, and tells the story of a strange meteor shower. Anyone who observes the meteorites goes blind immediately, which means that almost all of humanity will go blind. At the same time, the radiation from space has a magical effect on a plant, the Triffid. Triffids hit by the meteor shower grow to enormous size, develop the ability to move and spray a poison that kills people within seconds. Humanity seems doomed to certain destruction.
A sailor who wore a blindfold during the meteor shower for eye treatment is not blinded. He senses the fate of mankind if the Triffids continue to spread. He desperately tries to find a solution. Will humanity perish?
The film is a classic 1960s thriller that uses simple means to evoke a terrifying atmosphere of annihilation. By chance, a solution is found that could help mankind survive. But will they succeed? The novel and the film are a visionary view of the state in which the world finds itself time and again. Whether chance will lead us out of the chaos again – we shall see.
Wednesday, July 2, 2025, 6 – 8 pm
Die Blume des Bösen (La fleur du mal)
by Claude Chabrol, F 2003, 99 min, Farbe, DF, with Nathalie Baye, Bernard Le Coq, Mélanie Doutey, Benoît Magimel, Suzanne Flon and others.
As so often and always with new charm, Claude Chabrol dismantles the public façade of an upper-class family. Pharmacist Gérard Vasseur is an old-school chauvinist who cheats on his wife Anne and doesn’t trust her to run for the office of mayor. Then a flyer appears revealing unpleasant events from the family’s past. The bourgeois façade begins to crumble. Gérard is not bothered by this. Unconcerned, he harasses his stepdaughter Michèle and is beaten to death by her with a lamp. Aunt Line rushes to Michèle’s aid and shares a family secret: she herself once killed her father because he had collaborated with the Germans during the war and handed his own son over to them. When Anne Charpin-Vasseur wins the mayoral election, the whole family throws a party as if nothing had happened.
A surreal atmosphere pervades the drama, whose narrative is hard to believe, but which one secretly believes to be absolutely possible and real.
Wednesday, July 16, 2025, 6 – 8 pm
Grey Gardens
By David and Albert Maysles, USA 1975, 85 min, color, English OF, with Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer and others.
It is usually feature films that touch the soul – documentaries depict the reality we experience every day. But then suddenly there is a documentary that knows how to touch people in a very special way. Grey Gardens is one of them, and not just because of its awards: in 2010 it was included in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as culturally, historically and stylistically significant, and in 2012 the public voted it the best documentary film of all time.
The protagonists are two quirky older ladies – the mother “Big Edie” and the daughter “Little Edie”. They come from a special family, the Bouviers. Their niece and cousin was the wife of American President John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a super-rich style icon of the 20th century. The two ladies are different. As if fallen from a strange, surreal world, they live in the wealthy New York suburb of East Hampton for 50 years in a run-down mansion teeming with dirty cats, raccoons and fleas. Big Edie and Little Edie are completely impoverished, but they have style. It was only when the council wanted to have the villa torn down in the early 1970s that Jacqueline Kennedy stepped in and financed a renovation. In 1975, brothers David and Albert Maysles made this unique documentary film in the style of direct cinema.
Wednesday, August 20, 2025, 6 – 8 pm
When the Clouds Roll By
by Victor Fleming and Theodore Reed, USA 1919, 75 min, b/w, English OF, with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and others.
While the mad doctor and psychoanalyst Dr. Mabuse was plotting his crimes in dark films in Germany in 1922, the American silent film three years earlier showed a light comedy about an insane psychoanalyst in America. His name is Ulrich Metz. Metz wants to use his psychological skills to drive the ambitious and clueless medical student Daniel Boone Brown to suicide. He orchestrates countless seemingly fateful events that befall Daniel Brown; a black cat, a broken mirror and all manner of paraphernalia of mysterious doom appear. But amidst all the chaos, Daniel Brown meets the beautiful artist Lucette Bancroft, and their love affair takes its course.
The movie turns into an endearing silent comedy. Just as the young doctor is about to commit suicide, we find out that the psychiatrist himself is insane. Daniel is saved. With his new girlfriend, he sets off on the train from crazy New York to the peaceful American West. And just when everything seems to be going well, a gigantic tidal wave sweeps the train away. Everything seems lost! But the hero wouldn’t be a hero if he didn’t get his lover Lucette and himself to safety.
Wednesday, 10. September 2025, 6 – 8.15 pm
Ich kämpfe um Dich (Spellbound)
by Alfred Hitchcock, USA 1945, 111 min, b/w, DF, with Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Leo G. Carroll and others.
Alfred Hitchcock is a master of the psychological thriller. I’m Fighting for You is one of the director’s masterpieces. Hitchcock had intensively studied Sigmund Freud’s psychology of the unconscious. And dreams, to which Freud attached particular importance, became a central moment in this film. Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck can be seen in the leading roles. Hitchcock had Salvador Dalí design a dream sequence that leads to the solving of a mysterious murder case. Dalí had made one of the most important surrealist films with Luis Buñuel in 1929: An Andalusian Dog.
I’m Fighting for You tells the story of a psychoanalyst who falls in love with the new director of a psychiatric hospital in Vermont, until she finds out that he is an impostor suffering from dissociative amnesia and possibly … a murderer! And as in any true Hitchcock thriller, the suspense reaches new heights until the murderer is revealed. Is it Gregory Peck? Is Ingrid Bergman’s love, as so often in her films, in vain?
Wednesday, 24. September 2025, 6 – 8 pm
Träume zu verkaufen (Dreams that Money Can Buy)
by Hans Richter, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Fernand Leger, Alexander Calder, USA 1944-47, 84 min, color, English OF
Hans Richter has been one of the best-known surrealist filmmakers of the early years since his 1929 film Vormittagsspuk. 1928 and 1929 were his most productive years, but after the Second World War he set out to make another long film. It was to be a concept film: Five artists as directors producing their version of a modern cinematographic-kinetic experiment in a shared frame narrative.
Joe has signed a lease for his apartment, but he doesn’t quite know how to pay the rent. Then he discovers that he can look into his soul by looking at his eyes in a mirror. There’s a business to be made out of that! Joe opens an office for dreams of frustrated and neurotic customers. And then five tailor-made dream films by co-directors Hans Richter, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Fernand Leger and Alexander Calder follow. “Dreams That Money Can Buy is a very unusual film and a successful ‘home-made’ film experiment. Perhaps other artists, after watching this gem of independent filmmaking, will continue to develop cinema on this basis and explore the possibilities further. And anyone equipped with a sufficient half-knowledge of the Freud family will enjoy Richter’s film,” wrote George A. Lelper in the Harvard Crimson in 1948.
Wednesday, 8. October 2025, 6 – 8 pm
Der Trip (The Trip. A Lovely Sort of Death)
by Roger Corman, USA 1967, 85 min, color, DF, written by Jack Nicholson, with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Susan Strasberg and others.
Almost every moviegoer knows the classic Easy Rider, which depicts the lifestyle of the wild 1960s in America. Hardly anyone knows The Trip, which was produced shortly before with the same leading actor and perhaps shows the subject more honestly, or at least more realistically. The screenplay was written by Jack Nicholson, who was successful as an actor in Easy Rider.
Paul Groves, an advertising film director, is in a personal crisis. His wife Sally wants to divorce him and now he wants to recognize himself and come to terms with himself. His friend John sends him on an LSD trip. Extreme perceptions, hallucinations and Paul’s real story alternate. Psychedelic images, sexual ideas, fears and dreams – all the clichés of our idea of the 1960s in America manifest themselves in the film The Trip. At the beginning, Paul is euphoric, then his consciousness becomes increasingly confused and illogical. He wanders around, still high, and meets an old acquaintance with a penchant for men who take LSD. She asks him if he has found the insight he was longing for. Paul says he will think about it tomorrow. His face freezes and shatters like glass. The end.
Wednesday, 22. October 2025, 6 – 8.15 pm
Naked Lunch
by David Cronenberg, Can, UK 1991, 110 min, color, DF, with Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Roy Scheider and others.
Naked Lunch is a cult film by horror film director David Cronenberg. Deeply rooted in surrealism, it is based on the novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs. Where splatter separates from professionalism, he views horror not with horror, but from an amused distance that strolls between the real and the surreal.
In a drug-fueled stupor, exterminator Lee plays William Tell with his wife. The game turns bloody serious when Lee does not hit the glass of water on her head, but herself. Horrified, he flees to Tangier, where he lives among obscure people, junkies, life artists and surreal creatures – including a talking insectoid typewriter. Lee stumbles into a surreal nightmare in which he roams through the international Tangier full of gigantic insects as a secret agent, while at the same time writing a novel about these experiences – entitled “Naked Lunch”.
The film is based on the novel Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, a writer of the Beat Generation, which rebelled against traditional America in the 1950s. On the Road by Jack Kerouac, The Howl by Allen Ginsberg and Naked Lunch are considered the most important works of the Beat Generation, who wandered aimlessly through the country in search of meaning in life. The name Beat Generation describes the protagonists as the generation beaten by fate – not, as one might think, as followers of the Beat music of the 1960s.
Wednesday, 5. November 2025, 6 – 8.15 pm
Being John Malkovich
by Spike Jonze, USA 1999, 108 min, color, DF, with John Malkovich, John Cusack, Cameron Diaz and others.
An exuberant, surreal comedy by Spike Jonze, who had previously produced countless music videos.
Craig, an unsuccessful puppeteer, finds work on the 7th and 5th floor of an office building that can only be reached via the elevator’s emergency stop. Behind a filing cabinet, he discovers a corridor that leads him directly into the brain of actor John Malkovich. Together with a friend, he founds “J. M. Incorporated”, which sells 15-minute visits to the actor’s brain. Even John Malkovich himself dives into his own brain and is confronted with an infinite number of himself. An insane mixture of the real and the surreal is created that extends into the movie theater: the film character John Malkovich is played by the real actor John Malkovich.
Craig establishes himself more and more in the brain of his human company capital and manipulates Malkovich into a puppeteer, through whom he finally finds success in his actual profession. Later, his colleague falls in love with his wife and conceives a child with her while she is inside John Malkovich’s brain. Life could go on and on in its complicated beauty if it didn’t turn out that the owner of the company on the 7.5th floor is the actual author of the brain duct. And this elderly gentleman plans to achieve eternal life in John Malkovich’s brain for himself and some friends. Will he go through with his plan?
Wednesday, 19. November 2025, 6 – 8 pm
Citizen Dog (Ma Nakhon)
By Wisit Sasanatieng, Thailand 2004, 100 min, color, OmenglU
Citizen Dog is an absurd comedy from Thailand, full of over-the-top ideas that culminate in a surreal environmental film.
When young Pod escapes from his boring country life, his grandmother curses him that he will grow a tail in Bangkok. Pod finds work in an anchovy factory, where a machine cuts off one of his fingers. Pod searches through thousands of tins of anchovies until he finds one with a finger in it. It fits him … not quite.
A short time later, he falls in love with young Jin, who is reading a white book whose language she does not understand. When Jin sees a man reading the same white book, she thinks he is an environmentalist who was shot dead at a demonstration in Washington. She starts collecting thousands of plastic bottles, which she piles up outside the city. Pod becomes a cab driver because Jin confesses to him that she has a phobia of taking the bus. In the cab, he meets a chain-smoking toddler with a rabble-rousing stuffed bear and a gecko that is a reincarnation of his grandmother. And at some point it turns out that the white book is an Italian homoerotic romance novel. Disappointed, Jin throws it away and marries Pod. The mountain of plastic bottles has now taken on huge dimensions and has become a meeting place for romantic lovers. Jin and Pod are expecting a child. Pod is convinced that the child will be a reincarnation of his grandmother. The world goes round in circles…
Wednesday, 3. December 2025, 6 – 8 pm
Buñuel – Filmemacher des Surrealismus (Buñuel, un cineasta surrealista)
by Javier Espada, ESP 2024, 87 min, OmU
Thirty years ago, the taz newspaper quoted the theologian Eugen Drewermann, who said that Luis Buñuel and surrealism were “applied psychoanalysis” (taz, March 15, 1994).
Cinema Surreal is showing a documentary about perhaps the most important surrealist film director: Luis Buñuel. An Andalusian Dog, which he made together with Salvador Dalí, is repeatedly cited as the first and most important surrealist film, mostly because of the indelible scene in which a lover cuts his lover’s eye with a razor like a cloud drifting across the sky in front of the romantic moon. But Buñuel’s work is greater!
With masterpieces such as The Forgotten Ones and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, the Spanish director has written himself into film history. The documentary filmmaker Javier Espada provides a “deep and unique insight into the career of one of the most important directors of the 20th century, his past, his development and his work, which has not only significantly influenced and forever changed cinema, but the entire art world”, according to the film’s distributor. And Javier Espada doesn’t just talk about Luis Buñuel. In a dramatic composition, he shows excerpts from all of the great surrealist’s unforgettable films. Perhaps a preview of what awaits you in Cinema Surreal 2026.
Wednesday, 17. December 2025, 6 – 8 pm
Cleo
by Eric Schmitt, D 2019, 99 min, DF, color
Is it really possible to dissolve the contrast between dream and reality into a surreality that then becomes our usual reality? Cleo is a cheerful, charming movie that does just that. Just like that! The director uses all the means at his disposal – animated sequences, rewinding time, speed, darkness, light and dreams – to give the surreal the guise of an ordinary reality. And you just want to believe it. At times, Eric Schmitt’s films resemble those of his great predecessors, the first surrealist filmmakers from the 1920s and 30s, Luis Buñuel, Man Ray or Jean Cocteau. Cum grano salis – and a hint of melancholy.
Cleo works for a tourist office in Berlin and has lived a lonely life since her father died when she was ten years old. Her mother died when she was born. Cleo has hoped since childhood that a magic clock will help her turn back time and save her parents. She has always been able to see people from the past and talk to them. Einstein told her about the relativity of time. That fits. And then she receives a treasure map from two famous Berlin burglars, the Sass brothers. They had stolen the magic clock in the 1920s. For Cleo, a journey through Berlin’s history begins, to the beginning of time and back to a happy ending.
Worthy and enjoyable fun at the end of the Cinema Surreal 2025 film series in the Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection.
WHEN?
From Wednesday, May 21 to Wednesday, December 17, 2025
WHERE?
Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection
Schloßstraße 70
14059 Berlin-Charlottenburg
COST?
Free admission
