Semi-documentary film about the everyday life of a 16-year-old schoolgirl in Berlin who lives with her single mother on the outskirts of West Berlin. Her father, a soldier from Puerto Rico, has left the family. With the help of the Hawaiian postcards and records he left behind, the young woman repeatedly dreams herself into an idyllic fantasy world while performing her monotonous household chores. Director Elfie Mikesch visualizes these dream states using stylistic devices reminiscent of advertising films.

1982 film by Elfi Mikesch

Der Film erzählt die Geschichte des Markus Anatol Weisse, der trotz extremer Sehbehinderung erstaunlicherweise Maler geworden ist, der seltsame Maschinenwesen baut und sich selbst wünscht, ein Bio-Roboter, ein Cyborg, zu sein.

Mon Paradis, Der Winterpalast is a forty-eight minute film by Elfi Mikeschi that explores the history of the Hermitage and its effect on the people in St. Petersburg. Staff and curators of the museum are interviewed throughout the film, detailing their love of the museum and discussing with pride how the population's collective passion for its works saved many treasures from destruction during the German siege of St. Petersburg. It is mostly shot documentary-style, and while I appreciated a deeper look at the Hermitage outside of the context of Russian Ark, I found it to be the least interesting supplement included on this DVD. It is a nice and moderately informative addition, but it isn't one I'd return to any time soon.

Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life.

It’s the early 1950s and little Franzi is growing up in the small Austrian town of Judenburg. Her oppressive family home is dominated by her feverish and mentally ill father, who is rigid and unpredictable. Her father, who regularly delivers halves of pork for the butcher, spent several years in the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, Algeria and Syria – a period which he partly glorifies but which still also haunts him. Franzi immerses herself in this world by looking at an abundance of beguiling yet disturbing photographs taken at the time by her father. Her own childish fantasy realm of fairy tales and picture books soon intermingle with nightmares as reality merges with imagination, war, horror and beauty.