German animator Ronny Traufeller’s apocalyptic work conjures up a future world in which the continents have vanished and humans are now adrift on the oceans living on cramped floating rocks. Traufeller created the piece in 2009 as his degree thesis at the Hochschule Anhalt in Dessau. Visit his website at http://www.traufeller.de/index.php
A rock’n'roll star from the psychedelic ’60s wakes up at the gates to Nirvana. To advance inside, he will need to wrestle with a few of his own demons and dreams. Jan Koester created this trippy animation as his graduation film from the Konrad Wolf Filmschool in Potsdam, Germany. While it’s reminiscent of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, Koester borrows liberally from many sources, including The Wizard of Oz and even Lotte Reiniger’s shadow puppet fantasies. H/T Kuriositas
In 2008, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike left Germany with their five children and came to the United States asking for refugee status as an oppressed minority. The Roemikes, you see, insist on homeschooling their children, which is illegal under German law.
“The German Constitutional court has said it’s alright for Germany to ban home education because the public has an interest in counteracting, or stamping out, parallel societies,” explains Mike Donnelly, a lawyer for the Home School Legal Defense Association and a representative for the Romeike family. Donnelly tells Reason’s Nick Gillespie that such laws have a long history in Germany.
The family currently resides in the U.S. and is awaiting a verdict from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, hoping to be granted refugee status. If deported back to Germany, they could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and the possible loss of custody of their children.
ROXY DIAMOND
Raised in Switzerland and now based in Berlin, Roxy Diamond embarked on a career in burlesque after coming to New York to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which counts Grace Kelly and Katharine Hepburn among its alumni. Her performances are often filled with movie references. She has an original act “Bates Motel” that pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and another show, “Eyes Wide Shut,” inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s kinky thriller. Even so, Roxy is perhaps most celebrated for her Champagne Glass acts. She takes a dip here at the International Burlesque Circus in Utrecht, Netherlands.
We’d show you one of her movie acts, except none can be seen online, although a trailer exists for “Bates Motel” on YouTube. In the absence of same, here’s a fan dance by Roxy, set to Billie Holiday’s blues ballad “Love me or Leave Me,” and performed at the Plaza in Zurich, Switzerland.
Visit Roxy’s website at http://www.roxydiamond.com/index.php
MARLENE VON STEENVAG
One of the world’s great fan dancers, Germany’s Marlene Von Steenvag often evokes the high, theatrical glamour of the Moulin Rouge or Las Vegas. Her costumes are showy and elaborate, but she also has a naughty side, exploring the realm of fetishes. In this act, which she calls “Pan’s Dream,” she fashions an entirely fresh fantasy world. The video was shot in Vienna at the Cirque Rouge No. 10, in January 2011.
Having singled out her fan dances, we would be remiss not to present one of them. Here, she works the fans, and her fans, in a segment from her larger show “Bird of Paradise,” staged in late 2011 in Berlin.
Visit her website at http://marlene-von-steenvag.de/
LEOLILLY
A blonde bombshell from Hamburg, Germany, Leolilly seeks to evoke the pinup couture and retro glamour of Hollywood in the 1930s. “I love to create a breathtaking spectacle,” she says. “I love glamorous costumes with rhinestones all over. And I really love the spotlight.”
She demonstrates she’s one hot fraulein with her dramatic entrance as Queen Calavera. Keep your powder dry. After her steamy dance, you’ll need to go to your medicine cabinet to see if you’re stocking the antidote to Love Potion No. 9.
The powder flies again as she takes her act to the Hapa Haole, a music bar in Witten, Germany, that pays homage to the likes of Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. Not too shabby.
Visit her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Leolilly/169478763063391
A young man awakens each morning in despair, as every night he hatches another golden egg containing a freakish little monster. He tries to hide the creatures in the woods, but they have ways of worming themselves back into his life.
This new animated short is the work of Xin Sun and Yun Li, who created it at Kassel School of Art and Design in Germany. The artists, both originally from China, used a combination of hand drawings and computer graphics. H/T Animation Blog
Michael Walsh, best-selling author of Hostile Intent, recalls his years as a Time Magazine correspondent, traveling extensively in Eastern Europe during the Cold War era. Walsh is interviewed about the Cold War and crossing over from freedom into tyranny by PolitiChick Dr. Gina Loudon. The interview takes place at the Wende Museum in Los Angeles, which focuses on East German and Cold War scholarship. Walsh is vice president of the museum’s board of directors.
The German Parliament is moving to reinstate laws against sex with animals after a pronounced rise in the number of bestiality cases. The Germans struck down bestiality as a criminal offense in 1969, but now a reversal appears imminent, amid signs of increasing zoophilia. Some farmers are reportedly pimping out their sheep and pigs for sex acts. There are even erotic zoos that people can visit to abuse animals including goats and llamas.
Michael Kiok, the chairman of a German zoophile group called ZETA, defended keeping bestiality legal. “Mere concepts of morality have no business being law,” Kiok said.
What a strange line of reasoning. If laws governing human behavior are completely divorced from morality, then humans have been reduced to barnyard animals. Who believes this is what the founders of Western Civilization, even those advocating libertarian principles, had in mind?
Brigitte Helm as Maria drives the men crazy in Metropolis. Fritz Lang’s 1927 film is often considered the first great science fiction classic of the silver screen. Helm actually plays two roles, as a virtuous Maria and a wild and wanton robotic Maria, controlled by the inventor Rotwang, to do his evil biding.
