In a room, François Miron piles boxes against a wall film screen. The images projected on it quickly rush together:automobile accidents, Tuscan landscapes, an injured man, medical experiments intercut with smoking factories, a sleeping face. Miron moves the boxes about constantly, as if feeding a burning fire.
The weekly brass band rehearsal is an enjoyable, light-hearted occasion. Then Mathew, the conductor, introduces James, a newcomer to the village, who is an enthusiastic bandsman from the north, where they do these things properly.
Playwright and director Nils Wijn brings his relationship issues to the stage. In his play "The Whore, the Virgin, and the Dying Man," he has his girlfriend Tessa appear in revealing lingerie and takes her to a real prostitute for some practical lessons.
What are Ilona Herfurt and her boyfriend Dietmar Freistrath doing in the old mine? Where does the money come from that her son Jimmy finds under the newspaper? Where have the unique and intricately carved works of art, often passed down for generations, disappeared to from the village in the Ore Mountains? What do the carver Gerlach and his foster daughter llona have to do with it? Questions upon questions that are burning under the detective's nails.
Something very common in our days, an adolescent who does not find communication with her mother or stepfather falls into a depression that drags her down paths of difficult return.
This film deals with the contrasts of the Wilhelminian era in Berlin: the splendor of the monarchy, the economic and intellectual vitality of the up-and-coming imperial capital on the one hand, and the misery of the proletarians in the tenements on the other.
