A compilation of Wolfgang's documentaries presented in a 7 minute VHS tape. To obtain a copy of the tape, you can send an email or call.
WISH YOU WERE HERE - shirt tales from the Hawaiian islands
Beauty, romance, the lure of the tropics - people follow their dreams to Hawaii, marking their time there with postcards and often leaving the islands wearing an Aloha shirt-- a sartorial souvenir that has come to be synonymous with a place, an attitude, a way of life. Whether worn proudly or with a nudge and a wink, wherever you are, an Aloha shirt never fails to make a statement.
Ready for adventure and longing for a taste of paradise, filmmaker Wolfgang Hastert acquires a vintage Hawaiian shirt of his own, packs it up, and heads straight for the source. As he tours the Hawaiian islands with his blue shirt in tow, he meets a cast of characters as colorful as the shirts themselves: A 90-year-old woman who made one of the first Aloha shirts, an indigenous shaman, a German businessman who arrived in Hawaii in 1945 with a secret that transformed the local fashion industry, and many of the other people who turned what might have been a fad into a cultural icon. Along the way, Hastert documents his experiences with postcards home - the quirky and visually stunning record of a journey like no other.
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43 minutes, Mini DV, Super-8/ High-8 ARTE/ France Germany |
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| Go Directly to the Hawaiian Shirt Film summary page | |
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CLICK ME:) explores the trials and tricks involved in searching for a mate online.
"Men like to hunt... they can introduce themselves to me"- so a Las
Vegas showgirl turned secretary who boasts her own web site. "I wrote an ad for the girl of my dreams and got her",explains a Motown aficionado. Other subjects include a poet who found her man after talking to 140 other
guys, a former leg model from Germany , a Norwegian goth girl, and a
rejected Christian electrician from down under. These are only some of
the characters who make up CLICK ME:).
The film features interviews and video footage from chat rooms and web
sites, and gives a passionate "behind the monitor look" at the human
condition of love searchers in cyber space.
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76 minutes/ 60 minutes US version, Mini DV, ARTE/ France Germany |
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| Go Directly to the CLICK ME:) summary page | |
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Each year the "Picture Man" photographer Shelby Lee Adams, returns to the place of
his childhood to photograph stark and striking family portraits of the Appalachian
mountain people. In an unsettling yet sensitive way, Wolfgang Hastert’s film follows
Shelby's footsteps through remote areas of rural Kentucky, discovering a reclusive
world of mystery, sorrow and love tangled within strong familial bonds.
Warm-hearted and dramatic, this compelling portrait of a small American subculture
gives voice to an estranged and private world.
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56 minutes 16mm/ Super-8/ High-8, ARTE/ France, Germany |
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Listen to Audio File of Holiness Church Service |
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View Photographs by Shelby Lee Adams |
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No other artist of the Twentieth Century has captured the essence of American Realism
as precisely as Edward Hopper. Hopper’s paintings have inspired photographers and
filmmakers over the last several decades with his portrayals of melancholic
atmospheres and landscapes.
This unique docudrama traces Edward Hopper's footsteps along the coast of Cape Cod
and in the city scape of New York, searching for th same scenes and inspiration that
Hopper may have experienced in creating his masterpieces.
The film includes a carefully chosen set of Hopper paintings and rare archival footage
of Edward Hopper.
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56 minutes / 43 minutes 16mm Film, Super-8, Beta SP, ZDF, ARTE/ France, Germany |
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A COMPELLING DOCUMENTARY ON BIG FOLKS AND THEIR ETERNAL
BATTLE OF THE BULGE ... IT'S NOT EASY TO BE FAT
No other country in the world is more obsessed with beauty and fitness culture than the
U.S. And no other country suffers so much from the effects of obesity. Here, figure
killers like fast food and soft drinks have been invented and ingeniously marketed all
over the world.
Sheri Erdman, who considers herself a fat person, comes to a cruel conclusion: First
the food industry made us grow fat, now they offer us questionable diet foods and take
our money again. Michael Fumento, author of "The Fat of the Land" claims to have lost
some pounds and is well known for hating fat people. His theory: "Fat people simply
eat too much and the diet products make them fat too."
He might be right. Most of the obese people that film maker Wolfgang Hastert met in
the U.S. agree that they only gained weight because they have unsuccessfully tried
diets. Like Kate Dillon, a once anorexic top photo model, who got her lost pounds back
through the help of nutritionists and psychologists. Today she is an internationally
acclaimed large size model. But not everyone has a success story like this one or the
even more dramatic story of JoAnna Lund who lost about 150 pounds through her own
recipes and is now known as the diet cookbook queen of North America.
There are also tragic stories. Fat people are always targets for jokes and humiliation.
And the worst: Fat people can’t hide their fat bodies. Director Wolfgang Hastert has
met with those people and portrayed them in his film, BIG STORIES, in a way that is
compelling and engaging. The people openly tell their stories- in many cases behind a
facade of false content. It was the choice of the film maker to show these interviews
without commentary. BIG STORIES takes a gutsy but not sensation- seeking look into
the drama of dieting and the lives of big people. It is a warmhearted film on big beautiful
folks and their eternal battle of the bulge. After all it is not easy to be fat...
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56 minutes , Beta SP, ARTE / Germany, France |
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She was every guy's dream girl. Known simply as the Varga Girl, she traveled the
world on the noses of World War II bombers and on the pages of the Esquire Calendars.
This documentary examines the extraordinary Pin-Up images created by Peruvian
immigrant Alberto Vargas. The film includes over 60 Varga images commissioned by
Esquire Magazine, personal photographs and letters which show his influence on
photographers, costume designers, and other Pin-Up artists.
VARGA GIRLS is also a dramatic account of a humble artist who unwittingly sold his
name and the rights to his own dream girl creations to the publishers of Esquire Magazine.
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56 minutes/ 16mm, 35mm, Super-8, ARTE/ Germany, France |
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View Original Illustrations by Alberto Vargas |
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JAMES BIDGOOD is seen as the father of the pulp and glamour aesthetic, yet his
works are still scarcely known. In his photographs and films he pays cinematic
homage to the youthful male body, in elaborate stagings of his romantic shimmering
visions of a homoerotic paradise. He built the complicated sets for almost all his
productions in his own tiny apartment in New York, living for weeks on end in bizarre
dream worlds.
Even his film PINK NARCISSUS, which stands as the masterpiece of camp culture,
was made there.
The documentary, directed by award winning German director Wolfgang Hastert, is the
first film on JAMES BIDGOOD. It is an artistic portrait of the famous and anonymous
creator of PINK NARCISSUS and it presents a complete overview of his work,
revealing an artist whose productions have at last come into their own in these times
of glamour revival.
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32 minutes, Super- 8 and Beta SP, ARTE / Germany, France |
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Paul Outerbridge strove obsessively for the perfect form. His "Artificial Paradises" were created under the sway of Cubism, the New Objectivity and Surrealism. In the 1920's his black and white photographs of aesthetically presented everyday objects made him famous. "IDE COLLAR" his legendary image of a starched collar in Vanity Fair of 1922 so impressed Marcel Duchamp that he tore it out of the magazine and tacked it to his studio wall.. When Outerbridge moved to Paris in 1925, the circle around Pablo Picasso and Man Ray welcomed him with open arms.Back in the USA, he applied his considerable technical virtuosity to developing a pioneering new color printing process. Today his Carbro Color prints of nudes are one of the great rediscoveries of photographic history. His original print "Woman With Claws" is considered the most expensive original photograph of the 20th century.
Wolfgang Hastert approached this topic in a unique way. He recreated
several original photographs in an elaborate studio setting and placed all his interviewees in stunningly styled and lit environments. In addition Wolfgang shot black and white Super 8 film footage of still life objects modeled after Outerbridge images. The imagery of the documentary takes the audience back to 1920's and evokes a feeling of having visited Outerbridge on one of his studio shoots. The film is master piece in cinematography and takes an unusual approach in his interviewing style and narrative. Part of the material for the film is based on a collection of Outerbridge diaries which were supplied by the
Getty Museum, Los Angeles
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30 minutes, DV, Super-8, 35mm archival , ARTE / Germany, France |
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View Black and White Stills From Film |
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In a microcosm of East meets West, the Czech Republic has become the target of a new free market adventure. Young American college kids , computer wizards, advertising executives, and super models have all found ways to exploit the new market, but underneath all the posters, commercials and billboards director Wolfgang Hastert finds still moments of magic and romance in the golden city of Prague.
20 minutes, Beta SP/ Super-8, ARTE "Metropolis" / France, Germany
HIDE AND SEEK...
What is hidden underneath has always been especially fascinating. Underwear Stories
explores different layers of undies and discovers the world of designing, making,
testing, marketing, wearing, photographing, and cleaning underwear. A funny, and at
times sensual portrayal of the underwear industry.
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76 minutes , Beta SP, High 8 , Super 8 Film, ARTE/ France, Germany |
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"I was never jealous of Marilyn Monroe"
Dixie Evans remembers Marilyn well. She studied every dance and film of Marilyn's
to mirror Monroe on the stages of Burlesque. Now, she loves to talk about the early
days of striptease and her idol Marilyn. Both were born the same year, lost their
fathers early in life, lived in the same city, posed nude for the same pin-up
photographers, and dated the same famous man. But only Dixie survived...
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28 minutes, 16mm/ High 8, ZDF/ Germany |
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View Quicktime movie - Part 1 / View Quicktime movie - Part 2 |
A rainy day in Germany. Wolfgang drives in an old Ford on the road from Frankfurt to Darmstadt. Trees and street signs fly by to the rhythm of the squeaky windshield wipers. He shoots one roll of Super-8 Film while the edit happens right inside the camera. Suddenly the car passes a farm
stand with a sign: SPARGEL TAGESFRISCH. Asparagus fresh by the day. The
music for this film is a distorted accordion rendition of a German song.
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Wolfgang has produced several animations for his wife Blair Thornley.
Their compilation of shorts ( UNDERWEAR STORIES ) was awarded by the Art
Director's Club , New York and traveled the US in the Spike & Mike
Festival of Animation. Subsequently they finished MR. LOU IN LOVE
Both animations deal with the character Mr. Lou, who battles the so
called
yo-yo effect of dieting and in the later film falls madly in love with a
small mermaid after a string of bad luck with women he had found in the
personals.
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