Harvard Film Archive Collections

We are constantly amused by the items in the Lothar and Eva Just Film Stills Collection that fall into the category we call Bavarian Softcore (see previous blog post on erotica).

Today, while working on the oeuvre  of  Sigi Rothemund, we discovered these films do have their own genre title, very close to the one we had assigned to it: Lederhosenfilm, which apparently translates into “Bavarian porn,”  a title that is far less amusing (and less descriptive!).

Cola, Candy, Chocolate (Sigi Rothemund, 1979) lobby card

The above image, from the instant classic COLA, CANDY, CHOCOLATE,  apparently typical for the director Sigi Rothemund (AKA Siggi Götz), brilliantly incorporates two themes that will always be funny – a chimp wearing clothes and women popping out of their tops.  The image below, from the same film, adds the additional hilarity of a man in poorly  done drag with the chimp (who, come to think of it, can also be considered to be in poorly done drag).

Candy, Cola, Chocolate AKA Drei kesse Bienen auf den Philippinen (Sigi Rothemund, 1979)

Mr. Rothemund was also partly responsible for a film that is difficult to comprehend from the production materials:

Starke Zeiten (Klaudi Fröhlich, Rolf Olsen, Otto Retzer, Sigi Rothemund, 1988)

STARKE ZEITEN, a production with no less than 4 credited directors plus a co-director, includes the above scene with David Hasselhoff as a mad scientist?  And then it’s off to the Middle East to blow up oil fields and drive around in a strange collage of mis-sized people!  Naturally, a chimp in human’s clothing (upper left) directs.

Starke Zeiten (Klaudi Fröhlich, Rolf Olsen, Otto Retzer, Sigi Rothemund, 1988)

Although nobody appears in lederhosen in the above images (and nobody appears to be in Bavaria), we assure you these are part of the much beloved Lederhosenfilm genre.

Next time we write about it, we promise to provide pix of people in Lederhosen being naughty in Bavaria.

A note to those of you looking for a research topic for your film studies degree – it doesn’t look like anyone has written much about Lederhosenfilm.  Just a suggestion.

The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Boston donated their collection of 16mm film prints to the Harvard Film Archive in 2007.   They are now find-able on Harvard Library’s online catalog, HOLLIS.

To see the titles, go to Advance Search, put TECO Collection in the Keyword box, and limit the location to Harvard Film Archive.   Titles are cataloged with their original language characters, their transliterated titles, as well as their English language release titles.

Culled from the years 1979-1994, 115 titles from Taiwan and Hong Kong are represented here.  These prints were once used by the Cultural Office as a resource for loaning and screenings in and around the city of Boston.   The genres they cover run the gamut from Kung Fu action films to sweet romances to serious dramas. The films are in Mandarin and subtitled in English and Cantonese.

Titles include
That Day at the Beach (1983), Taipei Story (1985), The Black Skin and White Tooth (1985), Terrorizer (1986) (all directed by Edward Yang)
Ang Lee’s first film, Pushing Hands (1992)
Five Girls and a Rope (Hung-Wei Yeh, 1992)
Song of the Exile (starring Maggie Cheung, directed by Ann Hui, 1990)

Kung fu films such as
Dragon Inn (starring Maggie Cheung and Donnie Yen, directed by Hsiao Ton Cheng and Raymond Lee, 1992)
The Kung Fu Kids (Wu Wanlali, 1982)
Raiders of the Shaolin Temple (Fang Hoa, 1982)

And some great titles like
Marvelously Fast Juvenile Delinquents (Liang Chun Chao, 1988, starring Andy Lau)
Return of the Electric Love (Dunping Yang, 1982)
Even the Sun is Sobbing (Chin-Tang Lai, 1983)

Film is both sturdy and incredibly delicate.  One wrong move can ruin a film forever.  The biggest mistakes most often happen in projection.  Like vampires, film projectors often destroy the ones they love.

The image above, seen through a loupe,  is from a 16mm print that was most probably projected from or onto a bent metal reel that had a burr on it.  This print of The Great John L. (USA, 1945) is from the Howard E. Burr Collection.  (This is also the kind of scratching you can get from running a film on a platter incorrectly, but those of you projecting at home probably won’t have to worry about that.)

The image above, from another print of the same film, shows damage that can be done inside the projector gate.  There is a short white line through the man’s head in this Gone With the Wind – style shot.  This is where the emulsion has been abraded, probably by something stuck to the gate.

The arrows point to another emulsion scratch.  This could easily have been made by a dirty roller in the projector.

Always clean your projector prior to showing your movie!  Here are some tips on projector cleaning from Bob Brodsky.