Raphaela Film

Ekchart Schmidt examines the machinery behind the dream factory; the Hollywood myth is unmasked. How does the studio industry work? What role does marketing and the hype surrounding the stars play?

Once before, the ravishing lake mermaid Undine has warned her lover Raoul. Their humid-romantic fairy-tale love is in danger because Raoul's brother wants to destroy the pristine mountain lake idyll with an ambitious hotel project. Undine defends her paradise. She is alluring, but also perverse and unpredictable. She can give a lot of love, but she can also kill.

Schmidt follows the 27 miles of the “street of life” to Pacific Palisades, where the boulevard ends at the ocean. While interviews with celebrities from show and film document the well-known glamorous side of Sunset Boulevard, Schmidt also witnesses the transformation in the wake of a gigantic investment boom

Starting out as e-mail pen pals, Daniel and Laura soon fall in love. Only problem is that she lives in Germany and he lives in Los Angeles. When they finally arrange to meet in person, they discover that there is no chemistry between them.

Documentary about the history of German television.

Budd Boetticher talks about the Ranown Cycle, a collection of low-budget westerns of the late 1950s.

Documentary about Italian cinema.

Documentary about the American actress Jane Russell.

Documentary about American gangster movies.

Documentary about the 2004 movie 'Der Untergang' aka. 'Downfall'

Documentary about Hollywood.

A selfie-film.

TV review of a litany of Hollywood impropriety.

A documentary about director Budd Boetticher.

Documentary about the Wu-Tang Clan.

Documentary about Marilyn Monroe: 1962: America loses its blonde icon. Marilyn Monroe dies under mysterious circumstances. How did she die? The police report states: probable suicide. But there are many things that point to murder: a corpse draped too beautifully, an investigation that was cut short, evidence that disappeared. Plus Marilyn's affairs with the then US President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby. What really happened on that fateful summer night? After her housekeeper discovers the body, six hours pass before the police are called. She finds a beautifully draped corpse, sleeping pills in the blood but no pill residue in the stomach, witnesses who seem uncertain. The first investigator thinks about murder - and is taken off the case. Today no police files can be found.

Daniel and Clara are on a vacation in Italy. In the form of the mysterious "Sandman" Coppola, a figure from Daniel's childhood, returns to haunt him, while he succumbs to an obsessive love with an enigmatic woman of strange beauty: Olympia, who might be far more than she first appears to be...

What happens when famous directors stage an opera? Eckhart Schmidt shows successful and failed attempts.

Harold Nebenzal talks about his career.

Second part of Eckhart Schmidt's TreCamerone-trilogy.