Macumba

 Alongside more famous names such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Werner Herzog, the New German Cinema saw the birth of a generation of filmmakers who, from different genres and cinematic languages, dealt with the open wound of the war in multiple ways. Elfi Mikesch is best known as the cinematographer of Monika Treut, her partner and long-time collaborator. Both were important precursors of feminist and queer cinema in Germany. In Macumba, which she also writes and directs, Mikesch shapes a labyrinth of passions in an abandoned building, where a heterogeneous group of people lead a seemingly banal existence. With a mise-en-scène that alludes to artistic manifestations such as penny dreadfuls, the filmmaker builds an atmosphere of repressed emotions where her protagonist, Max Taurus, foresees a future crime. Dreams and magic take over in this story which, emulating a trance state, blurs the dividing line between the real and the unreal, between love and violence.