The Film Explainer

The Film Explainer was first released in Germany in 1990, hailed as a work of comic genius. In it, a boy tells of the life of his grandfather, Karl Hofmann, who worked in the Apollo theater in Limbach/Saxony as a film explainer and piano player. As the Nazis rise in power, Grandfather goes along until a bomb falls on the Apollo. Beneath the surface of this seemingly simple tale are complex undercurrents--the folly of Grandfather's life, the grandson's memoir, the glory of the cinema, the choices of the German war generation--all told in Hofmann's quick, comic dialogue that earned him critical praise for both his novels and radio plays.