Cinemania is a documentary film about five film-addicted people in New York. Their purpose in life is cinema, but for them it has become an obsession that overgrows everything. Whereas an art lover is able to buy and collect paintings, a film lover can only ever try to collect the traces of memories of seen film images in order to multiply them and make them parts of his private “collection”. Their passion makes them dancers between their often sad reality and the beloved cinematic fiction. They have long since lost touch with “real life”, because their passion is at the same time a full-time job that leaves no room for other things and constantly leads them economically to the edge of existence. Some of them have literally become “hunters and collectors” for whom the cinema tickets and film programmes have become desirable devotional objects of a dream world. They ultimately strive to physically own their celluloid dreams and keep meticulous lists of all the films they have seen. At the same time, they are walking encyclopaedias of film history and are so familiar with the copies of certain films in circulation that they even regard the scratches as old acquaintances. The film portrays them in their everyday lives and shows archive footage of life in New York and clips from well-known Hollywood classics.

Direction: Angela Christlieb, Stephen Kijak
Buch: Angela Christlieb
Camera: Angela Christlieb
Cut: Angela Christlieb, Stephen Kijak
Musik: Robert Drasnin, Stereo Total
Sound: Mario Pego, Manuel Lopez, Jennifer Packard, Heiko Schendel, Dietmar Post
Editorial: Thomas Sessner, Sabine Rollberg
Production: Gunter Hanfgarn
Koproduktion: BR, WDR
Broadcaster: BR, WDR
Sponsored by: Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, BR, WDR, Wellspring Film+Video
Contributors: Jack Angstreich, Eric Chabourne, William Heidbreder, Roberta Hill, Harvey Schwartz

– “Golden Starfish” for Best Documentary, The Hamptons Film Festival (USA), 2002
– Semaine de la critique, Locarno Filmfestival (Swiss), 2002
– more than 80 festival participations worldwide