| Putting Things Straight | |
| Director: | Georg Brintrup |
| Producer: | Hartmut Bitomsky Christhardt Burgmann |
| Starring: | Gisela Stein Hanns Zischler Ulrich Gregor Hans Christoph Buch Harun Farocki |
| Music: | Arnold Schoenberg Classical Arabic music |
| Cinematography: | Ali Reza Movahed |
| Editing: | Carlo Carlotto Georg Brintrup |
| Runtime: | 60 minutes |
| Country: | Germany |
| Language: | German |
Putting Things Straight (German title: Ich räume auf) is a 1979 film directed and written by Georg Brintrup. It was shot in 16 mm film and was the director's first television release. The script is based on a polemic printed in 1925 ("Ich räume auf - Meine Anklage gegen meine Verleger")[1] by the Jewish German poet Else Lasker-Schüler, the principal woman representative of German Expressionism.
The film describes a dispute between poet Else Lasker-Schüler and her publishers. The film takes place in Berlin before, during and after World War I. It deals with the rights of the author; quoting from Karl Marx: "a writer is judged as productive, not on the amount of ideas he produces, but on the amount of money his publisher is able to profit from his works."[2]
The film was first broadcast on 23 December 1979, by Westdeutscher Rundfunk. It was then shown at the 1980 International Film Festival Rotterdam.