Two women, one from Boston and one from Germany, flee their empty lives to seek fulfillment in Mexico. The Black Angel is a transitional film; on one hand, it is a companion piece to Willow Springs, featuring two Schroeter regulars as characters far from home and in extremis; on the other hand, it is a film essay about Mexico and as such a harbinger of Schroeter’s nonfiction work to come. While he clearly shares his characters’ fascination with Mexico, the filmmaker also savages touristic exoticism – the otherworldly appearances of his protagonists and their rapturous reactions to new surroundings contrast sharply with the sober perceptions of Mexican history and economics featured in the documentary segments and in the prosaic presence of a non-professional cast of locals. - Harvard Film Archive

1968 film by Werner Schroeter

1969 film by Werner Schroeter

A feminist cult survives by robbing and killing passersby, at their remote desert ranch. The North Star Dhruva cult leader Magdalena refuses to work for the Yankee dollar. Consequently she subjugates her two followers, who are forced to listen to the music of German opera all the time, while Magdalena drinks rum and Coca Cola in the ranch's ornate bar. But the lesbian masochist's iron rule over the rundown California ranch is questioned when a mother-loving young male wanderer, Lord Invader, stops in and romances the cult's meek slave Ila, after his mother is turned away by Magdalena.