Carnival Magic

Recently orphaned, a young boy is taken in by his godmother who is shocked to realize that she can see the boy's imaginary friend: a flamboyant, French magician named Bogus.

In a small provincial town, the magician Viktor Mikhailovich Kukushkin performed in a student dormitory. His tricks were not very complicated and did not make a great impression on the audience. But this evening was the beginning of friendship between the magician and the students.

200 years of Cologne Carnival! The most colourful and loudest festival in Cologne celebrates a big birthday. In February 1823, a few men from Cologne's upper class founded the so-called 'Festordnende Komitee' - the forerunner of today's 'Festkomitee Kölner Karneval'. This 'big bang' was a reaction to the old festival getting out of hand in orgies and violence. Carnival was in danger. A ban by the Prussian rulers was imminent. The new committee wanted to control the wild goings-on, establish rules and organise the celebrations.

Members of a circus troupe "adopt" Lili Daurier when she finds herself stranded in a strange town. The magician who first comes to her rescue already has romantic entanglements and thinks of her as a little girl. Who can she turn to but the puppets, singing to them her troubles, forgetting that there are puppeteers? A crowd gathers around Lili as she sings. The circus has a new act. She now has a job. Will she get her heart's desire?

College prof Peter Boyd tries to salvage his professional and personal reputation by using a lab chimp to prove that environment trumps heredity in behavioral development.