ESSAY FILM FESTIVAL: Thinking Cinema on Television: Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), ca. 1975
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
No booking required
Tickets £5.00 BOOK HERE
Introduced by Volker Pantenburg, and featuring Werner Dütsch in conversation
Filmemigration aus Nazi-Deutschland - Teil 1 (Film Emigration from Nazi Germany - Part 1), Günter Peter Straschek, Germany, 1975, 16mm (transferred to digital), 60 mins, German with English subtitles
Günter Peter Straschek (19422009) belonged to first group of students of the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb). He started studying film in 1966 together with Hartmut Bitomsky, Harun Farocki, Holger Meins, Helke Sander, and others. His student film Ein Western für den SDS was confiscated by the director of the school, and the ensuing occupation of the director's office led to the relegation of Straschek and other students in 1968.
This is the first episode of a five-part series consisting of comprehensive interviews with people who had worked in the German film industry before they were forced into exile during the Nazi period. Apart from some radio features and articles, this 290-minute TV programme remains the only published trace of Günter Peter Straschek's lifelong work on the emigration of film personnel. He intended to publish a three-volume book, encompassing all available data about 3,000 emigrants originating from the centre and peripheries of film production. However, this book never materialised.
Fritz Lang, Werner Dütsch, Germany, 1974/1990, 16mm (transferred to digital), 45 mins, German with English subtitles
Werner Dütsch was one of the most prolific commissioning editors at the WDR film department, producing work by Helmut Färber, Harun Farocki, Hartmut Bitomsky, and many others. His Fritz Lang is a reworked version of an earlier program on the German director (Die schweren Träume des Fritz Lang, 1974). Like other commissioning editors at the WDR, Dütsch not only organised TV-retrospectives, and initiated and co-produced work by others, but he also worked as an author and director. Fritz Lang is organised as a dialogue between two voices (Dütsch and Martina Müller), addressing the main themes and obsessions of the director. The film is full of concise observations: 'There is a lot of killing in Lang's films; with energy, skill, and arrogance. Images of bodies, falling heavy and helplessly, follow. As if the dead, with their specific weight, wanted block the way of the living.'
Contact name:
Matthew Barrington
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