Film and Art

Walther Ruttmann is a pioneer of modern multimaedia art. His first short films are unique experiments with forms, rhythm and colors, his innovative commercials connected abstract animation art with concrete messages. The symphonic documentary Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großstadt is one of the most famous silent cassics, the travelogue Melodie der Welt became the first German sound feature film. With the radio play Weekend Ruttmann created the first "sound film without images" while his sound short In der Nacht transforms music to images and is a prototype of modern music videos. The 2-disc DVD combines for the first time all surviving works by Walther Ruttmann from 1920-1931 in newly restored and reconstructed versions, often with original scores. It also includes lobby cards, posters, programs and text documents as well as little known paintings and drawings by Ruttmann.

In casting a glance one artist pays tribute to another as James Benning offers his filmic paean to Robert Smithson's legendary "earthwork" sculpture, the Spiral Jetty. With RR, his homage to the American railroad, the filmmaker brings an era to its close by going back to cinema's roots. Shot back-to-back over a period of two years, these works marked James Benning's farewell to analogue filmmaking and together constitute the profound "last words" on the film medium by one of its most singular innovators. This 2-disc set presents both films together with rare audio interviews in which Benning recounts the experience of making his "last" films and gives unique insight into his creative methods.

Werner Schroeter's unique melodramas about love and death are fascinating amalgamations of opera, theater and cinema elements. Art and kitsch, high and low brow, Maria Callas and Caterina Valente, myths and genre elements. The 2-disc DVD set presents the first two feature-length films by Schroeter in beautifully restored versions. Additionally it offers a new reconstruction of Schroeter's legendary two-screen projection Argila and excerpts of a talk with Werner Schroeter, lead by Dietrich Kuhlbrodt during the Werner Schroeter Tribute at the Viennale 2008.

Since 1920 artist, photographer, and filmmaker Ella Bergmann-Michel lived and worked at the "Schmelz", an old paint mill near Frankfurt on Main. With guests such as Kurt Schwitters and László Moholy-Nagy the house became an important locale for modern artists. Between 1931 and 1933 she made five documentary films that constitute a rare example of socially involved and equally artistic film. The DVD contains these five films, a documentary film about the artist and a comprehensive booklet with essays on Ella Bergmann-Michel's films.

This epic documentary subtly introduces the complex world view of iconic filmmaker and theoretician Peter Kubelka (born 1934, Vienna). While Kubelka's radical and pioneering body of films is a highly condensed work of about an hour focussing on the essence of cinema, his legendary lectures often unfold over many hours. These lectures on "what is cinema" and "cooking as an art form" are frequently illuminated by the presentation of archaeological objects from Kubelka's eclectic collection. He considers his ongoing collecting to be an expanded film practice which explores the evolution of humanity. Martina Kudláček has carefully woven an open-ended portrait which goes beyond the biographical to reveal fresh insights into the phenomenon of film.

With films including the 'rubble woman' portrait Martha, the three-part experimental film cycle Potter's Stier, Venus nach Giorgione and Frau am Klavichord, the portrait of the artist Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner, and also the documentaries Rangierer and Die Küche, noted for their outstanding sound and visuals, Jürgen Böttcher distances himself yet further from the didactic tone and abstract heroic representation of socialist films. In Georgien is the only full-length film that Böttcher was able to shoot on location outside of the GDR.

In his pictures, films, collages and installations, the painter and filmmakerLutz Dammbeck seeks a synthesis of expressive means from the genres of film and fine art. His work to date identifies him as one of the key representatives of independent film and media art in the former GDR and as a unique, outstanding phenomenon within modern contemporary art. The 2-disc DVD presents for the first time all his animation films and media works, including an extensive booklet with essays about Lutz Dammbeck's filmic work and a lot of documents about his fight with state authorities as ROM features.

"Film should not be misused for non-filmic messages": Wilhelm and Birgit Hein examine in their films theprocess of reproduction and the film material itself. Rohfilm shows the destruction of the common "film image" and was described by Stephen Dwoskin as a "visual bombing" of shreds, fragments, dirt and leftovers of film editing. Reproductions dissolves photos in greys, 625 films a negative "snow" TV image with different speeds, in Portraits photos are changed by the development and reproduction processes. Materialfilme consists of film starting and ending leaders, the elements of every film that normally are not seen on the screen. W+B Hein's underground film classics deal with the unexplored potentials of the film material which starts to disappear in the digital world.

Georg Kaiser decribes in his Expressionist theater play the attempt of a bank cashier to escape his middle class daily life. Director Karlheinz Martin's adaptation transfers Kaiser's play into an Expressionist film of radical stylization. The German film industry was so irritated by the result that the film never found a distribution and was never shown in German cinemas. The only existing print of this classic survived in Japan where the film received a cinema release and was preserved by the National Film Center. The Munich Filmmuseum restored the film and added two scores transferring the visual avantgarde concept of the film into a musical structure: An improvised performance for three percussionists by the SchlagEnsemble H/F/M and a modern score for seven musicians composed and condacted by Yati Durant.

The American minimalist poet Robert Lax (1915-2000) was a companion of the painter Ad Reinhardt and the religious philosopher and monk Thomas Merton, who had a strong influence on the poets of the beat generation. After decades of a nomadic life between America and Europe he has lived withdrawn for 30 years on the Greek island of Patmos. The present film published on this DVD is the outcome of a long-standing friendship between Robert Lax and the filmmakers Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel: A visual poem with beautiful black-and-white photography, added by a short film showing Lax reading his poems and by photos shot by Nicolas Humbert in 1993-1999.