Metropolis: key scenes rediscovered after 80 years!
"Last Tuesday Paula Félix-Didier travelled on a secret mission to Berlin in order to meet with three film experts and editors from ZEITmagazin. The museum director from Buenos Aires had something special in her luggage: a copy of a long version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, including scenes believed lost for almost 80 years. After examining the film the three experts are certain: The find from Buenos Aires is a real treasure, a worldwide sensation. Metropolis, the most important silent film in German history, can from this day on be considered to have been rediscovered."
(ZEITmagazin, 2.7.2008)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
UK and German TV Experiment: Interwoven Plot Lines For Shared Audiences
"This month the officers of Sun Hill station are pioneering an unprecedented twinning experiment with primetime German cop drama SOKO Leipzig, as the two shows jointly film a two-part story to be broadcast in almost identical form on ITV1 and German state broadcaster ZDF.
Leipzig's Hauptkommissar Hajo Trautzschke travels to London to find his goddaughter - seeking assistance, god bless him, from The Bill's perennial guv'nor DCI Jack Meadows. DC Mickey Webb joins his boss as they track the kidnappers back to Leipzig, allowing for a few smart cross-cultural gags - such as Teutonic blonde Detective Superintendent Ina Zimmermann shrugging "We Germans have no sense of humour" as she dismisses our boys in blue's backchat.
In fact, the history of Europe's jointly produced television has been about as successful as the history of Europe's jointly produced treaties - with the notable exception/obvious confirmation being the Eurovision Song Contest. So it's little wonder that the Bill's producer, Johnathan Young, is keen to distance his co-production from one that preceded it. "This is definitely not Eurocops," he insists.
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The signs so far are that the budget twinning worked for the production companies and the broadcasters at least.
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(Stephen Armstrong, August 4 2008)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Claustrophobic spaces of German modernity and agoraphobic spaces of American post-war film genres
"Running throughout our essay as its leitmotif is the opposition between the claustrophobic spaces of German modernity (epitomized in Expressionist cinema and in the noir films directed by Germans in Hollywood) and the agoraphobic fear of wide open spaces, exemplified by post-war American space (suburbia and the urban "superblock") and by the post-war film genres of the western and the road movie. Lacking a frontier myth, Germans fantasized about an expansive sense of space and dreaded a claustrophobic one. By contrast, the American cinema developed a morbid fear of open spaces devoid of human community and fantasized about the possibility of a tightly-knit urban community."
(Ed Dimendberg and Anton Kaes)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Understanding The Versions of Fritz Lang's Metropolis
"Fritz Lang''s Metropolis-a visually astonishing, nightmarish view of the future-belongs in every well-rounded SF film collection. Yet finding an acceptable copy of this 1926 German masterpiece is often a frustrating quest, because there are more widely differing versions of Metropolis in circulation than perhaps any film in history."
(Wesley G. Holt)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Heartfield: Political Commentary Through Photomontage
"Exposing Nazism, and its leaders, to ridicule was [John] Heartfield's main aim in the 30s. 'The Meaning of the Hitler Salute' shows Hitler's right hand accepting a wad of bank notes from a gigantic bourgeois standing behind him. ''Little man requests big donation. Motto: Millions are behind me.
Heartfield was an early pioneer of photomontage. He used it as a political weapon to challenge fascism prior to the 2nd World War. For Heartfield ''New political problems demand[ed] new means of propaganda. For this task photography [possessed] the greatest power of persuasion."
(The Leninist, 1992)
Fig.1 John Heartfield (1932). Der Sinn des Hitlergrusses: Kleiner Mann bittet um große Gaben. Motto: Millonen Stehen Hinter Mir! [The Meaning of the Hitler Salute: Little man asks for big gifts. Motto: Millions Stand Behind Me!], 1932 [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1987.1125.8]
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The Constellations ProjectSHARE
