Edgar Reitz

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Edgar Reitz (2006)

Edgar Reitz (born November 1, 1932 in Morbach ) is a German author and film director and former professor of film at the State University of Design in Karlsruhe .

life and work

Edgar Reitz gave the laudation for Werner Herzog at the award ceremony for the City of Munich's Cultural Prize in 2014

Edgar Reitz comes from a Catholic family. His grandfather was a blacksmith , his father Robert Reitz a watchmaker , whose business in Morbach Reitz 'brother Guido later took over. Already during his school days at what would later become the Herzog-Johann-Gymnasium in Simmern , Reitz began, under the guidance of his German teacher Karl Windhäuser, with acting and staging plays. After graduating from high school in 1952 , he studied German , journalism , art history and theater studies in Munich .

Early work

He made his first experiences with the medium of film not theoretically, but as a camera , editing and production assistant from 1953. Also in 1953 Reitz ran his own studio stage. In the same year he developed a simultaneous projection process for 120 movable screens for the German Transport Exhibition in Munich.

In 1962 he became head of experiment and development at Insel-Film . In 1963, together with Alexander Kluge , he founded the " Institute for Film Design " associated with the Ulm School of Design . There he taught directing and camera theory until the HfG closed in 1968. Reitz and Kluge's group participated in the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto at the local short film days . The gathered young filmmakers demanded nothing less than a new cinema: “The old film is dead. We believe in the new one.” The motto “Papa's cinema is dead” was the title of the press conference. From then on, the concept of the auteur film became popular in Germany as well , which Edgar Reitz helped shape in the following years.

Reitz received one of his first awards in 1967 for his feature film Meals at the Venice Festival , where it was recognized as the best first work . In 1971 he founded Edgar Reitz-Filmproduktion (ERF) in Munich . Reitz continued his university collaboration with Kluge with joint auteur films, including the fictional documentary from 1974: In danger and in dire need, the middle path brings death .

The film series Heimat

The lavishly produced film Der Schneider von Ulm (1978), which retells the social crash of the Ulm aviation pioneer Berblinger , was also a financial crash landing for Reitz. During this crisis the idea for a film project about his homeland, the Hunsrück , arose . What initially looked like an attempt at self-discovery and in 1981 initially led to a two-hour documentary film about the Hunsrück, which later served as a prologue , finally expanded into the almost 60-hour film series Heimat , which was both very successful with viewers and showered with critical praise and awards has been. The main parts of the trilogy series were published in 1984, 1992 and 2004. It was completed in 2006 with the epilogue Heimat-Fragmente: Die Frauen . With this long-term and monumental project, Reitz achieved a completely new perspective, namely a poetic and realistic approach to the German past as it might have happened in the provinces .

From 2011 Edgar Reitz worked on a feature film that is a continuation of the trilogy and thematizes the period of the Vormärz using the wave of emigrants from the Hunsrück to Brazil in the middle of the 19th century. The shooting of the German-French co-production lasted from April 17 to August 10, 2012. The almost four-hour film was released on October 3, 2013 under the title The Other Home .

In 2015 “Heimat” was released in a digitally revised version as “Heimat remastered”.

Further work

In the 1970s and 80s Reitz published numerous books and articles on film theory and film aesthetics, as well as stories, essays, poetry and literary versions of his films.

In 1995 Edgar Reitz co-founded a film institute again, this time the "European Institute for Cinema (EIKK)" in Karlsruhe, and in the same year was also appointed professor of film at the Karlsruhe University of Design. He later became the chairman of the advisory board of the EIKK, in which colleagues such as Theo Angelopoulos , Alain Tanner , Jean-Luc Godard and István Szabó are represented .

In 2005 his long-time friend and partner Robert Busch retired from the Edgar Reitz-Filmproduktion (ERF) company . Since then Reitz and his son, Christian Reitz , have been running the Reitz & Reitz-Medien GbR company based in Munich. Another project is Change of Location , a silent film with live orchestra accompaniment. The film premiered on October 20, 2007 at the Musiktage in Donaueschingen . In 2009 a digitized version of his earlier works was published on DVD ( Edgar Reitz - Frühwerk ).

Impact history

The writer Andreas Maier confessed that Reitz had "influenced" him a lot in his "home-origin project" bypassing the area .

Private

Edgar Reitz is married to the singer and actress Salome Kammer for the third time and lives in the Munich district of Schwabing , on the edge of the English Garden .

Quotes

“Home is always something retrospective. A feeling of loss. "

- Edgar Reitz

literature

Works (excerpt)

Secondary literature

  • Constantin-Film (ed.): The young German film. Documentation for an exhibition at Constantin-Film, Munich 1967.
  • Reinhold Rauh: Edgar Reitz. Film as a home. Heyne Film Library, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-453-06911-0 .
  • Werner Barg: Narrative cinema and auteur film. On the theory and practice of cinematic storytelling with Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz . Fink, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7705-3001-2 .
  • Marion Dollner: Longing for self- confinement . The endless odyssey of the mobilized hero Paul in the film "Heimat". With an interview with Edgar Reitz. Röhrig Universitätsverlag, St. Ingbert 2005, ISBN 978-3-86110-384-4 (also dissertation, University of Mannheim).
  • Matteo Galli: Edgar Reitz. Il Castoro Cinema, Milan 2006, ISBN 88-8033-386-0 .
  • Thomas Koebner : Edgar Reitz: chronicler of German longing; a biography , Stuttgart: Reclam, 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-011016-4
  • Edgar Reitz. The big retrospective. A manual . Schüren, Marburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-7410-0323-3 .
  • 800 times lonely - a day with the filmmaker Edgar Reitz . Documentary by Anna Hepp , 2019.

Filmography (selection)

Documentaries and feature films

  • Communication , experimental film 1959, 12 min.
  • Yucatan , poetic documentary 1960, 11 min.
  • Cotton , industrial documentary 1960, 22 min.
  • Speed , short film, 1962, 13 min.
  • Inland shipping , industrial film, 1964, 20 min.
  • Infinite journey - but limited , experimental film 1965, 200 min.
  • VariaVision, a cinematic perpetual motion machine 1964/65, 580 min.
  • The children , short film 1966, 12 min.
  • Meals , feature film 1966/67, 97 min.
  • Footnotes , experimental fictional film 1967, 100 min.
  • Film lesson , documentary 1968, 45 min.
  • Cardillac , feature film 1968/69, 102 min.
  • Uxmal , documentary feature film 1970, 80 min.
  • Tales of the Bucket Child 25 episodes, with Ula Stöckl, 1969/70, approx. 220 min.
  • Das goldene Ding feature film, together with U. Stöckl and Alf Brustellin , 1971, 118 min.
  • Kino Zwei , made-for-TV film 1972, 45 min.
  • The trip to Vienna , feature film 1973, 105 min.
  • In danger and in dire straits, Mittelweg brings death , documentary 1974, script and direction together with Alexander Kluge, 90 min.
  • Zero hour , feature film 1976/77, 118 min.
  • Germany in Autumn (episode Grenzstation) feature film 1978, 25 min.
  • The Tailor of Ulm , feature film 1978, 111 min.
  • Susanne dances , documentary 1979, 35 min.
  • The Night of the Directors , documentary 1994, 100 min.
  • Change of location. A multimedia project for ensemble, female solo voice, two actors, live video and film 2007, 21 min.

Home (trilogy)

Feature film cycle in 30 parts 1982–2004: total length 52 hours, 8 minutes, cinema: 24B / S

  • Heimat - A German Chronicle (1984)
  • 1. Wanderlust (1919–1928), 119 min.
  • 2. The middle of the world (1929–1933), 93 min.
  • 3. Christmas like never before (1935), 58 min.
  • 4. Reichshöhenstrasse (1938), 58 min.
  • 5. Up and away and back (1938–1939), 58 min.
  • 6th Home Front (1943), 58 min.
  • 7. The Soldiers' Love (1944), 59 min.
  • 8. (Berlin end of April 1945), 7 min.
  • 9. The American (1945–1947), 102 min.
  • 10. Hermännchen (1955–1956), 138 min.
  • 11. The proud years (1967–1969), 82 min.
  • 12. The festival of the living and the dead (1982), 100 min.
  • The Second Home - Chronicle of a Youth (1992)
  • 13. The time of the first songs (1960), 120 min.
  • 14. Two strange eyes (1960–1961), 115 min.
  • 15. Jealousy and Pride (1961), 116 min.
  • 16. Ansgar's death (1961–1962), 100 min.
  • 17. Playing with Freedom (1962), 119 min.
  • 18.Kennedy's Children (1963), 108 min.
  • 19. Christmas Wolves (1963), 110 min.
  • 20. The Wedding (1964), 120 min.
  • 21. The Eternal Daughter (1965), 118 min.
  • 22. The End of the Future (1966), 132 min.
  • 23. Time of Silence (1967–1968), 120 min.
  • 24. The time of many words (1968–1969), 121 min.
  • 25. Art or Life (1970), 133 min.
  • Heimat 3 - Chronicle of a turning point (2004)
  • 26. The happiest people in the world (1989), 106 min.
  • 27. The world champions (1990), 100 min.
  • 28. The Russians Are Coming (1992–1993), 125 min.
  • 29. Everyone's OK (1995), 132 min.
  • 30. The Heirs (1997), 103 min.
  • 31. Farewell to Schabbach (1999–2000), 105 min.

DVDs

  • Meals , Two Thousand One Edition German Film, 2012.
  • The tailor from Ulm , 2011.
  • Zero hour , 2011.
  • Edgar Reitz - early work (7 DVDs), 2009.
  • Filming location Heimat - Chronicle of a German saga of the century (3 DVDs), 2007.
  • Heimat Trilogie (16 DVD Box), 2006 / (18 DVD Box), 2010.
  • Heimat 1 - A German Chronicle (5 DVDs), 2004.
  • Heimat 2 - Chronicle of a Youth (7 DVDs), 2004.
  • Heimat 3 - Chronicle of a turning point (3 DVDs), 2004.
  • The other home - Chronicle of a longing (2 DVDs), 2014.

Honors

Star by Edgar Reitz on the Boulevard der Stars in Berlin

Film awards

  • 1960: 1st prize (best scientific film) at the Rome Film Festival for Cancer Research I.
  • 1960: 1st prize at the European Industrial Film Days in Rouen for cotton
  • 1961: 2nd prize in the group "Technology and Productivity" for Moltopren I - IV
  • 1963: 2 × film tape in gold (direction and production) for speed
  • 1966: Award for the best first feature film at the Venice Film Festival for meals
  • 1966: Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1966 for saying goodbye to yesterday
  • 1974: Filmband in Gold (musical dramaturgy) for In Danger and Greatest Need, the middle way brings death
  • 1978: Adolf Grimme Prize with silver for zero hour
  • 1978: Film tape in gold (conception) for Germany in autumn in the team

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin No. 37, September 13, 2013, p. 19.
  2. ↑ Literature Spiegel May 2018, p. 11.
  3. ↑ Press release of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, July 6, 2009 (PDF; 85 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Reitz, Edgar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film director and film producer
DATE OF BIRTH November 1, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Morbach in the Hunsrück