Hartmut Bitomsky

Hartmut Bitomsky (born May 10, 1942 in Bremen ) is a German filmmaker and film producer. From 2006 to 2009 he was the director of the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb).

biography

Bitomsky studied theater, German and journalism at the Free University of Berlin from 1962 . In 1966, the year it was founded, he moved to the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin . He was one of the 18 radical students from the dffb who were evicted in 1968 . Since 1993 he has been dean and lecturer at the School of Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts . As the successor to Reinhard Hauffs , he was director of the dffb from January 2006 to July 2009 . He left for health reasons.

3000 Houses (1967) is about a young people attacking the university coffers. Your group fails because of the ambiguity of the goals of their action. A feature film shot for the cinema, Auf Biegen oder Brechen (1975) was unsuccessful.

Bitomsky showed films like A thing that understands itself (15 times) (1971, 64 minutes, black / white) in the International Forum of New Films in Berlin and made a career in third television programs. The first Brechtian educational film Die Teilung alle Tage (1970, 40 minutes or 65 minutes), with Harun Farocki as co-author / film director, who explains terms from the political economy of Karl Marx for the WDR , followed over the years a dozen other television documentaries and film essays: The Language of Revolution. Examples of revolutionary rhetoric, examined by Hans Christoph Buch (1972, 45 minutes), You too will love me one day. About the importance of notebook novels ; with Farocki (1973, 44 minutes, color), Kressin and ... (1973), cinema / criticism: About the words, the meaning and money of films (1974), storytelling (1975, black / white, 58 minutes), a portrait of the English documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings (1976), The scene of the war. The cinema by John Ford (1976), 1977 the two-part television film Caravan of Words , 1980/81 the four-part television documentary Highway 40 West , 1983 'L'Argent' by Bresson (30 minutes, color and black / white).

Bitomsky was with the project German trilogy in the parts of Germany Images (1983, with Heiner Mühlenbrock) Reichsautobahn (1985), The VW complex known (1988/89), two compilation films of UFA - cultural films and a film about the Volkswagen -Werk and his story in Wolfsburg . The National Socialist aesthetic was examined in one of its more inconspicuous but powerful forms. In 1992 a film essay about Ufa followed .

The documentary B 52 (1997-2000), about the long-range bomber of the US Air Force Boeing B-52 , which was known for its use in the Vietnam War , was shown at the 2001 Berlinale , while Staub (2007) premiered at the 2007 Venice Film Festival .

In 1987 Bitomsky received the Adolf Grimme Prize with gold for the Reichsautobahn . For Das Kino und der Tod he received the 1989 Adolf Grimme Prize from the Minister of Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia .

Filmography (selection)

• 1967: 3000 houses
• 1970: The division of all days (together with Harun Farocki )
• 1971: A thing that goes without saying (together with Harun Farocki)
• 1973: You will love me one day - On the meaning of magazine novels (together with Harun Farocki)
• 1974: Cinema / Criticism - On the Words, the Meaning and the Money of Films
• 1975: Bend or break
• 1977: The Caravan of Words
• 1980/1981: Highway 40 West travel in America
• 1983: Pictures of Germany
• 1985/1986: Reichsautobahn
• 1988: The cinema and death
• 1988/1989: The VW complex
• 1991: Cinema area bunker
• 1991: The cinema and the wind and photography
• 1992/1993: The UFA
• 1993: Imaginary architecture - the master builder Hans Scharoun
• 2001: B-52
• 2007: dust

Fonts

Books

• Hartmut Bitomsky: The blush of the red from Technicolor. Cinema reality and production reality . Luchterhand, Luchterhand Collection , Volume 69, Neuwied, Darmstadt 1972
• Jutta Pirschtat (Ed.): The Reality of Pictures. The filmmaker Hartmut Bitomsky . Filmwerkstatt, Essen 1992. In it, among other things, the film texts from Deutschlandbilder , Reichsautobahn , Das Kino und der Tod , Das Kino und der Wind und die Photographie and Die UFA as well as recordings for the films Highway 40 West and The VW Complex .
• Ilka Schaarschmidt (Ed.): Hartmut Bitomsky. Cinematic truth . Vorwerk 8, Volume 8, Berlin 2003. ISBN 3-930916-54-1 . In it the republication of about twenty texts originally published in the film review and elsewhere as well as, as an original contribution, excerpts from a working journal for the film B-52 .
• Hartmut Bitomsky: Borrowed Landscapes. On the practice and theory of documentary film. New Berlin Art Association; Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2012. ISBN 978-3-86560-815-4

Bitomsky was co-editor and editor of the magazine Filmkritik from 1974 to 1985 .

Articles (selection)

• History lesson - since its inception / A film and its commercial censorship . In: Filmkritik , No. 209, from May 1974.
• Lola Montez: "The defining pleasure and the marked pain" . In: Filmkritik , No. 210, from June 1974.
• The salt and the bread . In: Literaturmagazin , No. 3, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1975, pp. 280-289
• The golden age of cinematography . In: Filmkritik , No. 237, from September 1976 (collaboration: Traudl Kühn, Werner Dütsch).
• Yellow stripes. Severe blue. Passage through films by John Ford . 4 parts. Part 1 in: Filmkritik , No. 258, No. 6, June 1978, pp. 283-335; Part 2 in: Filmkritik , No. 267, No. 3, March 1979, pp. 39-95; Part 3 in: Filmkritik , No. 284, No. 8, August 1980, pp. 341-377; Part 4 in: Retrospective John Ford , a Viennale publication, edited by Astrid Johanna Ofner and Hans Hurch, Viennale, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-901770-38-8 .
• What is Chris Parker doing right now? (via Jim Jarmusch's Permanent Vacation ). In: Filmkritik , No. 298, October 1981.
• Modern images (via Lumière films). In: Filmkritik , No. 299–300, November – December 1981.
• Travel in America - Highway 40 West . In: Filmkritik , No. 310, 1982, pp. 446-505
• Cliffhanger (via Wim Wenders' Hammett ). In: Filmkritik , No. 314, from February 1983.
• (Via Michael Cimino's) Heaven's Gate . In: Filmkritik , No. 318, from June 1983.
• The fender of a Mercedes-Benz. Nazi culture films. Part I in: Filmkritik , No. 322, issue 10/1983; Part II in: Filmkritik , No. 324, issue 12/1983.
• (Via John Cassavetes') Love Streams . In: Filmkritik , No. 327–328, Issue 3–4 / 1984.
• The last of the Cahiers du Cinéma (on Jean-Luc Godard's Prénom Carmen ). In: Filmkritik , No. 331–332, Issue 7–8 / 1984.
• How can you be an American? . In: The fruits of anger and tenderness - retrospective Danièle Huillet / Jean-Marie Straub and selected films by John Ford , a Viennale publication, director: Hans Hurch, concept and text selection: Astrid Johanna Ofner, Viennale, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3 -901770-15-1 .

literature

• Jutta Pirschtat (Ed.): The Reality of Pictures. The filmmaker Hartmut Bitomsky. edition filmwerkstatt, Mülheim 2004, ISBN 978-3-9807175-4-0 . It includes texts by Klaus Kreimeier , Peter Nau and Karen Rosenberg.
• Frederik Lang: Hartmut Bitomsky - The work of a critic with words and images . Synema, Vienna 2020, ISBN 978-3-901644-83-2 .

Web links

• Hartmut Bitomsky in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Literature by and about Hartmut Bitomsky in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography, AFK-Karlsruhe ( Memento from May 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ).
• Biography, Deutsches Filmhaus
• Hartmut Bitomsky in the nbk video forum

proof

1. ↑ Hartmut Bitomsky gives up dffb management early . In: Der Tagesspiegel , June 20, 2009. [1] , [2]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Bitomsky resigns , cargo-film.de  
2. ↑ Bitomsky information on the website of the Deutsches Filmhaus.
3. ↑ Premiere in Oberhausen on April 17, 1970. First broadcast on WDR on April 19, 1970. The producer was Helmut Herbst .
4. ^ First broadcast on October 10, 1972, on NDR
5. ^ First broadcast on August 30, 1973, West 3 / WDR.
6. ^ First broadcast on December 16, 1975 in West 3 / WDR.
7. ↑ In addition, the numbers 10 and 12, 1983, the film review appeared .
8. ↑ Dust at "Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion" ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.