Kassel film collective

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Jutta Schmidt at Das Blaue Sofa , 2008
Gisela Schmidt at Das Blaue Sofa , 2008
Adolf Winkelmann in front of his video installation “The tower produces printer ink for creative people” on October 10, 2010 at the Dortmunder U

The Kassel film collective , also known as the Kassel filmmaker collective , Films vom Dörnberg , was an artists' association founded in the Dörnberg youth farm near the Helfenstein am Hohen Dörnberg near Zierenberg , which made film experiments. The avant-garde film collective existed from 1968 to 1972.

precursor

The media scientist and filmmaker Gerhard Büttenbender was employed as a pedagogical employee at the Jugendhof Dörnberg educational establishment in the State of Hesse . He made short films there and brought filmmakers, art and film critics to seminars in the Jugendhof.

Jüm Jüm and Gurtrug 2

Werner Nekes and Dore O. stayed for the first time in 1967 as guests of the Jugendhof Dörnberg for three months and during this time they shot the experimental films Jüm-Jüm and Gurtrug 2, influenced by Fluxus :

In “Jüm Jüm” a girl, portrayed by Dore O., swings in front of a painted picture. Exchanging the top and bottom allows the viewer to understand the motion process in the film as an artificial, cinematic, both synchronous and asynchronous film experience. Werner Nekes and Dore O. received the film tape in silver for Jüm Jüm .

"Gurturg 2" is a cinematic double projection. The film is a symmetrical composition of two triangular images, one above the other, the tips of which touch. It shows people lying down who swap places according to certain rules. Both triangles show the same thing in complete inversion.

The seminar

Bazon Brock and Werner Nekes shot the short film “Das Seminar” in 1967 at the Dörnberg youth farm. The experimental film was made on the occasion of a training seminar held by Bazon Brock in August 1967 in the Jugendhof. The seminar consisted of three parts: History, Literature and Life Studies.

Kassel December 9, 1967 11H54

Adolf Winkelmann , who was a student at the Werkkunstschule Kassel (part of the Kunsthochschule Kassel ), filmed himself walking through the pre-Christmas Kassel city center and recorded the reactions of passers-by. For the film “Kassel December 9th, 1967 11H54” he received the 2nd prize of the “1st prize” in 1967. Hamburger Filmschau ".

Foundation of the Kassel film collective

In 1968 Gerhard Büttenbender, the filmmaker Adolf Winkelmann and the twin sisters Jutta and Gisela Schmidt , art students of Floris Michael Neusüss at the Werkkunstschule Kassel, founded the Kassel film collective after completing a film seminar in the Jugendhof Dörnberg. The Kassel twin sisters were already in contact with the Kassel art scene at the Werkkunstschule as schoolgirls. Her acquaintances in the occupied “Münstermannhaus” between 1964 and 1965 on Kassel Königsplatz included the artists Erwin Fricke , Norman Jung , Rainer Kleinschmidt , Peter von der Heydt and the brothers Jan and Michael Buthe .

Influence and Kassel Fluxus

Gerhard Büttenbender and Christian Rittelmeyer invited numerous speakers to the Jugendhof Dörnberg. Reimut Reiche , Bazon Brock , Harun Farocki , Hansjürgen Rosenbauer , Gerd Conradt , Katrin Seybold and Hartmut Bitomsky , but also representatives of the Frankfurt School such as Reimut Reiche, Dieter Groesch , Dieter Bott and the judge Fritz Bauer gave lectures and led seminars. Gudrun Ensslin and Astrid Proll attended the seminars without invitation. From the Fluxus representative Barzon Brock, the participants learned "that you can invent yourself" and that it is not about the "work of art, but about the creative idea". The film collective wanted to create new developments in media agitation forums. The production processes influencing life were shown on film. Life should not distance itself from art.

The Kassel film collective visited the first “American Underground Film Festival” (1st Hamburg Film Show) in Hamburg in 1968 and met the filmmakers Hellmuth Costard , Gerd Conradt, Holger Meins and Katrin Seybold.

Political activities

The twin sisters Schmidt joined the KPD / ML . They dealt with the works of Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels and Mao Zedong . Together with Klaus Bernd and Bernd Lunkewitz , they organized the largest mass rally after 1945 in Kassel in 1968. They demonstrated against the Vietnam War and for an improvement in working conditions in factories. They distributed self-made “Rote Fahne” leaflets in front of the factory gates of Henschel & Sohn (Kassel), VW ( Baunatal ) and HNA (Kassel).

Short films by the Kassel film collective

Heinrich Much

With the debut film, the filmmakers turned against the classic dramaturgy of cinema . They demonstrated the correspondence between cinematographic and real time, making the viewer insecure and forcing them to think about an everyday occurrence.

In 1969 the married couples Gerhard and Gisela Büttenbender and Adolf and Jutta Winkelmann won the Grand Prix as an experimental film collective at the 15th  West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen . Your contribution was the short film Heinrich Viel , which shows the worker Heinrich Viel at the assembly line production for 31 minutes - without a film cut . The film was shot in the VW factory (Baunatal). The film begins in black and white and Heinrich Viel first tells about his life and his idea of ​​happiness.

Ruth Schmidt spoke

During the screening of the film Katzelmacher , the film collective met Rainer Werner Fassbinder at the “Mannheimer Filmfest” . Her contribution "Es speaks Ruth Schmidt", a montage film about the mother of the twin sisters Schmidt, was awarded the Josef von Sternberg Prize in 1970.

Trusting Love-Glowing Hate

The film, shot in 1969, is an educational film about the social function of trivial literature. A pensioner, a secretary, a kitchen help and an apprentice try to portray characters from a book of novels in the film.

The Höcherl

The film about the politician Hermann Höcherl was shown at the Hof International Film Festival in 1971. The film collage made from family albums, with pictures of the twin sisters Schmidt, their parents, pictures of Höcherl, men in uniforms, waving Nazi women and a mountain of dead Jews triggered a scandal. This experimental film denies that the German people were seduced by a leader in the Third Reich; it is rather the thesis that the family is the core of horror.

What is our strength

The documentary film "What is our strength" from 1971 is a documentary recording of an educational experiment and role-play in the youth center in Dörnberg.

resolution

In the Kassel Werkkunstschule the members of the Kassel film collective in 1972 Kenneth Angers “Luficer” and Jonas Mekas “Reminiscences of a journey to Lithuania” and Maoist Peking opera films were shown. The Schmidt sisters changed their subject at the Werkkunstschule Kassel and now both studied graphics. In 1972 they exhibited, curated by the experimental photographer Floris Michael Neusüss, at the art academy in Kassel and Tokyo .

The film collective dissolved after the divorces of the married couples Adolf and Jutta Winkelmann and Gerhard and Gisela Büttenbender in 1972. Jutta Winkelmann and her sister Gisela moved to Berlin to join the Commune I to Rainer Langhans join. Gerhard Büttenbender was appointed to the University of Education in Göttingen in 1972.

aftermath

In 2017 the documenta 14 contribution "Eternal Internist Brotherhood / Sisterhood" was filmed by Angelo Plessas at Hohen Dörnberg. The multimedia installation was presented during the art exhibition in Kassel's Gottschalk Hall. She processed motifs of the Zierenberg brotherhood / sisterhood founded in the Thirty Years War .

Prices

Films from Dörnberg

  • 1967: Jüm Jüm
  • 1967: Gurtrug 2
  • 1968: The camera is aimed at passers-by
  • 1968 Dear Gudrun
  • 1968/69: Heinrich Viel
  • 1969: Trusting Love-Glowing Hate
  • 1969: Dear ones
  • 1970: Ruth Schmidt spoke
  • 1971: The Höcherl
  • 1971: What is our strength
  • 1970/1971: What is our strength
  • 1971/1972: Strike at Piper & Silz

Exhibitions

  • 1972: Fotoforum Kassel, Kunsthochschule Kassel
  • 1972: Tokyo

Film festivals

  • 2015: Kino im Sprengel: "Hamburger Filmmacher Cooperative" (1968–1972), Hanover-Nordstadt

Films in the archive

literature

  • The end of ease. Focus, June 3, 1996, accessed March 13, 2017 .
  • Gisela Getty, Jutta Winkelmann and Jamal Tuschick : “The twins or the attempt to kiss money and mind”, weissbooks.w, Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 70-105 ISBN 978-3-940888-01-3 .
  • Bazon Brock "Aesthetics as a mediation training seminar at the youth farm in Dörnberg" DuMont Verlag 1985
  • "Fear of the 'Dörnberg-Kur'" | ZEIT Archive 35/1969 EDUCATION / JUGENDHOF DÖRNBERG
  • "Weird Birds" DER SPIEGEL issue no. 44 from 1969

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Focus from June 3, 1996 , article at Nexis, accessed on March 8, 2017 from Focus
  2. ↑ The end of ease. Focus, June 3, 1996, accessed March 13, 2017 .