WML - Steiger or painter

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Movie
Original title WML - Steiger or painter
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1976
length 21 minutes
Rod
Director Karlheinz mouth
script Karlheinz Mund
Wolfgang Thierse
production DEFA studio for documentary films
music Hanns Eisler
camera Christian Lehmann
cut Karin Klöpsch

WML - Steiger or Painter is a documentary film by the DEFA studio for documentary films by Karlheinz Mund from 1976 .

action

Willibald Mayerl , known as WML because he signed his pictures like this, is an 80-year-old painter and former miner who worked 42 years underground in the Lugau-Oelsnitz coal mine. First he was a Hauer , Steiger , then a Markscheider and after the war he became a senior engineer at Wismut . The mines he worked in have been closed for many years.

Most of the large-format pictures he created around 40 years ago are stored in a converted shed in Hohndorf , in the Ore Mountains . Together with his friend Kurt Teutscher, he carries them into the courtyard and garden of the house and sweeps the dust off the canvas. Now you can look at them in the most beautiful weather. Most of the illustrations show miners in the shaft at work, but also in suits after work. Since the work in the pits looked different back then than it does today, they are artistic documents of historical testimony.

Sitting in front of his pictures, WML tells how he got into painting. He wanted a picture for his apartment, so he went to an art dealer in Chemnitz and asked about the average price, which was around 300 to 400 marks. Since the sum was more than a month's salary, he decided to paint one himself and took a painting class with a friend. The friend was able to end it, while WML had to end it because of his shift work. However, he has taken a liking to painting and decides to continue, because if he sets himself a task, he can pursue it for years.

WML is a naive amateur painter who does not paint his dreams, but what he sees. No contemplative idylls, but his colleagues in the different situations of their working day, based on their own experience and with the eyes of their buddy , miners in large formats and dark colors. In his eyes, his earliest pictures, his best works, are pictures of incorruptible truthfulness, which caused a sensation at the first exhibitions. A large part of the film is taken up by its explanations of the images. There is probably no work underground that he has not recorded. Miners in the face and sinking , in the filling site and when examining the bad weather , shooting masters and pit fitters - everything can be found on the canvas.

Production and publication

WML - Steiger or painter was filmed by the artistic work group "DEFA-Augenzeuge" under the working title The painting miner on ORWO color. The first proven performance of the film took place on April 26, 1976 during the 21st West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen . June 11, 1976 is given as the launch date in GDR cinemas . The commentary comes from Wolfgang Thierse and Christiane Hein was responsible for the dramaturgy.

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