Filmstunde_23

In May 1968, a high school teacher from Munich had an idea: to invite director Edgar Reitz and his crew to the school and spend a few weeks teaching filmmaking to girls aged 13 to 14. He transformed the task into an experiment in cinema education, documenting the process and turning it into the TV movie FILMSTUNDE (1968), which advocated for film to be treated as an important subject in German schools. Fifty-five years later one of the students, now a 68-year-old woman, runs into the 90-year-old Reitz at a concert and they decide to reconnect, together with Jörg Adolph, to revisit those images. This encounter is built on shared memories, full of tenderness and wise reflections on how cinema deeply affected each of their lives. But FILMSTUNDE_23 is also a journey back in time to a certain kind of Germanness, in line with Reitz’s long-term interests. If we compare these images to Frederick Wiseman’s HIGH SCHOOL from the same year, we don’t see the ghosts of the Vietnam War or the vital rage of adolescence. But what we do see is a German girl turning a camera on police officers in an intentional attempt to ridicule power through time lapse and slow motion. It was May ‘68, and it shows. Subtly, silently, on a tiny strip of Super 8 film. (Victor Guimarães) 

Jörg Adolph, Edgar Reitz: MAHLZEITEN (1967), FUßNOTEN (1967), FILMSTUNDE (1968), CARDILLAC (1969), KINO ZWEI (1971), DIE REISE NACH WIEN (1973), STUNDE NULL (1977), DER SCHNEIDER VON ULM (1979), GESCHICHTEN AUS DEN  HUNSRÜCKDÖRFERN (1981), HEIMAT – EINE DEUTSCHE CHRONIK (1984), DIE ZWEITE HEIMAT – CHRONIK EINER JUGEND (1992), DIE NACHT DER REGISSEURE (1995), HEIMAT 3 – CHRONIK EINER ZEITENWENDE (2004), HEIMAT – FRAGMENTE – DIE FRAUEN (2006), ORTSWECHSEL (2007), KAFKA GEHT INS KINO (2013), DIE ANDERE HEIMAT (2013)