MoMA To Salute New German Cinema Pioneer
Written by: FFT Webmaster | May 8th, 2012
The Museum of Modern Art, in association with the Munich Film Museum and the Goethe-Institut New York, will present the first comprehensive North American retrospective of German film, theater, and opera director Werner Schroeter. The program, which runs from May 11 to June 11, includes 40 feature films and rare early experimental shorts, very few of which have had theatrical releases in the United States. Schroeter’s filmic approach was extremely influential on his German contemporaries Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Rosa von Praunheim, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Daniel Schmid, Ulrike Ottinger, Wim Wenders, and Werner Herzog. He also worked with an eclectic group of acting talents including Isabelle Huppert, Bulle Ogier, Candy Darling, and his muse and superstar Magdalena Montezuma, from whom he drew some of their greatest performances. Inspired by the divas of silent-era cinema, Schroeter strove for an authenticity of feeling through extreme emotions, reaching a point, he said, of “musical and gestural excess.” Mixing kitsch with high art, his visual exercises were intoxicating to the eye, ear and the imagination of the audience. For more information on the series, visit: www.moma.org