Weimar Shorts – Prog. 2: Work and Leisure

Marianne Brandt: Miss Lola. 1926. Photomontage of the film explorer Lola Kreutzberg with newspaper clippings on black cardboard. 48 x 63.2 cm. Image: MutualArt.

Lola Kreutzberg, explorer and documentary film-maker. Photo: eBay.

Weimar Shorts – Prog. 2 Work and Leisure.
Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone.
Grand piano and violin: Günter Buchwald.
Teatro Verdi, e-subtitles in English and Italian by Underlight, 9 Oct 2019.

AA: The second Weimar Shorts programme in Pordenone had an emphasis on artists: the puppet master Lotte Pritzel, Otto Dix at the height of his Expressionistic period, and Lola Kreutzberg the documentary explorer, here recording Javanese shadowplays, dances and orchestras. The long takes of Otto Dix at work creating a tempera painting are priceless. The show started with a sparkling wine ad relevant to the William S. Hart retrospective. It also included a tale of a lady film editor suffering from hangover... and seeing the Dadaistic results of the day's work on the giant screen of the Ufa-Palast, relevantly to this year's Films on Film programme. Ernö Rapée must adopt a prima vista approach to his Kino-Orchester of 85 players. Even the final ENDE card is upside down.

Image not from the film. Kupferberg Gold. Wikipedia: "Die Kupferberg Sektkellerei wurde 1850 von Christian Adalbert Kupferberg in Mainz am Rhein gegründet. Seitdem werden dort verschiedene Sektmarken hergestellt. Die bekannteste ist „Kupferberg Gold“, ein halbtrocken bis brut ausgebauter Sekt im unteren Preissegment."

DIE WARNUNG [The Warning] (DE 1921)
regia/dir: ?. photog: ?. prod: Projektionsgesellschaft Palast Charlottenburg, Berlin. riprese/filmed: 1920. v.c./censor date: 11.1.1921. copia/copy: 35 mm, 61 . (orig. 63 m), 3’03” (18 fps); did./titles: GER. fonte/source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin.

Michael Cowan (GCM): "Early advertising film in Germany was often enlisted for the promotion of leisure products such as perfume, chocolates, or sparkling wine, and Kupferberg Gold – a leading producer of sparkling wine – was one of the first companies to wholeheartedly embrace the new medium. By the time this film was made in 1920, audiences would have been quite familiar with Kupferberg’s signature champagne glass and bubbles, which had already offered a pretext for various trick effects in films such as Julius Pinschewer’s Sektzauber (“Champagne Magic”) from 1912. Kupferberg also invested heavily in other forms of technological advertising, such as giant outdoor light advertisements, which showed – in animated images – a bottle of bubbly wine being poured into a glass. In this comical advertisement, the filmmakers draw on the iconography of the Western to demonstrate how a glass of Kupferberg just might save your life!" Michael Cowan (GCM)

AA: There is a William S. Hart connection in this sparkling wine ad: a reflection of approaching Native Americans in a glass of Kupferberg Gold gives them away, saving lives. Good visual quality.

Photo not from the film. Lotte Pritzel, puppet artist and costume designer. Photo: via Wikipedia from: Wanda von Debschitz-Kunowski (1870–1935) – Unsere Zeit in 77 Frauenbildnissen, Niels Kampmann Verlag, um 1930. Gemeinfrei.

DIE PRITZELPUPPE [The Pritzel Puppet] (DE 1923)
regia/dir: Ulrich Kayser. scen: Maria Elisabeth Kähnert. photog: Max Brinck. cast: Lotte Pritzel, Blandine Ebinger, Niddy Impekoven. prod: Ufa (Universum-Film AG). v.c./censor date: 10.8.1923. copia/copy: 35 mm, 381 m, 18’31” (18 fps); did./titles: GER. fonte/source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin.

Michael Cowan (GCM): "Documenting artists at work is a theme most often associated with the Schaffende Hände series included in this program. But there were also other variants on the theme; this film focuses on the work of puppet-artist and costume designer Lotte Pritzel (1887–1952). The screenplay was written by the author and film critic Maria Elisabeth Kähnert, and was directed by Ulrich Kayser — the head of technical production for the Ufa-Kulturabteilung, and later a specialist in industrial film — with cinematography by Max Brinck (who also worked on Die Seele der Pflanze)."

"Lotte Pritzel had been a well-known figure in the Munich bohemian arts scene for over a decade when Die Pritzelpuppe was made. She knew many of the leading artists and writers of the day, including Emmy Hennings, Jakob van Hoddis, Oskar Kokoschka, and Rainer Maria Rilke, who was fascinated by her work and dedicated an essay to it in 1921. Her work also exerted a strong influence on dancers such as Anita Berber (who had performed a ballet – also titled Die Pritzelpuppe – in 1921, two years previously) and Niddy Impekoven (who makes an appearance in this film). Pritzel can be seen as part of a long line of experimental puppet design, which would include Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer (Triadisches Ballett) and the work of Hans Bellmer (with whom she later stayed in contact)."

"In the film, Kähnert and Kayser take us behind the scenes to show Pritzel at work in her studio; they explain her techniques, speculate on her inspirations, and locate her work within a longer history of artistic styles." Michael Cowan (GCM)

AA: Maria Elisabeth Kähnert and Ulrich Kayser's film is not merely a documentary portrait of an artist but an artwork itself, including an overview of puppet-making, situating Lotte Pritzel in the contemporary approach of grotesque puppets. The puppet montages are fascinating, the cinematography is expressive. Intriguing. Visual quality: good.

Photo not from the film. Otto Dix: Self-Portrait with Easel 1926 © DACS 2017. Leopold-Hoesch-Museum & Papiermuseum Düren. Photo: Peter Hinschläger. Photo: Tate.

SCHAFFENDE HÄNDE. OTTO DIX [Hands at Work: Otto Dix] (DE 1924)
regia/dir: Hans Cürlis. prod: Institut für Kulturforschung e.V. copia/copy: 35 mm, 249 m, 9’04” (24 fps); did./titles: GER. fonte/source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin.

Michael Cowan (GCM): "This short film document was part of a long-running series by the filmmaker Hans Cürlis entitled Schaffende Hände (Hands at Work), which he began filming in 1923 and continued well into the post-WWII period. Cürlis was the head of the Institut für Kulturforschung (Institute for Cultural Research), an important centre of educational film, where Lotte Reiniger and Berthold Bartosch both worked as animators. Schaffende Hände was a live-action series documenting the labor of visual artists (painters, sculptors, etc.), and occasionally extended to other kinds of manual production (e.g., Schaffende Hände. Wie Süßigkeiten entstehen / Hands at Work: How Sweets are Made, 1929). The series has provided footage for many documentary projects over the decades, and much survives to the present day (e.g., images of Kandinsky painting, which are still available on YouTube). This segment on the Neue Sachlichkeit (“New Objectivity”) painter Otto Dix was created as a stand-alone film in 1924, and was later incorporated into a longer film, Schaffende Hände. Die Maler (Hands at Work: The Painters), along with several other segments, on George Grosz, Lovis Corinth, and other artists, in 1926." Michael Cowan (GCM)

AA: A revealing and illuminating study of Otto Dix at work. This film belongs in the same privileged category as Le Mystère Picasso by Henri-Georges Clouzot, sharing an intimacy with the artist in a close study. We witness Otto Dix outdoors. He then starts an "Akt ohne Modell" – a full-figured nude without a model, working with ink, relishing the large breasts. He then prepares a composition with a pencil and proceeds to paint a portrait with tempera, working fast on the wet surface. Special care is devoted to hair: Dix paints each hair individually. Much of this is caught in long takes, enhancing the documentary value.

Photo not from the film. Lil Dagover appears in found footage.

WENN DIE FILMKLEBERIN GEBUMMELT HAT… [When a Film Cutter Blunders…] (DE 1925)
regia/dir: O. F. Mauer. cast: Alice Kempen. copia/copy: 35 mm, 328 m, 14′ (20 fps); did./titles: GER. fonte/source: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt-am-Main.
    Tragödie einer Uraufführung.
    With: Lil Dagover. (In recycled footage).

Anton Kaes (GCM): "This Dada-inspired film, also known as Tragödie einer Uraufführung (Tragedy of a Premiere), was made in 1925 in the shadow of Entr’acte, the classic French Dada film of 1924 by René Clair and Francis Picabia, which was shown in Berlin in the famous avant-garde film matinee Der absolute Film (“The Absolute Film”) on 3 May 1925. Filmkleberin satirizes avant-garde cinema itself by suggesting that the rejection of narrative is the result of carelessness and blunder. This little-known film, directed by O. F. Mauer and starring Alice Kempen, both minor figures in Weimar cinema, is also a comical take on censorship, film production, and exhibition practices."

"Filmkleberin begins in the manner of an industrial film, with the title “High Season in a Film Cutting Company,” followed by a tracking shot along editing tables, stopping at a group of five female employees in white coats, vivaciously engaged in a … crossword puzzle (which itself was a new phenomenon in 1925 – see our entry for Kreuzworträtsel im Film Nr. 3). A title card explains that films are put together from 1,000 large and small scenes – a manual process that the camera proceeds to illustrate via close-ups of female hands using razor blades, scissors, and glue to scrape, cut, and join strips of film together."

"In its own narrative, the film focuses on a young film cutter who is visibly bored by her work, daydreaming about a young man. The close-up of the couple’s imaginary kiss is interrupted by an intertitle declaring “Zensur,” and an inspection of the kissing scene under a magnifying glass, leading to a pair of scissors destroying the offending frames. The woman awakens from her daydream and resumes work – now under pressure to finish editing a film by a 6 o’clock deadline. The camera pans across two boxes, one labeled “Diverse Newsreel Clips,” the other “Blossoms That Float in the Mud,” a fictitious revue film whose titillating title alludes to the so-called Aufklärungsfilme (sex education films) from the censor-free period between November 1918 and May 1920. Predictably, the film cutter mixes up the boxes and strips from both are spliced into one film, with startling results. The second half of Filmkleberin takes place in a movie theater, where the cutter sits in the audience watching what her distracted editing has produced."

"Snippets from real life taken from newsreel and Kulturfilm shorts interrupt, undercut, and ridicule the fictional artifice of the revue film. For instance, a title announces “Lil Dagover at Breakfast,” but instead of the glamorous film star, we see a half-nude African woman nursing her baby while drinking palm wine – a scene presumably taken from one of the popular travelogue shorts, such as Quer durch Africa (Across Africa, 1924). Another title announcing the diva’s favorite small dog cuts to a hippopotamus. And so on. A montage of random clips from sports and entertainment, including a brief parody of the 1924 feature-length Kulturfilm, Ways to Strength and Beauty (1925), as well as an excerpt from a short entitled Zur Vermännlichung der Frau (On the Masculinization of Women), follows at an increasingly rapid pace, producing such chaotic anarchy that the frustrated and enraged audience throws objects at the screen and rips it. (Entr’acte also concludes with the tearing of its final “End” title.)"

"In the tradition of films that reflect on film, this short teaches the public about the making and breaking of a narrative film. By violating all norms of logic and formal organization, Filmkleberin lampoons and challenges these norms, including censorship, the ultimate norm that determines what can be seen and what cannot." Anton Kaes (GCM)

AA: A parody of film cutting, also relevant for Le Giornate del Cinema Muto's Films on Film series this year. There is nothing to add to Anton Kaes's thorough program note above. The film cutter lady, suffering from hangover, blunders by intercutting a revue film with newsreel footage, particularly botching the intertitles. The film is funny but the "film in film" feels slightly prolonged because the mismatching montage jokes are not all witty. Good visual quality.

Photo not from the film. Kuenstler AK Max Rabes: Forschungsreisende und Filmproduzentin Lola Kreutzberg. Photo: Oldthing.ch.

ALLERLEI VOLKSBELUSTIGUNGEN IN JAVA [Various Popular Entertainments in Java] (DE 1928)
regia/dir, scen, photog, mont/ed: Lola Kreutzberg. prod: Ufa (Universum-Film AG). sponsor: Parufamet GmbH. v.c./censor date: 19.11.1927. copia/copy: 35 mm, 200 m, 9’43” (18 fps); did./titles: GER. fonte/source: Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin.

Michael Cowan (GCM): "Focusing on traditional Javanese leisure activities, Allerlei Volksbelustigungen in Java is the 5th installment of the series Aus dem holländischen Insel-Indien, produced by the Ufa-Kulturabteilung. The film was directed by Lola Kreutzberg (1887–1966), a former veterinarian who became a pioneer of films and photobooks on animals, nature, and exotic life in the 1920s."

"The “adventurer” cameraman was a well-known figure in the film and photography scene of the 1920s, represented in Germany by filmmakers such as Colin Ross (director of Mit dem Kurbelkasten um die Erde, 1924). Kreutzberg was one of the few women in this field, but she had forerunners in female travel lecturers from the late 19th century, such as Esther Lyons in the U.S. Kreutzberg was also very well known on the Weimar cultural scene. For example, the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung ran a series of her travel reports in 1926, the same year that the Bauhaus artist Marianne Brandt created a photomontage entitled “Miss Lola”. But Kreutzberg’s work was not without its critics; for example, the left-wing film society Volksverband für Filmkunst (Popular Association of Film Art, whose members had a hand in several activist films that are being shown in our third program) had this to say in a 1930 review of her work: “In her trip to the colonies, Lola Kreutzberg saw only the exotic aspects of colonial life. She saw nothing of the struggle of this oppressed people, their misery and poverty, their oppression by a colonial system.”"

"Allerlei Volksbelustigungen in Java is one several films Kreutzberg made for Ufa in the late 1920s, before founding her own company, Lola Kreutzberg-Film GmbH, which would produce dozens of travel and expedition films up to 1932. The film embodies some of the contradictions surrounding her work. In many ways, this is a typical colonial documentary, in which an omniscient narrator explains the customs of a “foreign” people for Western audiences. But the film is also remarkable for being made by a woman, and many of the motifs (puppets, shadow play, etc.) resonate with the work of other female artists (Lotte Pritzel, Lotte Reiniger) featured in this program." Michael Cowan (GCM)

AA: This movie introduces me to the intriguing film explorer Lola Kreutzberg. On display is fascinating footage from Java, including itinerant Chinese, shadow plays, puppet theatre, Javanese orchestras, and dances. The visual quality is obscure as if the print might have been struck from an inferior source.

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AA Facebook capsule:

The second Weimar Shorts programme in Pordenone had an emphasis on artists: the puppet master Lotte Pritzel, Otto Dix at the height of his Expressionistic period, and Lola Kreutzberg the documentary explorer, here recording Javanese shadowplays, dances and orchestras. The long takes of Otto Dix at work creating a tempera painting are priceless. The show started with a sparkling wine ad relevant to the William S. Hart retrospective. It also included a tale of a lady film editor suffering from hangover... and seeing the Dadaistic results of her day's work on the giant screen of the Ufa-Palast, relevantly to this year's Films on Film programme. Ernö Rapée must adopt a prima vista approach to his Kino-Orchester of 85 players. Even the final ENDE card is upside down.