Friday March 12, 2010, 8:00 pm

At the Echo Park Film Center, 1200 N Alvarado (at Sunset)

Los Angeles Filmforum and the Echo Park Film Center present

Who Was Walter Ruttman?

A Presentation by Stefan Droessler, Director of the Munich Film Museum

With a screening of Berlin: Symphony of a City (1927)

**NOTE THE CHANGE IN DATE, TIME AND LOCATION**

Tonight we’re delighted to host Stefan Droessler of the Munich Film Museum, which has an ongoing program of restoration of film works and issuing exemplary DVD editions through the Edition Filmmuseum label.  Droessler will present the issues and process involved in their restoration of Walter Ruttmann’s work, followed by a presentation of the classic poetic documentary masterwork Berlin: Symphony of a City.  The presentation will include photos, scans of paintings, and his short films Opus I-IV, and will last about 60-80 minutes, followed by intermission and the screening of Berlin.

This visit by Mr. Droessler made possible by the Goethe Institut Los Angeles.

Tonight’s films include:

Lichtspiel Opus 1 (1921, Germany, 11 minutes)

Opus 2 (1922, Germany, 3 minutes)

Opus 3 (1924, Germany, 3 minutes)

Opus 4 (1925, Germany, 3 minutes)

Directed, written and photographed by Walther Ruttmann

“Walther Ruttmann's Light-Play Opus Nr. 1, was shot in 1919 and 1920, had a musical score composed for it, and premiered in April 1921. It makes brilliant use of color. Ruttmann had been a painter and his last abstract canvases were characterized by many delicate nuances of painterly brushstrokes and fine gradations of unmixed colors.

In moving to film, Ruttmann tried to capture some of the same variety and dynamics by using three coloring techniques: tinting, toning and hand-tinting, that is, coloring the emulsion so dark areas have a hue, dying the film strip so the light areas have another color, and adding touches of other colors to specific shapes by painting directly on each film frame. This meant that each individual scene had to be printed separately (from black-and-white negative pieces), and each projection print of the film had to be assembled from a hundred fragments ...

Ruttmann limited the imagery to a confrontation between hard-edged geometric shapes and softer pliant forms, and allowed the colors not only to characterize certain figures, but also to establish mood, as in the long blue "nocturne" of the second movement. When Ruttmann followed this with subsequent abstract Opus films, he avoided the complex color effects of his first film. He gave general orange and green tints to scenes in Opus 2 and Opus 3, but the all hard-edged, optically-vibrating Opus 4 remained black-and-white for maximum contrast.” -- William Moritz, Color Music: Integral Cinema at iotaCenter.org.

Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927, Germany, 65 minutes)

“Filmed less than 20 years before the Nazi occupation, Ruttman’s influential silent documentary Berlin: Die Sinfonie einer Großstadt is an invaluable photographic record of life in Weimar Berlin. A timeless demonstration of the cinema’s ability to enthrall on a purely visceral level, the film offers a kaleidoscopic view of a single day in the life of the bustling metropolis.  Carl Mayer (The Last Laugh), influenced by the naturalistic Kammerspiel movement, envisioned “a melody of pictures” sprung from daily reality instead of the stylized artificiality of the studio-bound expressionist film.”  -- Holly Wallace, UCLA press release, 2007.

Advance ticket purchase available through Brown Paper Tickets. 

Click here to purchase!

About Stefan Droessler:

Stefan Droessler was born in 1961. Since 1977 he has been the director of several film clubs, film festivals and film seminars. From 1986 to 1998 he founded and directed the Bonner Kinemathek and since 1999 he has been the director of the Filmmuseum Munich. He has published several books and articles about film history, and film techniques. The museum focuses on German silent films, the “New German Cinema,” and Munich film productions. The archive also holds a collection of Russian films and the estate of Orson Welles.

About Walter Ruttman:

Walter Ruttmann (1887-1941) is a pioneer of modern multimedia art. His first short films are unique experiments with forms, colors, and rhythm, his innovative commercials connected abstract animation art with concrete messages. The symphonic documentary Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großstadt is one of the most famous silent classics, the travelogue Melodie der Welt became the first German sound feature film. With the radio play Weekend Ruttmann created the first "sound film without images" while his short In der Nacht transforms music to images and is a prototype of modern music videos. The 2-disc DVD by Edition Filmmuseum combines for the first time all surviving works by Walther Ruttmann from 1920-1931 in newly restored and reconstructed versions, often with original scores.

About the Munich Film Museum:

The Munich Film Museum was founded in 1963 as part of the City Museum. A centre for research in cinematic history, it is where important works of German and international film history are collected and restored. Additionally, its cinema shows a different film every day; silent films are often accompanied by live piano and/or violin music, especially composed for the occasion. The programme includes classics as well as relatively unknown films and recent productions. Newcomers in film making have a forum here just like established producers. Regular retrospectives document the work of a particular person or films on a certain topic. Directors, actors and film historians are often invited to give an introductory talk to a showing or to discuss the film with the audience. All films are shown in their original version with German or English subtitles.

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.

Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.