Movie: Actress Alice Guy
You can’t get past her at film schools in Paris: awards are named after Alice Guy, her face adorns various posters, you meet female students there whose film-loving parents named their daughter Alice because of her. But the recognition is new. Similar to Vincent Van Gogh, the world’s first female film director looked back on a career that was sold off during her lifetime.
In 1896 she filmed with “La Fee aux Choux“, in German “the fairy in the cabbage”, probably the first feature film in history. A year earlier, the Lumière brothers had filmed workers leaving the factory, but the plot did not demand any acting talent from the extras. With the cabbage fairy a lady conjures cute toddlers out of cabbages. Humor is paramount in Guy’s work. At the turn of the millennium, films were not yet recognized as an art form and were primarily intended for entertainment. But Guy’s humor differed from that of his male colleagues. In 1906 she made a short film, in which the gender roles were reversed: men got a slap on the bottom and were pushed onto the bed. The spectators burst out laughing, especially the female spectators.
Although she produced hundreds of films at the beginning of the 20th century for Gaumont, the largest film studio in the world at the time, and founded her own studio in New York in 1910, only a fraction of them have survived. With the economic success of the film industry, competition within the industry also grew, making it increasingly chauvinistic. Alice Guy’s work was subsequently attributed to her male colleagues, her name erased. Her manipulative husband Herbert Blaché also ruined her financially, she separated from him too late. All this can be read in a comic biography by the author José-Louis Bocquet and the illustrator Catel Muller (AliceGuy. The first female film director in the world, in Splitter Verlag), which was published on the occasion of the director’s 150th birthday.
In the meantime, countless exhibitions, podcasts and documentaries have processed her works, inspiring French filmmakers such as Céline Sciamma, director of “Portrait of a Young Woman on Fire”. Born on July 1, 1873 near Paris, Alice Guy’s legacy resonates more strongly with age. Leonardo Kahn
Classic: “Carl Loewe, Jan Hus, Oratorio, op. 82”
The Arcis vocalists sing Carl Loewe’s oratorio “Jan Hus”.
(Photo: Oehms Classics)
Five years ago, he convincingly devoted himself to an oratorio by Carl Loewe, who was considered more of a ballad composer. This time Thomas Gropper, the Munich singing professor, has taken on the life of the Bohemian church critic Jan Hus, which Loewe set to music as a severe oratorio. Gropper shows that there is enough room for emotion and poetry in an elegant, exciting, sound-intensive, and rarely monotonous way. The finely balanced choral sound is particularly inspiring, but so are soloists such as the wonderful oratorio tenor Georg Poplutz. The mixture of life images and reflections corresponds to the great formal tradition of the oratorio, which allows a distanced participation even at the horrific end: the pyre on which Hus died becomes the “Choir of Flaming Spirits”. Helmut Mauro
Story: “Short Messages. The tiles of the Heilandskirche Sacrow”
150 years of German history can be found in short messages on the church tiles.
(Photo: Hatje Cantz Verlag)
The Heilandskirche in Sacrow, located on the banks of the Havel, was planned by Friedrich Wilhelm IV as a glorification of the Prussian state and divine right. He had the elegant building with the striking striped facade built in the form of an early Christian basilica. It soon became one of the “excursion churches” between Berlin and Potsdam. No excursion destination without signs: I was there too. Or just: “Icke”. The beautiful tiles on the facade with a yellow rosette on a blue glazed background attracted the inscription frenzy shortly after the church was consecrated in 1844. It survived the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Second World War, the end of Prussia, since 1949 the church has been in the border area with West Berlin, after the Wall was built it was inaccessible. The inscriptions record the names and service times of the NVA border troops. Photographer Lars Wiedemann documented 136 tiles. The pictures are framed by short essays. Did “Prussia’s Arcadia” ever exist? Lothar Mueller
Artist documentary: “Thomas Schütte – I’m not alone”
In the film directed by Corinna Belz, Thomas Schütte lets his hands do the talking.
(Photo: Corinna Belz film production)
Corinna Belz’ film about the German sculptor Thomas Schütte, now in cinemas, avoids two typical pitfalls of artist documentary. On the one hand, biographism, i.e. the reduction of the work to the life of the creator. On the other hand, the garrulousness, i.e. the explanation of the work by the artist and his exegetes. Watching the quiet, taciturn Schütte at work, Belz reminds us that art is more than a personal destiny. Of course, there is a bit of hagiographic talk from experts and curators, and the accompanying music could have been left out. But it’s not bad. Because when Schütte forms grotesque heads out of clay quickly and with concentration, he speaks with his hands alone. The film focuses on the artistic process.
The starting point of the documentary is a giant “mermaid” that is being exhibited in New York while the Museum of Modern Art is preparing a retrospective. From there, Belz uses flashbacks to examine the fascinating, complex process of creating the sculpture, from the polystyrene from the 3D printer to the cast bronze. In addition to this material transformation, the focus is not on the monumentality of the figure, but on the scalability of an originally small model into larger forms. Elsewhere we first see an architectural model with a butter dish as a roof and then what has become of it, Schütte’s “Sculpture Hall” in Neuss. At Schütte, the big comes from the small. The essence of his art is its modesty.
Personal details, such as a previous psychiatric stay, a failed marriage or the death of a friend, are only mentioned in passing. The easygoing Rhinelander and chain smoker treats his craftsmen to a round of cheese rolls (“no salad and mayo, please”) and transfers their wages in good time (“so that they don’t starve”). But the next highly concentrated gesture follows. He uses a small bolt to punch two holes in the balls of clay, and then there are two eyes looking at you. If you have the eyes, you have everything, Schütte knows. And the work on the bust can continue. Philip Stadelmaier
Youtube series: “What’s in my Bag?” by Amoeba Music
Santigold rummages through the assortment of the best indie record store in the USA.
(Photo: Youtube: Amoeba’s “What’s in my bag”)
Hardly a week goes by without complaints about how streaming services manipulate audiences. But nobody has to sell their taste to the evil digital corporations. You can also simply read this feuilleton – or, for a splendid deep dive into pop history, watch the video series “What’s in my Bag?” Check out the Youtube channel for America’s top indie record store, Amoeba Music. For almost 20 years now, the Amoeba makers have been inviting pop heroines they trust – from stars like Gang Of Four, St. Vincent, Noel Gallagher or Questlove to pop hipsters like King Krule, Nilüfer Yanya, Khruangbin or most recently Santigold – in the shop in store and feature five albums that excite or excite them. If you need even more knowledgeable and friendly invitations to good music (which are also unusually intimate mini-portraits of the musicians), you can also sell your soul to the streaming services. Jens Christian Rabe