Duerer’s Heirs
1996 | 58 min | Documentary
A portrait of a ‘German socialist art’ in the GDR up to the building of the wall in 1961.
Bernhard Heisig
ActorBernhard Heisig was not an actor or director, but rather a notable German artist and painter. He was born on March 31, 1925, in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), and passed away on June 10, 2011. Heisig was a significant figure in the East German art scene and was one of the founding members of the Leipzig School of painters. His works often explored themes of war, memory, and the human condition, influenced by his experiences as a soldier during World War II. In 1998, he gained widespread recognition with a retrospective held at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Although Heisig was not involved in filmmaking, his contributions to art have been highly regarded, with several exhibitions dedicated to his work posthumously.
Films
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The Netz: SEEK II
2009 | 29 min | Icons & Media Art
While doing research for his film THE NET, Lutz Dammbeck came across the groundbreaking exhibition “Software – Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art”, which took place at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1970. Curated by Jack Burnham, this exhibition presented the symbiosis of conceptual and media art with what were then new technologies developed for the American military. One of the central exhibits was the installation Seek by the Architecture Machine Group of the Massachusetts Institute ...
Sag mir, wo du stehst
2011 | 30 min | Documentary
Arrested, interrogated, persecuted, suppressed. At the Hohenschönhausen Memorial in Berlin, eyewitnesses recall the Stasi methods used during arrest. All of them remain traumatized. Their accusations are directed at the former SED regime. Conversely, former Stasi employees deny that any injustice occurred. In the film, both sides confront each other. A battle for the interpretation of the past begins. Personal memories, however, show that history has many facets. But it is the dialogue between victims ...
GDR Experimental: First Leipzig Autumn Salon
2006 | 22 min | Icons & Media Art
In 1984, the artists Lutz Dammbeck, Günter Firit, Hans Hendrik Grimmling, Frieder Heinze, Günter Huniat and Olaf Wegewitz occupied a trade fair building in the center of Leipzig to stage one of the first independent and public exhibitions in the GDR – the 1st LEIPZIGER HERBSTSALON. The event was an act of resistance against the GDR's system of state control and a creative form of self-assertion. The artists defied the restrictive guidelines of cultural policy and created an autonomous space for avant-garde, ...
GDR Experimental: Homage to La Sarraz
1981 | 12 min | Icons & Media Art
In September 1929, a group of visionary filmmakers gathered at La Sarraz Castle in Switzerland to discuss alternatives to commercial cinema. The participants, including Sergei Eisenstein, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann and Luis Buñuel, want to explore new ways of independent filmmaking and challenge the bourgeois narrative film. Lutz Dammbeck takes up this historic meeting and pays artistic tribute to it with DDR-EXPERIMENTAL: HOMMAGE À LA SARRAZ. The film combines documentary elements with experimental ...
The painter of the strange country …
1988 | 42 min | Icons & Media Art
Three artists who moved from East Germany to West Berlin in the mid-1980s are the focus of this documentary. Cornelia Schleime, Hans-Hendrik Grimmling and Hans Scheib were part of the alternative art scene in East Germany and resisted state dictates. But what did the change to a new social system mean for their artistic identity? How did their strategies and perspectives change in the West, where market mechanisms and a different culture of self-staging suddenly prevailed? In THE PAINTER CAME FROM ...
Age of the Gods
1993 | 92 min | Documentary
How does art influence politics – and how much does politics influence art? This question is particularly pressing in the case of Arno Breker, a sculptor whose works played a central role in National Socialism. Breker was Adolf Hitler's official state artist and created monumental sculptures that embodied the ideal of National Socialist aesthetics. Between 1936 and 1945, Arno Breker worked almost exclusively for the architect Albert Speer and his plans for the redesign of Berlin into the “world ...
Duke Ernest
1993 | 43 min | Animation
Duke Ernst is robbed of his castle as a result of a conspiracy and sent on the first crusade as penance. His journey takes him far beyond known borders into a world full of wonders and dangers. Accompanied by brave knights, he crosses the sea to reach the Orient, where he encounters numerous mythical creatures in his search for the legendary carbuncle: the one-legged Sciopods, the winged Ariasperns, the tiny Pygmies and the enigmatic birds Roch. During his adventures, he finds unexpected allies ...
The GDR Complex
2016 | 90 min | Documentary
Young, gay, and conservative, Mario Roellig is a witnesses to the atrocities committed in the GDR. He guides groups through the Stasi prison where he was once incarcerated. A love affair with a politician from West-Berlin made him try to flee to the West, but he got unlucky and was detained at the famous Stasi prison Berlin Hohenschoenhausen. Today Roellig confronts GDR aficionados and is also confronted by people who still believe in social utopias. And he tries to overcome his hurt feelings: ...
The Cave of Hercules
1990 | 44 min | Icons & Media Art
For centuries, the mythical figure of Heracles has been a symbol of immense strength, divine mission and the challenges of human existence. His twelve heroic deeds are world-famous – including the slaying of the Nemean Lion, the slaying of the Lernaean Hydra and the cleansing of the Augean stables. But beyond the heroic saga, his image remains fragmentary, changeable and elusive. HERAKLES CAVE sets out on a quest to find the ancient hero and his legacy in the modern world. Director Lutz Dammbeck ...
Master Game
1998 | 106 min | Documentary
In the 1990s, the art world is shaken by a series of mysterious attacks. At first, paintings in renowned galleries were targeted, and later, bombs were set off by the pro-German movement in Austria. In 1994, the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts finally became a crime scene: unknown perpetrators painted over several works by the famous Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer with black paint – a targeted attack on the “Über-Maler” himself? In MASTER GAME, Lutz Dammbeck links these events with the controversial ...