The 27th Braunschweig International Film Festival (05.-10.11.2013) pays homage to Birgit Hein, filmmaker and performance artist. Birgit Hein, who is considered to be the pioneer of underground- and experimental film, will be personally presenting nine of her films from the years between 1968 and 2013.

 

Born in 1942, Birgit Hein studies history of art and theatre arts in Cologne. Her profound involvement in the fine arts lead her to develop a strong interest in film in the 1960s. The year 1966 marks the beginning for the first joint films and performances together with her then husband Wilhelm Hein. Two years later she becomes co-founder of X-Screen, the first screening venue for independent films, in Cologne.

In 1968 “Rohfilm” (German for raw film), a milestone of structural film, puts her at the centre of international attention. In her film Hein concerns herself with the mediating role and task of film material. Her book “Film im Underground” is released in 1971 and deals with the development of independent film in Europe and America in the 20th century. To this day the book is considered the standard reference work for underground film.

The mid-seventies reveal Hein’s significance in the development of a European post-war Film Avant-Garde not least through the international retrospectives of her films, shown i.a. at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Hein participates in the documenta 5; the subsequent year finds her and her husband Wilhelm Hein running the experimental film section of the documenta 6. Birgit and Wilhelm Hein’s partnership in work and life ends after several more joint projects in 1989.

In the following year Hein takes on a professorship at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK), that shortly afterwards converts into a tenured full-professorship (emeritation 2007). For her first film to come out of this second working phase “Die unheimlichen Frauen”, she receives the German Film Critic Award in the category Best Experimental Film. The structural visual collage investigates the false ideal image of femininity. The blunt self-image of aging women continues to be subject of her work (e.g. “Baby I will make you sweat”), that is equally personal and political and frequently turns violations of taboos into the central theme. In 2007 Birgit Hein becomes a member of the Berlin “Academy of the arts”.

With this portrait the 27th Braunschweig International Festival honours one of the most significant spokeswomen of the European underground film and the long-time head of the Braunschweig University of Art Film Class. “Every year since its launch in the 1980s the Braunschweig Film Festival presents the latest works of the Film Braunschweig University of Art Film Class; we feel closely connected to the university and its alumni. This year, I am pleased that we will be able to honour the very artist who, with her work and teaching, has influenced the careers of so many experimental filmmakers.”, states festival director Volker Kufahl.

The art historian and critic Michael Stoeber from Hanover will introduce the works of Birgit Hein. The Braunschweig Film Festival will be screening “Rohfilm“ (1968), „Reproductions“ (1968), “625“ (1969), „Die unheimlichen Frauen“ (1991), „Baby I will make you sweat“ (1994), „Eintagsfliegen“ (1997), „La moderna poesia“ (2000), „Kriegsbilder“ (2006) and her latest film “Abstrakter Film” (2013).