Jürgen Böttcher’s early works are extraordinarily diverse. In this afternoon workshop we will screen and discuss three very different films from the 1960s.

Barefoot and Without a Hat (Barfuß und ohne Hut, 1964) is an upbeat portrait of young people on the beach making music and thinking about their future. Seemingly innocuous, the film was not well-received by the censors, who felt its free-wheeling, faintly anarchic tone – at one point a car goes round and round in pointless, faintly absurd circles – was potentially subversive. In the Pergamon Museum (Im Pergamonmuseum, 1962) is an atmospheric, wordless study of looking, of sculptures in the famous Berlin museum looking at the visitors and vice-versa. Finally, Zoo Film (Tierparkfilm, 1967) is also about spectatorship – animals pace back and forth endlessly in their cages, birds fly free overhead, and the camera captures the visitors staring at the exhibits. All three films have remarkable musical accompaniment and we will discuss Gerhard Rosenfeld’s scores, the cinematography of Christian Lehmann, and the ambiguous iconography of these beautiful and potentially subversive studies of looking and being looked at and the boundaries between the public and the private.

• Barefoot and Without a Hat (Barfuß und ohne Hut, 1964, 26 minutes, b&w)
• In the Pergamon Museum (Im Pergamonmuseum, 1962, 19 minutes, b&w)
• Zoo Film (Tierparkfilm, 1967, 18 minutes, b&w)

Speakers: Franziska Nössig and Martin Brady

The workshop is part of "Conjuring up the Real: The Films of Jürgen Böttcher", a film series at the Goethe-Institut London and Close-Up Film Centre from 23 October – 21 November 2019, and is staged in collaboration with King's College London and the German Screen Studies Network.

To book a free ticket please register on Eventbrite.