Kunert’s Cinema
He became famous as a poet, but is hardly known as a film writer. Yet Günter Kunert (1929-2019) wrote the scenarios for a total of 63 cinema and television films, series and film feuilletons over a period of 48 years. His texts for film and television, including the many works that were not realised, are characterised by an almost boundless joy in storytelling and an enormous wealth of imagery, combined with sharp, intelligent wit. Seemingly effortlessly, Kunert transferred his fantastic cosmos into a modern mass medium, using a number of genres: the crime novel, the social satire, the chamber play, the television series, the melodrama, film and television essays.
A resolute individualist, Kunert objected to the leaden conditions in the GDR and had long battles with the censors. In 1976 he was one of the first signatories of the petition against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann. In 1979 he left the GDR and then lived in Schleswig-Holstein. The cultural pessimist Kunert always asked himself and his audience how much truth man could be expected to accept.
Entertaining, enjoyable, diverting, his films and designs are still with surprising twists. Pessimism and sparkling wit combine to form a fascinating unity. An insight into this multi-layered oeuvre is provided by two film evenings, the occasion of which is the publication of Kunert's book Kino (Edition Schwarzdruck, Gransee 2023). The anthology, edited by the film historian Günter Agde, publishes for the first time all the filmed, printed and banned texts by the poet Günter Kunert that he wrote for the cinema.
