Collect Films!

In our series Collect Films! we invite small archives and collections to the Zeughauskino to give us an insight into their holdings. Our guest in March is Konstantin Hockwin from KommKino Nürnberg, founded in 1974 and one of the oldest initiatives in German off-cinema culture.

Founded as part of the self-managed communication and cultural center KOMM, the volunteer-run KommKino e.V. is now located together with the Kommunales Kino in the Künstlerhaus not far from Nuremberg's central station. The focus of the cinema programme is on underground and genre films; the association members also regularly organize analogue film festivals such as the “Hofbauer-Kongress”. They are united by the joy of making film-historical discoveries, especially in those areas that exist outside of the canon and good taste.

The KommKino also has an extensive, constantly growing film archive, which includes the association's own 35mm and 16mm prints as well as deposits from friendly collectors, mainly in German dubbed versions. The spectrum ranges from West German cultural and educational films to Italian sandal and Asian kung fu films to American action films. French porn and Mexican horror films are also represented. A unique feature is the collection of Italian westerns from the 1960s and 1970s. KommKino has been dedicating its own festival to this aesthetically innovative, politically provocative and commercially successful genre for years. Three particularly beautiful color prints in CinemaScope can now also be seen at the Zeughauskino. (Philipp Stiasny)