Retrospect

27. October - 1. December 2024

Time Travel for Children

Accompanying the children's exhibition Rein ins Gemälde! about a famous Labour of the Months from Augsburg, the Zeughauskino is travelling back in time to the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period over five days. Younger film travellers are particularly welcome.

11. October - 18. November 2024

Documentary Positions: Tamara Trampe & Johann Feindt

Together, Tamara Trampe and Johann Feindt have created a documentary oeuvre that gets to the bottom of the forms of expression of complex psychosocial phenomena as well as their social causes and historical dimensions in their encounters with people. The four co-directed works by Trampe and Feindt form the core of this new edition of Documentary Positions, our exploration of documentary filmmaking beyond the mainstream.

14. September - 7. October 2024

Sky of Stone

The Warsaw Uprising in Film

Every year on 1st of August at 5 pm, the Polish capital comes to a standstill. The Warsaw Uprising is commemorated, which began at this time in 1944 and in which the Polish Home Army resisted the German forces until 2nd of October. The selection of this retrospective focuses on this cinematic examination of the Warsaw Uprising in the 1950s and supplements it with two more recent examples from the last two decades.

23. August - 13. September 2024

Schlagende Wetter

Mining in International Cinema

In a world in which the supply routes for coal, ore, lithium and copper have long spanned all continents, it would not be enough to limit the past and present of mining to German perspectives. That is why, following the retrospective "Glück auf! Mining in German Film", presented in 2023, the program "Schlagende Wetter" is dedicated to different approaches to mining in international cinema.

14. June - 16. June 2024

Open your ears!

Inclusive cinema ... with audio film

In recent years, stakeholders, associations and experts in their own right have increasingly highlighted their passion for the cinematic experience in cinemas and clearly articulated the need for accessibility and cultural participation. They have initiated debates, influenced political decision-makers, set film industry processes in motion and thus fought for an inclusive cinema. A success of these debates is the emergence of new film versions.

31. May - 09. June 2024

Das Runde ins Eckige

Getting in the mood for the European Football Championship

Before the opening of the European Men's Football Championship, we invite you to three film programs that shed light on soccer and its social significance. What becomes of legends as time moves on? How is sport instrumentalized for political purposes? What to do when everyone is talking about soccer but you feel like doing something completely different?

17. May 2024

Die Legende von Paul und Paula

The DEFA cult film. When The Legend of Paul and Paula was released in cinemas in spring 1973, several million viewers wanted to see this love story within a few months, were fascinated by the heroine's rigorous approach to life and were inspired by the filmmakers' sometimes romantic, sometimes ironic approach to the reality of the GDR. Peter Gotthardt has now published a book about his work on The Legend of Paul and Paula with Schüren Verlag, which we are presenting in his presence.

26. April - 14. May 2024

Sorbian cinematic landscapes

Although Sorbians were already in front of and behind the camera at the beginning of the 20th century, film historiography has shown little interest in Sorbian film. The monograph Sorbische Filmlandschaften / Serbske filmowe krajiny by film and cultural scholars Grit Lemke and Andy Räder, recently published in the DEFA Foundation's publication series, responds to this shortcoming. Curated by the two scholars, this film series provides the first comprehensive overview of Sorbian filmmaking from the German Empire to the present day.

6. April - 27. April 2024

The ideal woman?

Ruth Leuwerik and the West German Film of the 1950s

Mayor, lawyer, doctor, student councilor. In addition to her roles as the Queen of Prussia and Empress of Austria, Ruth Leuwerik, who was born in Essen on April 23, 1924, mainly portrayed working women and academics in West German entertainment cinema: Protagonists whom the extremely popular actress profiled as self-confident and assertive women. Leuwerik thus occupies an outstanding position among the female stars of Adenauer-era cinema.

14. April - 28. April 2024

I do my own dirty work!

The comedian Ludwig Manfred Lommel

The Silesian-born stage and radio comedian Ludwig Manfred Lommel was a gossipy word twister, a vowel shifter and consonant softener with a peculiar, powerful timbre. In the 1920s and 1930s, Ludwig Manfred Lommel (1891-1962) was considered the biggest act on German radio, but today?

10th March - 31st March 2024

Nothing but Clay

In the universe of Aardman Animations

The British production company Aardman Animations is one of the best-known and most successful animation studios in the world. Its unique reputation is built on so called Claymation, a special form of stop-motion animation. Figures and sets are formed from themoldable plasticine and first captured in still photographs. 

"Nothing but Clay. In the Universe of Aardman Animations" brings together six short and feature-length films made between 1989 and 2015, depicting the entire spectrum of the Aardman studios and presenting their most popular creatures.

2nd March- 30th March 2024

Documentary Positions: Gerd Kroske

As one of the last documentarists trained in the GDR, Gerd Kroske occupies a special position in contemporary documentary filmmaking. Since the late 1980s, his extensive, wide-ranging work has been dedicated to German conditions and biographies in transition, violent manifestations of German history and marginalized areas of society.

1st March - 31st March 2024

A Short Laugh

Comic Characters in the Supporting Programme of 1934

In 1931, under the title "Lob der Charge" (In Praise of the Charge), the Berlin film critic Rudolf Arnheim praised the special quality, wit and stubbornness of the supporting actors in the cinema of the Weimar Republic who were acclaimed by the audience. He was thinking especially of comedians such as Siegfried Arno, Szöke Szakall and Otto Wallburg, all of whom had to flee Germany after the National Socialist seizure of power because of their Jewish origins. Following on from our film series Lob der Charge (In Praise of the Charge) in April 2023, which was devoted to German sound film comedy between 1930 and 1933, we now ask: What happened to the comic charge actors who remained in Germany in the early Nazi era? Which types were in demand from then on? What was allowed and what should be laughed at after Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had gained control over German filmmaking? What was funny in the "Third Reich"? Kurz gelacht explores these questions and focuses on a corpus of films that was growing rapidly at the time: the short comedies in the supporting programme of the long feature films. In 1934, we again encounter stars of the cabaret stage and popular supporting actresses such as Dodo van Doeren, Blandine Ebinger and Grethe Weiser, Werner Finck, Rudolf Platte and Theo Lingen.

22nd March - 23rd March 2024

Collect Films!

The RAMSCH Filmarchiv

Hundreds of thousands of film reels are stored in film heritage institutions. But much more numerous in the federal state are the small archives and collections, which are often privately owned and pursue their own specialized collecting interests. Despite the size of the public archives, it often happens that certain works cannot be found there. Here, the small archives and collections fill important gaps in the holdings and ensure a richer, more diverse transmission of the film heritage. What gaps do the small archives fill? What is collected there and for what reason? Who are the people behind these small collections? How do they shape their profile? These are the questions that our new series of events "Collect Films!" will be exploring, presenting small collections and the driving forces behind them.

Our first guest is Bernhard Marsch from Cologne, who has built up the private RAMSCH film archive there. He is a filmmaker, author, curator, film lover and the driving force behind many film projects of the "Kölner Gruppe". He has been a member of the Cologne Filmclub 813 team since 1990 and today Bernhard Marsch preserves the complete cinematic oeuvre of the German-Bulgarian filmmaker and artist Marran Gosov. At the Zeughauskino, he presents personal favorites and particularly rarely seen films.

13th January - 26th February 2024

Have a Nice Weekend!

On a Cinema of Free Time

For over 100 years, cinema has been telling the story of how people leave their everyday lives and the daily grind behind them between Friday and Sunday evenings. The retrospective "Have a Nice Weekend" presents a cinematography of this time out.

09th February - 13rd February 2024

On the Ward and Underground

Korean Labor Migration in the Federal Republic of Germany

As part of the recruitment agreements between the Federal Republic of Germany and South Korea, around 8,000 miners as well as 10,000 nurses and care workers came to West Germany until 1977. As fragile as the collective memory of the experiences of this time is, so is the cinematic tradition documenting the lives of the Korean "guest workers" sparse and incomplete. Only the descendants and the next generation of Korean people in Germany sought new approaches to this history in the medium of documentary film.
The directors of the films selected for this program look back on the history of the first generation of Korean labour migration and record what remains and is still visible today. They use archive material and reports from contemporary witnesses, and they relate themselves to what was filmed. But above all, they show images of the present and everyday life and try to understand how the present and everyday life have been significantly shaped by the lives of the migrant workers of the recruitment agreements. These are cinematic works that are still characterized by blank spaces, gaps and unanswered questions.

19th Januar - 29th Januar 2024

The Other America

The Cinematic Images of the United States in the GDR

In nine programmes, the film series highlights striking moments in the cinematic long-distance relationship between the GDR and the USA.