Nobody can write an editorial in October 2001 without thinking of the terrible
terrorist attacks that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center in
New York and shook the world, on September 11. What incredible acts of violence,
what sad loss of lifes! Most of the readers of this website are Americans, or
living in America. We hope that all of you and your friends and families are
OK.
For something more pleasant: Today, this website is online for five years. Started
from humble beginnings, the site has become a quite comprehensive reference-book
on some of the topics we are interested in, and about which you might not find
much anywhere else. The focus of our work is early horror, fantastic and adventure
film, especially the rise of these genres in Germany during the 1910s and 1920s,
the early career of director Fritz Lang, and the history of the film The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Though the focus is on fantastic, on early, and
on German film, not all films we cover necessarily fit that description. E.g.,
you can find other non-fantastic films of our favourite actors and directors,
fantastic films that are not from Germany, and even films that are not from
the 1910s or 1920s. The site is mainly designed as a tool for film scientists,
but may also be of use for journalists, fans, and anyone else interested in
these topics. Below, you can read about the history of the site. Also, there
is a new design, and lots of new entries everywhere. We hope you enjoy it as
we did for the last five years.
In summer 1996, we were busy researching the career of actress Gilda Langer,
a person involved in the genesis of the famous German silent film The Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari, of whom little to nothing could be found in film history
text-books. At the same time, the world wide web was a strange new place where
people around the world just started to exchanging ideas, chat, and scientific
knowledge. Links were always blue, and we operated a 486SX25 with a 100 MB hard
drive. We had this great idea: "Let's go to the internet!", and started
writing a (then so called) "Gilda Langer Home Page". Five months after
the initial idea, we went online with a rudimentary text-only version of this
website under the title "Project Early German Film History" at http://www.alf.zfn.uni-bremen.de/~a14m/,
containing six files with articles about Caligari, Halbblut, Der
Herr der Liebe, and Brigitte Helm who had just died. Our friend Ulrich Kühne
had given us a crash course in HTML, and though we had virtually no idea what
the internet was and where it would be going, we gave our infamous talk about
"the use of the computer in the humane discipline and the internet as a
medium for film-scientists" at a film conference in Weimar on October 07.
We were passionately interested in fantastic films, and so we went on extending
the site, and learned more about writing and designing web files. In November
1996, the site was entitled "The Internet Source Book for Early German
Film", introducing the "Hot Spot", and a new major article about
Gilda Langer. This is the text of our first "Hot Spot":
"Berlin 1920: Gilda Langer, a beautiful girl and upcoming film star died
at age 23. To find out about the SHOCKING TRUE STORY of her life and death click
on the picture!"
Though we didn't find people who could tell us more about Gilda Langer,
people started finding us, gaining information from our site that they
couldn't find anywhere else, and started asking us questions about early German
film. The feedback was quite encouraging, so in the following years, we added
a lot of articles, and carried out a lot of experiments in structure and design
(background pictures, animated gifs, and finally even a frame structure). It
was still the case that about the topics we were interested in not much could
be found in the text-books let alone the internet. People continued asking us
questions about early German film, and sometimes we even knew the answer. And
sometimes, people brought up a topic about which we became so excited that we
researched it in detail and put the information on the website, like Robert
Singer from New York who asked about Der Januskopf, or Joan McDonald
from Denver about Carl de Vogt. Although now we get a lot of mail every day,
we are still reading every e-mail very thoroughly, and answering most of them.
If you should write to us and do not get a response, one of the following reasons
applies:
In summer 1999, we prepared the move to the domain www.filmgeschichte.de,
introducing a newly designed version. We had given some talks accompanying Caligari
screenings of the Junges Theater, Bremen, and Olaf won a scholarship for his
Caligari dissertation. February 27, 2000, celebrating Caligari's
80th birthday, a completely revised edition came out, with the "film strip"
design and a lot of new articles. The site is now located at www.filmgeschichte.de,
containing DVD and book reviews, newsletters, smooth navigation, and more information
than ever. We see ourselves within the framework of the study of film history,
contributing to our understanding and knowledge of film. And now, at least something
is known about the topics we were interested in when we started all this.
On
Thursday, the Caligari stage version by Carlos Trafic (from 1980) premières
at the
Ernst Deutsch
Theater, Hamburg, Germany, running October 04 – November 10, 2001. Katrin
Kazubko is directing, and starring are Stefan Wigger, Monika Barth, Nane Brüning,
Georg Münzel, Gero Nievelstein and Marcus Widmann. Set design by Bernd
Holzapfel, costume design by Nora Weber, music composed by Günter Baby
Sommer, percussion Ulli Niedermüller.
Also,
earlier this year, another German Caligari stage-play was produced as
well, a new musical by Wolfgang Sréter (text), Toni Matheis and Raymund
Huber (music). Première was February 02 at the Südostbayerisches
Städtetheater Landshut, directed by Johannes Reitmeier, starring Dieter
Fischer (Dr. Caligari), Matthias Friedrich (Cesare), Kerstin Gandler (Jane),
Alexander Braunshör (Francis), Thorsten Danner (Alan) and Jochen Decker
(superintendent). Musical supervision Ulli Forster, choreography Petra Schulz,
set design Thomas Dörfler, costume design Anke Drewes. (Photo W. Buchner)
Together with the new American musical (see newsletter 2), that makes three
Caligari stage productions this year!
The Fritz Lang exhibition can now be seen in Los Angeles ( Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, August 03 - October 14), then it goes
to Hong Kong (
Hong
Kong Film Archive, December 2001 - February 2002), then Vienna (
Österreichisches
Theatermuseum, March - June 2002), and later to Paris, Thessaloniki and
Frankfurt am Main.
www.filmgeschichte.de,
a source book for early german film edited by olaf
brill & thomas
schultke.
Last update (this page): 17 Nov 2001.
The texts and images on this site are copyright © by the respective authors,
except where otherwise noted. Mostly, the items were published by kind permission,
but we were not able to find out all the copyright holders or their legal successors.
If you know about them, please let us know, especially if there's anything wrong
with publishing these texts or images. We do not intend to harm anyone's rights
and thought we best serve the purpose of understanding film and general history
displaying this source material and make it available for everyone.
If no author or source is noted, the texts are copyright © 1996-2004 Olaf
Brill & Thomas
Schultke.