Toute la mémoire du monde

BWPWAP, archives were the world’s central reservoirs of knowledge. This program spans the film medium as archive to films about libraries, museums and academies.

In 1922, when moving from Munich to Berlin, Oskar Fischinger did not have any money, neither for a ticket nor photonegatives. So he crossed Germany by foot and on this Munich-Berlin journey used his film camera like a still camera, which considering the large rolls of film was much more economical. Thus, the predecessor to the diary genre was born. With early cinema, the success of colonial travel films also began; people were eager for moving images from around the world. Crossing the Great Sagrada, as the first found-footage film in history uses means of montage to satirize the genre. Toute la mémoire du monde shows—in the entirety of pathos of the Great Nation—how one of the largest libraries in human history is organized. The National-Socialist Haus der Kunst in Munich was dedicated to the great and everlasting. In Eyewitness, the building is contrasted against detested American mass culture. The Woolworths Choir of 1979 interweaves three strands of narrative—the story of sacral 13th century choir architecture, a pop choir and a department store fire—into an oscillating form of narrative presentation. The found-footage installation The Eternal Lesson moves in the space between original and copy, where art students copy replicas of classical masterpieces.

Wandering from Munich to Berlin – München-Berlin Wanderung, Oskar Fischinger, de 1927, 5 min

Crossing the Great Sagrada, Adrian Brunel, uk 1924, 15 min *

Toute la mémoire du monde, Alain Resnais, fr 1956, 21 min

Eyewitness – Augenzeugen, Klaus vom Bruch, de 1993, 7 min

The Woolworths Choir of 1979, Elizabeth Price, uk 2012, 20 min

The Eternal Lesson, Christoph Girardet, de 2012, 7 min

* with live piano accompaniment by Peter Gotthardt