Few other screen genres reflect the diversity and ruptures of German film production as clearly as animated film. German animation in particular has produced internationally renowned names such as Lotte Reiniger and Oskar Fischinger, as well as two Oscar winners in the Best Animated Short Film category. An entertaining and informative survey of the genre’s historical and aesthetic development up to the present day was therefore long overdue.
Presented under the heading “Cheers! 100 Years of German Animated Film,” the retrospective at this year’s Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film documents the diversity of animation in Germany. Its thematic arc runs from the first German animated film, “Prosit Neujahr” from 1909, through works by early avant-garde artists of the 1920s and 1930s such as Walter Ruttmann and Hans Richter, to contemporary productions including the Oscar-winning shorts “Balance” (1989) by Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein and “Quest” (1996) by Tyron Montgomery and Thomas Stellmach.
The genre’s development during the National Socialist era should not be underestimated either. Alongside “Hitler’s Dream of Mickey Mouse” as a remotely controlled ideal for a standardized cinema culture, works of art also managed to slip past Nazi censorship, including Hans Fischinger’s vividly colored “Dance of the Colors” (1938/39) and Herbert Seggelke’s playful “Line and Dot Ballet” (1943).
The DEFA animation studios in the former East Germany likewise produced both films made under ideological directives and aesthetically innovative, controversial works that deliberately subverted them, such as Lutz Dammbeck’s “Einmart” from 1981.
From the late 1970s, the establishment of animation departments at art colleges and universities of applied sciences in Stuttgart, Kassel and Offenbach prompted a boom in animated film. This also led to the founding of the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film in 1982. Reunified Germany has since developed a highly ambitious generation of emerging talent. Encouraged by the Oscar successes already mentioned, academic environments such as the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg produced well-known titles including Steffen Schäffler’s “The Periwig Maker” (1999) and Johannes Weiland’s computer-animated project “Hessi James” (2002). Both received Oscar nominations.
Other filmmakers whose work will be shown in Stuttgart include Israeli artist Gil Alkabetz, who lives in Germany (“Rubicon”), Andreas Hykade (“We Lived in Grass”), Mariola Brillowska (“Morgenröte”), Kirsten Winter (“Clocks”), and artist couple Hanna and Fritz Steingrobe (“Yo lo Vi”).
Alongside the retrospective, Absolut Medien is publishing a six-part DVD series in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut under the title “The History of German Animated Film.”
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