Kriegsbilder
Birgit Hein
The war during which the film-maker was born is always there, under the surface. Birgit Hein aims to somehow depict the intangible. Since the Gulf War, she regularly documented war footage which she filmed from the German public television broadcasters ARD and ZDF as well as from TV5 and CNN, a technique whose visual alienation effect the film-maker had often used. The Iraq war changed this approach. War footage filmed on soldiers’ private digital cameras spread via the porn website nowthatsfuckedup.com, which allowed US soldiers to download porn for free.
In search of the Freudian »uncanny« images – images that we have seen, sounds that we have heard but were too young to remember – Birgit Hein approaches them through extraneous images, images that look like memory, that camouflage memory:
Memory mimicry. The result: a film about new wars.
Birgit Hein
Birgit Hein is one of Germany’s most important experimental film-makers. Along with Wilhelm Hein, she produced pioneering experimental films, performances and installations from 1966 to 1988. In 1968, she co-founded the experimental film series X-SCREEN in Cologne, enabling international experimental films to be shown in Germany. In 1971 she published Film im Underground. Hein curated one of the first film history exhibitions, Film als Film. 1910 bis heute (Kölnischer Kunstverein 1977). Her expertise in the history of avant-garde film was unrivalled at the time. She also made a major contribution to building networks in the structural film scene between the US, England, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. From 1990 to 2008, Hein was Professor of Film and Video at Braunschweig University of Art (HBK). She began making her own films in 1991. She was also a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin (Academy of Arts in Berlin) and deputy director of its Visual Arts Section.
Films by Birgit Hein (Selection)
Abstrakter Film 2013 | Kriegsbilder 2006 | La Moderna Poesia 2000 | Eintagsfliegen 1997 | Baby, I Will Make You Sweat 1994 | Die Unheimlichen Frauen 1991 | Die Kali-Filme 1987 | Verbotene Bilder 1986 | Love Stinks 1982 | Strukturelle Studien 1974 | 625 1969 | Rohfilm 1968
