EDGAR REITZ - Director and Author

'Edgar Reitz tells a story not only about us but to us in that he recreates us and the re- lentless motion of our times, the changing times which change all of us, in his films. He is the Germany epic maker of the 20th century and the turn of the century. Edgar Reitz has freed the word Heimat from being the backward looking pejorative it has been since the bloody devastation of German fascism. With Reitz Heimat is - and how could it be anything else in an art whose language is one which turns places into time and con- tinuously adjusts the place out of time - Heimat with Edgar Reitz is a process of constant change, a process in which he involves himself, not only when he talks about Heimat for 50 hours with an incomparable composure. With Reitz all of the inventiveness and technique of film story telling serves the idea of which comes to fruition during the course of the story telling. That he has saved a Utopia from a world which has become Heimat for us, that he contributed to this conversion and that he has set a European, in fact a global, yardstick for visual story telling, that is to be valued.' Peter W. Jansen

Edgar Reitz was born in 1932. He grew up in the Hunsrück and, after finishing school, studied German literature, journalism and drama in Munich. He has been involved with literary works, avant-garde music, literature, the fine arts and film since the mid-1950s. He made his first films in 1958, was a member of the Oberhausener Group who founded Young German Film in 1962 and declared Papa’s Cinema dead. Together with other young directors he founded the Film Institute at the Design College in Ulm the following year. For 8 years Reitz taught stage direction and camera theory at this the first film school in the Federal Republic of Germany. His first feature film MAHLZEITEN appeared during this time and was honoured as best debut film at the Venice International Film Festival in 1966. Numerous feature films, documentaries and experimental films followed, which received international acclaim and several awards. In 1971 Reitz founded a production company in Munich, which has since produced both its own projects as well as films by other directors. Since the mid-1970’s Reitz has published a number of books on film theory and film aesthetics, as well as narratives, essays, poetry and the literary versions of his films. 1995 saw the founding of the European Film Institute EIKK in Karlsruhe with Reitz as Professor for Film at the National Design College in Karlsruhe.

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