Heleen Gerritsen

Heleen Gerritsen, Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kinemathek and Head of the Berlinale Classics section at the Berlinale, joins us at the MIFC! She is on the panel for  the roundtable discussion, “How is the value chain created? An Anglo-Saxon model.”
 

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What is the nature of your work at the German Film Archive?

The German Film Archive preserves, restores and distributes films that are part of Germany’s cultural heritage. We also have a specialized library, and we organize screenings and educational programs. We have over 60,000 films in our collection; some from the Marlene Dietrich Collection in Berlin, others from Werner Herzog’s archives, and we have a very extensive collection of historical material from the National Socialist era. We are also a partner of the Berlinale. Cinema is an art form, but it is also a resource for historical documentation. We should make it available to a wide audience.

Why is it important to screen classic films at festivals, including Lumière in Lyon?

Festivals enable a wide audience to discover the history of cinema and have new aesthetic experiences. Beyond that, a festival is a key component that plays an ever-expanding and vital role for distributors and exhibitors. It is a growing market, and Lumière, through the MIFC, is a major festival in this regard.

This year, thanks to you, we’ll be discovering the German film Epilogue (Helmut Käutner, 1949) – why was this film chosen?

It’s a fascinating film, a political thriller made during the final years of WWII. Helmut Käutner and the producer Arthur Brauner were highly influential figures in West German cinema who experienced WWII in very different ways. Arthur Brauner was persecuted by the Nazis, whereas Käutner continued to direct films. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1950.

What is your working partnership with Park Circus like, for example in the case of a retrospective?

Sales agents play a vital role in the film industry because they have a network, they invest in marketing films and they manage all logistics matters with the rights holders. Sales agents who specialise exclusively in classic films are still relatively rare, and of course going through them naturally increases the cost of screenings. However, Park Circus makes movies from the major American studios available, which reduces the time and effort our team would otherwise have to spend looking for films when putting together a retrospective.

Interview by Virginie Apiou