FILM AND SOCIETY
A BOOK
BY KARL KÜFFEL
“Film is an art form that reflects a world with pictures which does not exist.”
FRITZ WERNER
FRITZ WERNER
One hundred years German history, the last ones of the past millennium, are the reason of a special retrospective. In ten ordered pictures, the artist Karl Küffel summarizes the events of the past decades in a unique individual way. The main emphasis of his work is laid on the contrast of pictures with reality. What appears controversial becomes unified and expresses his analyses of its character. The pictures learned how to move in the first decade of the twentieth century. With the silent films of the twenties, the medium of film was available to a large public. The propaganda films of the thirties “Triumph Of The Will” and “Jud Süß”, reflected in Karl Küffel’s work, served a political purpose. In the forties, the oppression of the people and the film “Kolberg” became a cinematographic monument. The contrast of film and society which is reflected in Küffel’s work, lightens the backgrounds and makes it clear to the people. The UFA – Dream Factory System (film production company) seduced the women in the cinema while men were fighting at war. Film as opium of the people, which did not find out about the atrocities of the concentration camps. The black & white of the first five pictures of the cycle refers symbolically to the horrors and violations of this period of German history and expresses the era of the black & white movie. In the fifties the world became more colourful. These films that glorified home life were successful, because they showed an intact world, which the Germans were starving for, after the end of war. Victorious America conquered the film screen and dominates even today. Its supremacy in matter celluloid, refrigerators and petticoats crossed the ocean as well as Elvis, John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe. The film “The Girl Rosemarie” pointed out, that everything could be bought. From decade to decade the medium of film, as reflection of reality became more complex and dominating. Ten decades held in ten pictures, should give the opportunity to a self analysis according to time. For this purpose, the artist depicted more than three hundred motives taken out of films and society in his collages. Not all of them could be mentioned in writing.
FRITZ WERNER
Previous Constantin and Gloria-Film, Munich
FRITZ WERNER
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