Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt
The Deutsches Filmmuseum was established by the city of Frankfurt in 1983/84 to expand the activities of Frankfurt's municipal cinema. The archive is built on several private collections, including the Archiv für Filmkunde (assembled by Paul Sauerländer, taken over by the city of Frankfurt in 1976, and comprised of copies, books, journals, photographs and posters, as well as cameras, projectors and materials on silent movie music), along with the collections left by the film historian Lotte Eisner, the actor Lilian Harvey and the avant garde filmmaker Oskar Fischinger. In 1998 the museum added the archive of the animated filmmaker Curt Linda.
The collections include materials on Oskar Fischinger, Hein Heckroth, Sven Ason Berglund, Wolfgang Zeller and Werner Fiedler and documents on the emigration of German filmmaking talent.
The technical collection comprises around 3,000 large items. Other focal points of the collections are avantgarde film (Hans Richter, Lotte Reiniger), short films and the restoration of silent film music.
Copies are usually available for lending.
A permanent exhibition is dedicated to the history and prehistory of film. The municipal cinema regularly includes films from the collection in its programme.
Hans-Peter Reichmann now heads the Deutsches Filmmuseum on a provisional basis.
The museum publishes materials to complement its exhibitions, in particular: "Zwischen Gestern und Morgen. Westdeutscher Nachkriegsfilm 1946–1962" (1989) (German-language publication. English title: 'Between Yesterday and Tomorrow. West German Post-War Film 1946-1962') and "Abschied vom Gestern - Bundesdeutscher Film der sechziger und siebziger Jahre" (1991/92) ('Farewell to Yesterday – Film in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s and 1970s'). It also regularly publishes books on film, including titles on Hans Albers (1977), Camilla Horn (2003) and Paul Leni (1986). A list of available publications can be viewed online.
