Pink, Kitsch & Revolution: The Filmmaker and Activist Rosa von Praunheim

In December 2025, almost a year ago, Rosa von Praunheim, one of the great icons of the gay rights and liberation movement and an uncompromising filmmaker, painter, writer and theatre-maker, died in Berlin at the age of 83. To remember and celebrate his remarkable life and work, Pink Palace at the Rio Cinema and the Goethe-Institut have joined forces to present a selection from the more than 150 films he made over the course of his lifetime. The programme includes key works such as It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives, The Bed Sausage, City of Lost Souls, Army of Lovers and Two Mothers. We hope to screen Silent=Death of the AIDS Trilogy on World Aids Day on 1 December the Rio Cinema. 

Working mainly in Germany, but spending extended periods in the USA, particularly New York, in the 1970s and 1990s, von Praunheim was instrumental in galvanising the gay movement in Germany. He became a passionate and demanding force for gay liberation, an unrelenting AIDS campaigner and an ever-curious chronicler of queer lives, the LGBTQ+ community and those who, in different ways, refused to conform. From the late 1960s until his death, his films remained closely engaged with the people and communities around him, making his absence all the more painfully felt.

The series also connects with the ICA’s major Werner Schroeter retrospective earlier this year and the Goethe-Institut’s May programme dedicated to Elfi Mikesch, two filmmakers with whom Rosa von Praunheim collaborated and shared close lasting friendships.