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7:30 PM
Rosa von Praunheim: The Einstein of Sex
Cinema Screening | Rosa von Praunheim Film Season
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Rio Cinema, London
- Price £7, £4 Members
- Part of series: Pink, Kitsch & Revolution: The Filmmaker and Activist Rosa von Praunheim
Rosa von Praunheim’s moving and often darkly humorous portrait of the once world-renowned Jewish sexologist and pioneer of the modern gay rights movement, Magnus Hirschfeld.
Please note that this film is screening at the Rio Cinema as part of the Pink Palace series.
“The Einstein of Sex” was how the American press once described the celebrated Jewish
physician and sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), whom Rosa von Praunheim seeks to restore to public memory in this biographical film. Following Hirschfeld’s life chronologically, the film begins with his childhood fascination with animal sexuality, traces his years as a medical student forced to listen to the prevailing view of homosexuality as degenerate, and finally as a physician specialising in “mental suffering and natural medicine,” deeply shaken by the suicide of a young homosexual officer that had sought his help. The officer’s his farewell letter addressed to Hirschfeld becomes a call for action and the film goes on to follow him as a tireless activist: In 1897, he co-founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (WhK) in Berlin, which campaigned for decades for the abolition of Paragraph 175 and thus for the decriminalisation of homosexual acts. In 1919, he founded the world’s first Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. There, Hirschfeld sought to use scientific methods to investigate the diversity of gender and sexual identities and to demonstrate that his theory of “sexual intermediaries” reflected a natural form of human diversity.
Often described as a catalyst of the modern German gay rights movement himself, von Praunheim pays tribute to his historical predecessor with a deliberately classical and at times gently humorous biopic. Throughout, he incorporates historical archive footage that conveys the atmosphere of the period but also shocks such as graphic photographs of homosexual men who took their own lives.
Von Praunheim presents Hirschfeld as a warm-hearted and passionate idealist, but also as a tragic and lonely man who, in pursuit of his scientific and political goals, long refrained from living out his own homosexuality, suffered violence, and ultimately saw his life’s work destroyed by the Nazis. The film shows him literally witness the destruction of the institute in a newsreel screening at a Paris cinema.
Von Praunheim surrounds his protagonist with a circle of historically documented companions whose lives were likewise marked by violence and social stigmatisation. Among them is Dora Richter, affectionately known to Hirschfeld as “Dorchen.” The trans woman worked as a domestic servant at the Institute for Sexual Science and underwent a series of gender-affirming procedures there, including the first recorded vaginoplasty. Contrary to what the lines dedicated to her in the film’s closing credits suggest, current research indicates that Richter survived both the Nazi era and the Second World War. After spending years in her native Bohemia, then part of Czechoslovakia, she came as a refugee to Allersberg near Nuremberg, where she died in 1966.
Germany, Netherlands 1999, colour and b/w, DCP (original format 35mm), 100 min. With English subtitles.
Director, producer: Rosa von Praunheim, screenplay: Rosa von Praunheim, Chris Kraus, Valentin Passoni, Friedl von Wangenheim, cinematography: Elfi Mikesch, editing: Mike Shephard, music: Karl-Ernst Sasse. With Kai Schuhmann, Friedel von Wangenheim, Ben Becker, Meret Becker, Olaf Drauschke, Otto Sander, Gerd Lukas Storzer, Wolfgang Völz, Monika Hansen, Gerhard Ludwig Storzer, Tima die Göttliche.
Pink Palace is a lo-fi safe space to engage with queer film history! Each week we introduce the film or have a speaker to talk about the context of the film and the message we should take from it. It's an informal pop up set up with a mix of chairs and stools in the basement bar. Please feel welcome to stay and chat afterwards. Film suggestions and film introductions are welcome.
Please note: there are no ads or trailers, and films begin at the advertised start time!
Please note that this film is screening at the Rio Cinema as part of the Pink Palace series.
“The Einstein of Sex” was how the American press once described the celebrated Jewish
physician and sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935), whom Rosa von Praunheim seeks to restore to public memory in this biographical film. Following Hirschfeld’s life chronologically, the film begins with his childhood fascination with animal sexuality, traces his years as a medical student forced to listen to the prevailing view of homosexuality as degenerate, and finally as a physician specialising in “mental suffering and natural medicine,” deeply shaken by the suicide of a young homosexual officer that had sought his help. The officer’s his farewell letter addressed to Hirschfeld becomes a call for action and the film goes on to follow him as a tireless activist: In 1897, he co-founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (WhK) in Berlin, which campaigned for decades for the abolition of Paragraph 175 and thus for the decriminalisation of homosexual acts. In 1919, he founded the world’s first Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. There, Hirschfeld sought to use scientific methods to investigate the diversity of gender and sexual identities and to demonstrate that his theory of “sexual intermediaries” reflected a natural form of human diversity.
Von Praunheim presents Hirschfeld as a warm-hearted and passionate idealist, but also as a tragic and lonely man who, in pursuit of his scientific and political goals, long refrained from living out his own homosexuality, suffered violence, and ultimately saw his life’s work destroyed by the Nazis. The film shows him literally witness the destruction of the institute in a newsreel screening at a Paris cinema.
Von Praunheim surrounds his protagonist with a circle of historically documented companions whose lives were likewise marked by violence and social stigmatisation. Among them is Dora Richter, affectionately known to Hirschfeld as “Dorchen.” The trans woman worked as a domestic servant at the Institute for Sexual Science and underwent a series of gender-affirming procedures there, including the first recorded vaginoplasty. Contrary to what the lines dedicated to her in the film’s closing credits suggest, current research indicates that Richter survived both the Nazi era and the Second World War. After spending years in her native Bohemia, then part of Czechoslovakia, she came as a refugee to Allersberg near Nuremberg, where she died in 1966.
Germany, Netherlands 1999, colour and b/w, DCP (original format 35mm), 100 min. With English subtitles.
Director, producer: Rosa von Praunheim, screenplay: Rosa von Praunheim, Chris Kraus, Valentin Passoni, Friedl von Wangenheim, cinematography: Elfi Mikesch, editing: Mike Shephard, music: Karl-Ernst Sasse. With Kai Schuhmann, Friedel von Wangenheim, Ben Becker, Meret Becker, Olaf Drauschke, Otto Sander, Gerd Lukas Storzer, Wolfgang Völz, Monika Hansen, Gerhard Ludwig Storzer, Tima die Göttliche.
Pink Palace is a lo-fi safe space to engage with queer film history! Each week we introduce the film or have a speaker to talk about the context of the film and the message we should take from it. It's an informal pop up set up with a mix of chairs and stools in the basement bar. Please feel welcome to stay and chat afterwards. Film suggestions and film introductions are welcome.
Please note: there are no ads or trailers, and films begin at the advertised start time!
Location
Rio Cinema
107 Kingsland High St
London E8 2PB
United Kingdom
107 Kingsland High St
London E8 2PB
United Kingdom
