This screening will be followed by a Q&A with the co-director Thomas Tielsch and will be hosted by Dr Debbie Lewer!
Director: Niels Bolbrinker, Thomas Tielsch, colour, 90 min., 2017/18
BAUHAUS SPIRIT – 100 YEARS OF BAUHAUS is an eye-opener that takes a look at far more than just construction history. It presents a cultural history of modern spatial thinking that is as enthralling as it is enlightening. BAUHAUS SPIRIT – 100 YEARS OF BAUHAUS takes us on an amazing and delightful stroll amidst the spaces and environments of Modernism — a stroll that makes sure that henceforth all shapes and forms are viewed through completely different eyes.
Almost one hundred years ago, a radical artistic utopia was born in the tranquil city of Weimar: the Bauhaus. Its effects still shape our world today.
From the outset, the architects and artists of the Bauhaus – including Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee – asked: What, "live together"? What does "live together" mean? How can spaces be designed so that all people can share a communal social life?
With Bauhaus, art, design and architecture became political. The result was a form of applied arts that was just as willing to think about the ideal distance between the bathtub and toilet as about the ideal chair. Bauhaus as a social utopia is the starting point whence the film surveys the movement's evolution, transformation, and power to inspire over the course of the last hundred years.
How can the ideas of Bauhaus respond to the challenges of global capitalism and its catalytic influence on housing markets?
Thomas Tielsch has worked as an author, cutter, director and producer since the early 80s. He is founder of the production company Filmtank. BAUHAUS SPIRIT – 100 YEARS OF BAUHAUS is not the first collaboration between Tielsch and Bolbrinker. They have worked on numerous films including THE WOMAN WITH THE FIVE ELEPHANTS (2009), FLIEGEN UND ENGEL (2009) and DIE WIRKLICHKEIT KOMMT (2014) and have received international recognition for their work.
Dr Debbie Lewer is a Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Glasgow, a specialist in Modern German art and also works in the field of the intersection between art and religious faith. She has published widely on modern art, culture and politics in Germany and Switzerland and is an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellow. Her work centres on the German-speaking avant-garde of the period ca. 1910-1933: Zurich Dada, Dada in Germany, German Expressionism, ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’, aspects of modern architecture and the wider literary and visual culture of the Weimar Republic. She has also worked on post-1945 German art in both the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic and has translated many important source texts from German into English.
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