WED. FEB. 11, 2015 @ 7.00 PM
Director: Joachim Herz
GDR, 1964, 98 min., B&W
This film will be introduced by Prof. Sebastian Heiduschke, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the School of Language, Culture, and Society, and Affiliate Faculty in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at OSU and author of East German Cinema: DEFA and Film History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and the co-editor (with Sean Allan) of Re-imagining DEFA. East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Context (Berghahn, 2015)
Zeitgeist Northwest is excited to introduce our PORTLAND GERMAN FILM FESTIVAL – Monthly Film Series. We will show a variety of of GERMAN or GERMAN-language films once a month at the Clinton Street Theater. In addition to the annual Portland German Film Festival, audiences will now have a chance to see German or German-language films on a regular basis. All films are with English subtitles.
Starting in 2015, the films will be screened every second Wednesday of the month.
Film Synopses:
In order to escape her narrow and restrictive life, Senta, the daughter of a rich shipowner, seeks refuge in her fantasies and dreams. In this realm of imagination, a bold and restless sea captain appears to her—the Flying Dutchman—who is cursed to wander the seas forever. In her obsessive dreams, Senta frees this man through her love for him.
Herz’s successful staging of The Flying Dutchman at the Berlin Komische Oper in 1962 at the invitation of Walter Felsenstein, and subsequent productions at the Opernhaus Leipzig and Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, prompted an invitation to make a cinematic adaptation.
The only East German film to include elements of horror and vampire genres, The Flying Dutchman was the first complete Wagner opera ever made on film. The script clearly separated the real from the imaginary; in the original 35mm format, this was reflected visually by changing the image size—from Academy ratio for reality, to wide-screen for fantasy. The film was produced with a groundbreaking 4-channel magnetic soundtrack.
