Fassbinder: Berlin Alexanderplatz: An Exhibition

On the role of the actor in Fassbinder’s cinema and parallels with performance and theatre

19.04.2007, 7 pm

On the role of the actor in Fassbinder’s cinema and parallels with performance and theatre
Gertrud Koch in conversation with Irm Hermann

In the context of the exhibition Fassbinder: Berlin Alexanderplatz

Prof. Dr. Gertrud Koch
Professor of cinema studies at the Free University in Berlin. Currently she is Max Kade visiting professor. She was visiting professor and scholar at Columbia University, NYU, Washington University, at UIC, the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles and the Sorbonne III in Paris. Her many books and articles deal with aesthetic theory, feminist film theory as well as with questions of historical representation. Books on Herbert Marcuse and Siegfried Kracauer, the latter came out in English 2005 Princeton UP. Editor of volumes on Holocaust representation, perception and interaction, art theory and 2006 on Film and Illusion. Co-editor and board member of numerous German and international journals like Babylon, Frauen und Film, October, History & Memory, Constellations et al.

Irm Hermann
Born in Munich in 1942, Irm Hermann first worked in publishing. She turned to acting after she met Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1966 and he persuaded her to appear in his first short film, The City Tramp. A short time later both came into contact with “action theatre”, where Fassbinder had his debut as a theatre director and Hermann her stage debut. From then on she played a key part in Fassbinder’s work in theatre and film, acting in 18 cinema and television productions. Leaving Fassbinder in 1975, she moved from Munich to Berlin, where she joined the ensemble at the Freie Volksbühne, then under the direction of Hans Neuenfels. Later she worked with the Berliner Ensemble under Peter Palitzsch. She also acted in nearly one hundred cinema and television productions with directors including Percy Adlon, Ulrike Ottinger, Hans W. Geißendörfer, Vicco von Bülow, and Christoph Schlingensief, with whom she worked at the Volksbühne, in Zurich and in Vienna.

Awards:

Bundesfilmpreis (German Film Award) for The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972),

Bundesfilmpreis for The Five Last Days (1982), Silberner Bär (Berlin Film Festival Award) for Outstanding Ensemble Achievement for Paradiso: Seven Days with Seven Women (1999), Radio Drama Award 2006 for Enigma Emmy Göring by Werner Fritsch