Heinz Emigholz

Directing

Heinz Emigholz

Born January 22, 1948 · Achim, Germany (age 78)

Born in 1948 near Bremen in Germany, Heinz Emigholz trained first as a draftsman before studying philosophy and literature in Hamburg. He began filmmaking in 1968 and has worked since 1973 as a filmmaker, artist, writer and producer in Germany and the USA. In 1974 he started his encyclopaedic drawing series The Basis of Make-Up . He looks back on numerous exhibitions, retrospectives, lectures and …

Known For

StalingradStalingrad · 1993
Stalingrad
★ 7.31993
MovieDramaHistory
A German Platoon is explored through the brutal fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad. After half of their number is wiped out and they're placed under the command of a sadistic captain, the platoon lieutenant leads his men to desert. The platoon members attempt escape from the city, now surrounded by the Soviet Army.
Brother of SleepBrother of Sleep · 1995
Brother of Sleep
★ 6.71995
MovieDrama
In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.
Bickels [Socialism]Bickels [Socialism] · 2016
Bickels [Socialism]
★ 4.52016
MovieDocumentary
The ‘Casa do Povo’ cultural centre in São Paulo, an icon of the secular Jewish workers’ movement: a crumbling theatre flanked by staircases, entryways and corridors. Construction noise drones away in the background, clinking crockery, a broom sweeping over tiled floors, an expressive façade of countless adjustable panes of glass covered by a patina. It’s October 2016 and a group of young people are preparing a preview of Bickels [Socialism]. The venue is to form a prologue to the completed film, which tours 22 buildings in Israel designed by Samuel Bickels, most of which for kibbutzim. Dining halls, children’s houses, agricultural buildings, bright structures inserted into the Mediterranean landscape with great ingenuity. An architecture with a sell-by date: That many are now empty or have been repurposed at best is linked to the decline of the socialist ideals they embody.
Streetscapes [Dialogue]Streetscapes [Dialogue] · 2017
Streetscapes [Dialogue]
★ 5.82017
MovieDocumentary
A film director confides in his interlocutor. He talks about the working process, about creative blocks, about artistic crises and expressive forces. At some point, the idea takes hold that this conversation could be turned into a film. And this is the very film we’re watching the two of them in.
CommittedCommitted · 1984
Committed
★ 8.01984
MovieDrama
Stylized, black and white biography of Frances Farmer by author Lynne Tillman and Sheila McLauglin.
Ordinary SentenceOrdinary Sentence · 1982
Ordinary Sentence
★ 8.01982
Movie
An experimental German film
MacumbaMacumba · 1982
Macumba
★ 6.51982
MovieDrama
Max Taurus, a sort of amateur detective, pursues the traces of general omni-present crime back to a partially demolished house. There, the remaining tenants try to gain pleasure and power from progressive abandonment in order to tear down their own conventionalities.
BartlebyBartleby · 1976
Bartleby
1976
MovieDrama
Adaptation of the novel "Bartleby the Scrinener: A story of Wall Street" (1853) by Hermann Melville.

Filmography

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Bickels [Socialism]Bickels [Socialism] · 2016
Bickels [Socialism]
★ 4.52016
MovieDocumentary
The ‘Casa do Povo’ cultural centre in São Paulo, an icon of the secular Jewish workers’ movement: a crumbling theatre flanked by staircases, entryways and corridors. Construction noise drones away in the background, clinking crockery, a broom sweeping over tiled floors, an expressive façade of countless adjustable panes of glass covered by a patina. It’s October 2016 and a group of young people are preparing a preview of Bickels [Socialism]. The venue is to form a prologue to the completed film, which tours 22 buildings in Israel designed by Samuel Bickels, most of which for kibbutzim. Dining halls, children’s houses, agricultural buildings, bright structures inserted into the Mediterranean landscape with great ingenuity. An architecture with a sell-by date: That many are now empty or have been repurposed at best is linked to the decline of the socialist ideals they embody.

Director

Slaughterhouses of ModernitySlaughterhouses of Modernity · 2023
Slaughterhouses of Modernity
2023
MovieDocumentary
Contemporary cinema’s preeminent chronicler of architecture and its intersection with the ever-present crisis of 20th-century modernity, Heinz Emigholz returns with an alternately mournful and sly treatise on how the presence—and, in some cases, absence—of municipal and communal building architecture is inseparable from capitalist ideology. Focusing mainly on cities and provinces in Argentina, Germany, and Bolivia, Emigholz’s latest film is a work of quiet observation and historical excavation. From slaughterhouses in Salamone to the flooded former spa city of Epecuén to the newly built Humboldt Forum in Berlin, the film demonstrates the effect of capital on public spaces, where creation and destruction go hand in hand, and as always, Emigholz makes the journey one of intellectual force and cinematic beauty.

Director