“In his films, he assembles a family, people from all manner of countries, shipwrecked people, and those crossing borders, dreamers and scroungers”, wrote Michael Töteberg about Peter Lilienthal. “They are people with riches, without a secure position or power, they are subject to repression and persecution, and yet still haven’t given up hope and their lust for life”. A film series to coincide with Lilienthal’s 90th birthday shows the thematic and stylistic breadth of his work, which was created in Germany, but also in Israel, Latin America, and the US. Peter Lilienthal, born in Berlin in 1929 as the son of a Jewish woman, was able to escape the Nazi regime in 1938 and found a second home in Uruguay until he returned to Germany in 1954. Before the backdrop of his experiences with dictatorship and exile, he repeatedly engages with the heated political developments in Latin America in his films.
MALATESTA (West Germany 1969, 30.10., with guest Peter Lilienthal) is Lilienthal’s cinema debut. The Italian anarchist in London at the beginning of the 20th century is played here by Eddie Constantine. At his London emigration, he collects exiles from Eastern Europe around him. When some of them want to take what the world has kept from them with violence, the anarchist worldview gives away to a horrific misunderstanding.
ES HERRSCHT RUHE IM LAND (West Germany/Austria 1975, 31.10., with guest Peter Lilienthal) deals with the consequences of the military coup in Chile, which destroyed the hope of a peaceful transition to a more socially just life for an entire generation.
The film series, which continues in November, was put together as a collaboration between the Deutsche Kinemathek, the Vietinghoff Filmproduktion, the Zeughauskino, the Akademie der Künste, and the Edgar-Reitz-Stiftung. The digitization of the films was supported by the FFA’s film heritage funding program. (mk)
