Edgar Reitz facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Edgar Reitz
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Reitz in 2015
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| Born | 1 November 1932 Morbach, Prussia, Germany
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| Occupation | Film director, producer, writer |
| Years active | 1953–present |
Edgar Reitz was born on November 1, 1932. He is a German filmmaker, which means he makes movies. He also used to be a professor who taught about film at the State University of Design in Karlsruhe, Germany. He is most famous for his amazing film series called Heimat, which was made between 1984 and 2013. This series is known all over the world!
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Edgar Reitz's Early Life and Learning
Edgar Reitz grew up in a town called Morbach in a region of Germany called Hunsrück. His dad, Robert, was a watchmaker, and Edgar's brother, Guido, later took over the family business.
Edgar became interested in acting and making plays when he was in school in Simmern. His German teacher, Karl Windhäuser, really encouraged him. After finishing school, Edgar went to study different subjects like German, journalism, art history, and theatre studies in Munich starting in 1952. But he didn't just learn from books! From 1953, he started working hands-on as a camera assistant, an editing assistant, and a production assistant. This helped him learn how movies are really made.
In 2016, Edgar Reitz even worked with an artist named Wolfgang Georgsdorf on a special project called Osmodrama. They made it so that his movie "Home from Home" could be watched with matching smells! It was like a movie that you could smell, and it worked really well when it first showed on July 17, 2016.
Helping New German Cinema Grow
In 1963, Edgar Reitz and another filmmaker named Alexander Kluge started something new called the Institute for Film Design. This institute was part of the Ulm School of Design. Edgar taught film directing and how cameras work there until the school closed in 1968.
Edgar Reitz was also part of a group of young German filmmakers who wrote something very important called the Oberhausen Manifesto in 1962. They announced it at a film festival. In this manifesto, they said that the old way of making movies was "dead" and they believed in a "new film." They famously said, "Papa's cinema is dead," meaning they wanted to make movies in a fresh, new way, different from how older filmmakers did it. This idea helped make the "auteur" concept popular in Germany. An auteur is a film director whose personal style and vision are very clear in their movies. Edgar Reitz played a big part in making this idea important in the years that followed.
Awards and Famous Films
..... It won the prize for the best first movie at the Venice Film Festival in 1967.
In 1971, he started his own film company called Edgar Reitz Filmproduktion (ERF) in Munich. He began working with his old friend from school, Alexander Kluge, on films. One of these was a made-up documentary from 1974 called In Danger and Deep Distress, the Middleway Spells Certain Death.
In 1979, Edgar Reitz made a movie called The Tailor of Ulm. This film was about a man named Albrecht Berblinger who tried to fly but failed. Making this movie cost a lot of money, and Edgar Reitz faced financial problems because of it. The film was even shown at the 11th Moscow International Film Festival.
During this difficult time, Edgar Reitz got the idea for a film project about his home region, the Hunsrück. What started as a way for him to understand himself better grew into the amazing Heimat film series. This series began in 1984 and became very popular with critics and audiences around the world, winning many awards. With this huge and important film series, Reitz showed a new way of looking at Germany's past, especially how life might have been in smaller towns and villages. His films were both poetic and realistic.
In 2004, Edgar Reitz received the Carl Zuckmayer Medal from the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. This award honored all the great work he had done in his career. In the same year, he also received the Master of Cinema Award from the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg.
Edgar Reitz is married to a singer and actress named Salome Kammer. She even appeared in the second and third Heimat films. They live in Munich.
Selected Films by Edgar Reitz
- Cardillac (1970)
- Trip to Vienna (Die Reise nach Wien) (1973)
- In Danger and Deep Distress, the Middleway Spells Certain Death (In Gefahr und größter Not bringt der Mittelweg den Tod) (1974) (co-directed with Alexander Kluge)
- Zero Hour (Stunde Null) (1977)
- "Grenzstation" in Germany in Autumn (Deutschland im Herbst) (1978)
- The Tailor from Ulm (Der Schneider von Ulm) (1978)
- Heimat (1984, TV series)
- Home from Home (Die andere Heimat) (2013)
Other Works
- Eight Hundred Times Lonely (800 Mal Einsam – Ein Tag mit dem Filmemacher Edgar Reitz) (2019), a film about Edgar Reitz made by German filmmaker Anna Hepp.
- Filmstunde_23 Subject: Filmmaking
See also
In Spanish: Edgar Reitz para niños
