Original subtitles

Keep the glasses on. Looks good.

I don’t normally wear them.

I like it with the glasses and the jacket.

That’s not the point.

Whether I like your looks?

I have to check myself again and again

because I am totally biased towards you

due to your movies.

Every character you have ever developed

I’m projecting onto you.

Well, that’s your problem.

Yes, that’s my problem.

I see Hermann in you. I see Clarissa in you.

I see Helga in you.

I like your smile.

That’s forced. It’s compulsory to smile.

I once swore not to smile.

Why is it so desirable not to smile?

Because it’s a cliché. Because everyone smiles.

But you’re worth something even when you are serious.

EIGHT HUNDRED TIMES LONELY

One day with German filmmaker Edgar Reitz

One row further back? That’s not here...

Susan’s Dance

A film by Edgar Reitz and Susanne Reitz

That’s a tremendous curiosity that that that...

curiosity that that that...

expertise certain...

that’s a tremendous curiosity that that that...

not primarily rational realisation but realisation certainly.

That’s a tremendous curiosity that that that...

A strong sense of seriousness comes into it. Yes.

What it does or runs because because

a little child simply jumps because it’s fun or runs?

...because because...

simply jumps because it’s fun or runs

because because because it wants to run.

That’s part of me somehow.

That’s part of me somehow.

I think then I’m missing something.

Then I exist differently.

When I feel I haven’t done it for a while

then I’m missing something.

Then I exist...

Only dance. Only dance...

Families always believe that they know each other.

My daughter Susanne

has danced all her life.

Started ballet when she was four

and when she finished school

I had forgotten I was still paying

her dancing lessons.

When being asked what she wanted to do after school,

she said: "I am a dancer and now I’m going to be a choreographer."

Then I said to myself,

I now want to know who my daughter is.

So I made the film.

Simply to portrait her.

That’s when I noticed a few things.

For example

she is constantly observing

her very movements,

checking them for usability

for her dancing

or current choreography.

Even more striking was

how this ritualisation

of her own movements

reflected on her way of speaking:

the repetition of short phrases

within or at the beginning of sentences.

I had noticed this in dancers as well

I tried to address this in my montage

in parallel to the movements.

These loops were just filmed from the cutting table.

Maybe a question:

You have worked very intensely with sound and picture contrasts

in the sense that the sound

does not match the picture or even contradicts it.

Was that a natural development?

Maybe even due to the cutting table

where synchronicity had to be established first?

Or did you implement that very consciously?

It was a conscious break with tradition.

Everyone always wants synchronicity.

I’ve always found that surprising,

because the moment picture and sound are out of sync,

the sound takes on a whole new meaning.

By making it asynchronous,

the sound turns into her thoughts, slides to the inside.

Totally biased towards you.

Biased, biased...

I project onto you.

I project onto you.

Is it...?

Ah, ok.

I didn’t know that.

Good thing we weren’t climbing over it then.

Turns into her thoughts.

Then it slides to the inside.

Turns into her thoughts.

Then it slides to the inside.

A real theatre.

It’s a beautiful stage.

All inspired by the theatre.

In the early days,

cinemas used to simply copy

the way theatres were built,

the stage replaced by a screen.

Just imagine 800 people in here.

The film starts

and they are all on the same beat.

Clocked by the film.

And when the film is over

it’s over for everyone. Not just for one.

That’s beautiful.

Even though I know it’s naive,

I still hope the need to

experience something in community

becomes as strong again as with the theatre.

But maybe we won’t be around then.

But which community?

The need to be in community

also means that you somehow feel a part of this community.

Or that loneliness is increasingly

experienced as a shortcoming.

Exactly.

But that’s also unifying.

Everything feels much better

when we notice there’s an offer like the cinema,

and when we go there all the other lonely ones will come too.

This is a lonely room, too.

I don’t think so.

It’s only waiting

for thousands of people.

Now it is lonely. Nobody’s here.

But eight hundred times lonely.

I’m one of those people who recover in battle.

I don’t like free time very much.

Free time in the sense of doing nothing panics me.

I would also say, give me a good job

and nothing can happen to me.

All the many stories I have filmed

have wiped out my personal memory of all these stories.

Take the story of Klärchen from "Heimat 1"...

One day I got a call,

there was this woman on the phone,

who I couldn’t place.

I had no idea who she was.

And it was her, the original Klärchen.

After she had seen the film,

she called and wanted to talk about it.

But I couldn’t speak to her,

I felt too alienated from her.

She seemed like a fake to me.

I didn’t let her close to me again.

In my opinion,

filmmakers who exploit their own biographies for their films,

are wiping out their personal lives by making these films.

So after having turned all my friends into films, I won’t have any left.

But that’s terribly sad.

Yes. That’s what turning reality into art or fiction does.

It isn’t a harmless process.

Only the facts remain.

Only the skin remains.

The emotional depth is gone,

it has been transferred to the film.

But then thousands of people can be moved by the film

when they see it.

You’ve never looked at it that way, but that’s how it is.

When the content of a narrative or a film

is fed by personal experience,

you mustn’t take this as a personal statement

or something private.

It needs to take the leap

from the personal to the general level.

The private has no artistic validity.

There are artists who are great self-promoters,

I’m not one of them.

For me the art work always comes first.

It’s always about the work I do,

the film I make.

It’s the product that counts,

not the person.

I’ve recently been in Switzerland,

where I took a cable car to the mountain top.

In my cable car were a family

with kids aged seven to ten.

The kids were constantly taking selfies

and filming themselves

even when we arrived at the top.

Wherever I looked,

people were taking pictures of themselves.

Shocking actually,

since it was such a bright day

with exceptionally good visibility.

You could see a hundred kilometers

into the mountains.

An overwhelming sight.

And what people do is film themselves!

They didn’t absorb any of this spectacular nature.

I’ve realised that the films are the films,

and the man,

the person behind those films

can also be seen detached from his work.

Or can he?

Sure can.

I’ve been writing a kind of

autobiography for a while.

I wonder whether it is possible

to detach my life story from my films

and tell it separately.

Well, I can’t either.

When you ask me, how old my son was in 1983,

I have to think first about

the film I was making at the time.

When I picture him as part of the team

or still at home asking about his daddy

being away filming –

only then do I know how old he must have been.

A film is like a magnetic field.

All the rest of your life

is aligned by this magnetic field.

The first film sheds light on your biography.

Does it have recognisable features?

Before, it has all been in a mess.

Confused.

Well, in your case,

you grew up in such hard times.

How old were you when the war broke out?

I was six, just starting school.

At that age you don’t see the big picture,

the history.

A child of six doesn’t know

about governments and politics.

At this age,

you’re still exploring your own little world.

You are still wondering

about the things around the corner,

beyond your parents’ house.

Take the way to school, for example.

It’s so new, so unknown

that you don’t even realise

whether it is war or not.

But how old were you when the war was over?

Twelve years old.

So quite a bit older.

I felt a lot older than two years later.

Because when the war was over,

I started making up for my lost childhood.

As a ten-year-old boy

living in a household with no father

nor any other males,

the women, the mothers

treated you like a man from very early on.

Suddenly you had to bear this huge responsibility.

In 1945,

shortly before the American troops

started marching into our village,

I was responsible for the bomb shelters.

Me and my peer friends secured the cellars,

supported their ceilings with beams.

Then, using a car battery,

I installed emergency lighting.

It was my responsibility to ensure

that the whole family would survive

down there for days, maybe weeks,

in case outside there would be bombs or artillery fire.

You never knew.

This, I believe, is crucial about war:

You never know

if and when it’s going to hit

and how hard.

How was the relationship to your father?

He had quite an influence on you,

even though you didn’t get to spend much time together.

We did.

There had been incredibly profound experiences.

We did DIY stuff together,

built things, made devices.

I’ve described this in a book once.

Making radios together was one thing.

He influenced my entire

understanding of scientific things.

He was an autodidact in this field,

because he had never gone to secondary school.

But as a clockmaker

he’d acquired his technical and scientific skills

through self-study and autodidactics.

He was very good at mathematics.

After the war,

he helped me with maths in school

and always motivated me

so that I became a very good student

in maths, physics, chemistry, everything.

Because of father’s passion

to immerse himself in these things with me.

So he influenced me much more than the teachers.

It was his dream for me to become an engineer.

Arts were scary to him.

Didn’t like them at all.

Even long after I had made my first big films,

he still didn’t accept the way things were taking.

Told me,

"One day you’ll understand that you can’t live off this.

And then it’s back to studying engineering."

When I started studying in Munich I told father

I was studying engineering at the technical university.

The truth was

I went to the LMU (University of Munich)

and enrolled in theatre studies.

But he didn’t know that.

I never told my parents what I was really studying.

Did he talk about the war with you?

About himself?

The whole generation

repressed their war experiences.

Very typical of all German fathers.

They all were very young when the war began.

Imagine being 27 years old,

having two kids,

having all sorts of projects and then the war breaks out.

The war interrupts everything

and lasts for five years.

Then you return, being 32.

So you say, "I’m going to forget all this shit

and finally start living my life."

They all tried starting a life

that hadn’t really started properly before.

This was the impulse in the 1940ies and 50ies

of almost everyone of this generation in Germany.

They all felt like saying,

"Let life begin!"

But my generation had a problem

when we started making films:

there was no space for us.

They all told us:

Easy, hold your horses, it’s our turn now.

Next generation – so what?

You can wait a good 10 to 20 years for a place.

There were no film schools in Germany then.

And there weren’t any vacancies in any companies,

not even a trainee job or anything

because my parent’s generation

were all in there helping themselves first.

Let’s not forget how young they were.

They were like you are now when the war was over.

They didn’t accept their kids telling them,

"Now get out of here." Obviously.

Ok. Go!

Yes.

Please be quiet!

Christian, shoot his feet from behind when he’s walking.

Where do we start?

Some. But not much.

From down there through this tree root should be even better.

As a close-up in the foreground.

Hello.

Hi.

Jule gives everything.

I’m totally enthusiastic about you.

You have such strong arms. No man could do that.

No need to turn this into a feministic issue.

I’m sitting comfortably. And you?

Not quite.

Well.

That’s better now.

I first asked myself:

What’s German in German film?

As if it were something different

from French film, or Spanish, or Italian,

or even American film.

And it is something different.

That’s why I also asked my colleagues,

"What’s German in German film?

Or what do you even perceive as German?"

My generation

has spent their lives very much

turning their backs on all forms of nationalism

or politically motivated orientation to "Heimat" (homeland).

What most of my colleagues thought of was "forest".

They all had this forest feeling

which also showed in all those interviews.

In the 18th and up to the 19th century,

travelling in Germany was still a risky endeavor

because you had to cross endless forests.

German villages must have been horrible back then.

Dirty.

Their inhabitants somber forest dwellers

with shaggy beards – our ancestors.

That wasn’t even five or six generations ago.

There is a certain longing

for a mystical place of opportunity.

In fairy tales the stories always take place

"in a time when wishing still helped".

This sentence has always inspired me.

As if there ever was a time

when wishing for something

was all it would take to make it come true.

The forest is also a place of longing

because you always wonder what’s beyond it.

In fairy tales you always lose your way there.

This corresponds to my biography.

I was always on the look-out

for faraway wish fulfillment and magical wonders.

I lost my way home in the process

which now is no longer open to me.

This also has to do with what I’ve said earlier about...

Memory.

...memories and role models.

You dismantle them.

Were you aware of what was going to

happen when you made your first films?

Not at all.

Knowing it now, would you do it again?

That’s hard to say because there’s no "again".

Nothing ever repeats itself.

Especially not the exact same decision you have had to make.

I still think it was the right thing to do

even though I have often regretted it.

There were times in my life when I was wondering

which unlucky star had made me a filmmaker.

Because I spent decades

without it bringing me even the smallest bit of luck.

I had the biggest crisis of my life

following the production of "The Tailor from Ulm".

This film mattered so much to me.

I had worked on it and

thought about it for years.

Being a historic costume film,

it was very expensive.

And when it was finally done,

a review in "Der Spiegel" turned it into a disaster.

After only one week

the film vanished from the cinemas.

Nobody wanted to watch it afterwards.

So after "The Tailor from Ulm" I was ruined.

Financially and mentally.

I somehow felt at odds with myself,

thought I had picked the wrong job,

made the wrong decisions.

I was 43 and thought

there is just enough time

for me to change course

and find another job,

head into a different direction.

I got a tax claim

I would never be able to settle.

And on top of it all

we got divorced that same autumn.

So I lost my home and didn’t know where to sleep.

Everything was gone and pledged.

I found refuge in some friends’ flat over Christmas

and started writing my autobiography.

I was especially interested in exploring the development from

a family background of craftsmen in rural Hunsrück to filmmaker.

I suddenly realised that

I didn’t really know my grandparents’ biography,

so I filled the blanks with my imagination.

I just wrote the story as I thought

it could have been

and that became the starting point of "Heimat".

When being successful, it’s easy to be mistaken.

Failure makes you realise where you stand.

I think this is where we overlap:

living in the same country,

in the same unconscious tradition.

This is beyond the issue of generation.

This is the link between us.

Without our knowing it, I think.

The history of film, which is the

"Oberhausen Manifesto" for us,

has had an impact on our filmmaking too.

You could see it like that.

I’m very good at recognising

the typical German filmmaker’s air.

I was one of the group signing

the so called "Oberhausen Manifesto".

We used to meet once a week

in an adjacent room of a Chinese restaurant for a year.

Then we said, "Look at us,

we are the generation of the short film makers.

We are winning international awards,

and the German feature film still doesn’t get respect anywhere.

The Nazi era that ended with the war,

is only now coming to an end in film."

"We have to carry this thought

out into the world", someone said.

And then the first sentence of the

"Oberhausen Manifesto" was written on a napkin.

It went:

The collapse of the UFA indicates

that a stale thought of the

Nazi era has come to an end.

Full stop.

This became the first sentence.

It goes on:

We, the young generation, demand...

In winter we went to Oberhausen,

you know, Oberhausener Festival

now "International Short Film Festival Oberhausen".

That’s where we felt at home.

That’s where we were able to show our films for years.

Where we read the manifesto.

Hilmar Hoffmann, directing this festival at the time,

had made this possible by opening doors for us.

He would listen when we told him we wanted to do stuff there.

For him as an employee of the city council,

a city official, that was quite something.

We were getting a lot of press attention

for months which finally turned the tide.

"We demand the New German Feature Film be created",

they would cite.

This was also setting a trap

for many of us

because none of the 26

who signed the manifesto

had actually made feature films.

Ok, not none.

I had, Kluge had, Schamoni had.

Maybe six out of the 26 actually

made a feature film afterwards.

The others could not live up to this self-imposed claim.

Making movies also means

to not be intimidated by societal forces.

You can’t talk about a filmmaker

and pretend it’s all about art only.

Of course it’s not exclusively about art all your life.

Looking back on my last 50 years,

I would say

I only spent three or four years with art.

The rest of the time

was dedicated to survival

and claiming territory.

A film about a filmmaker’s life

should mention this fighting.

Film is an art that’s part of this world,

not part of an other world.

You have to prove yourself in this world.

Filmmaking kids, watch a good film!

hanging hungers waiting woman

destroying all of us Ulysses

Lust for Love

A film by Edgar Reitz

White with blue and cress.

White with red and green.

Red with blue and gold.

Red with blue. Red with green.

Red with white. Red with black.

Blue with yellow.

Blue with red?

Blue with white? Yellow with black green.

Yellow with indigo.

Ultramarine.

Cyan blue.

Turquoise. Ice blue. Opal.

Neptune blue.

Nile green. Lake green. Malachite green.

Veronese green. Leaf green.

Moss green. Lemon.

Yellow. Gold. Croc. Cress.

Salmon. Scarlet. Red.

Amaranth red. Purple.

Vio. Amethyst.

Indigo.

Yuck!

The only thing of interest in the world is the human face.

Here are only cranes, lines,

all dead matter.

Do a nice Caspar David Friedrich

with me coming from below.

No, you from above.

Would you call yourself a romantic?

I have done from time to time.

I’d need to explain "romantic".

What’s one’s take on reality?

On the relation between "I" and world?

For me the world has always been

a product of imagination.

I wander about the world and wonder: Who has created it?

If there is anything I can relate to,

it’s people’s dreams.

You need to be scared of them.

People have horrendous dreams.

What they imagine and bring into being

is horrible to mankind.

Dictators getting themselves armies

and nuclear bombs. And things that can destroy everything.

They dream of utter disaster

and are able to realise just that.

But there are also productive,

beautiful, loving dreams.

Nothing is nature.

Everything is projection and imagination.

Christmas at the hospital.

An absurd setting by the night nurse:

a Christmas tree,

a record player playing,

a sudden silence in the otherwise noisy house.

In my room a woman in childbed.

I should see the happiness of motherhood.

While still having a fever,

I start reading Musil’s "Man Without Qualities".

I’m imagining the life of a different Clarissa.

A woman of the same name but very strange to me.

The slowness of the novel

corresponds to the slowness of recovery.

Eyes.

She’s seeing many eyes.

She’s having so many human experiences.

She understands that the human soul

speaks through people’s eyes.

Blue – faithfulness – femininity

Brown – unfaithfulness – masculinity

O, come, little children,

O, come one and all,

O come to the manger

in Bethlehem’s stall.

Green.

Our upbringing and all societal processes

are based on things being supposedly

true in a certain way.

A mother, for instance,

loves her child.

It’s a given.

Everything a mother does is for the child’s good.

In reality, that’s not true. –Exactly.

No mother loves her child at all times.

She often even refuses to become aware

that there are moments

when she hates her child.

When she is done with tolerance

and won’t act out of love.

And where may you do that?

In your films you may.

It becomes clear that that’s absolutely ok.

Yes. Normally, that’s not allowed.

Exactly.

The world always asks for certainty.

The good guy wins.

This is one of the most important claims

but it betrays the audience.

They are told, ’When you are a good guy, you will win’.

Not true!

Nobody wins because they are good.

Neither do they win politically.

But so we have been told by Hollywood

for hundred years.

This is why ambivalence becomes a big issue.

People want to meet... –Morality.

social norms somehow

and are ashamed when they don’t manage to.

But nobody does.

So everyone must be ashamed of themselves.

Or say it’s ok. –Or say, ’That’s life’.

My films say, ’That’s life’.

O you joyful,

O you blessed,

grace-bringing Christmas time!

Even though it’s just an empty room

you see, it’s an incredibly moving scene.

For me anyway.

A feeling of abandonment,

of being abandoned.

I remember writing this scene.

I was writing the film script for "Heimat 2" all by myself.

And I got into a very strange state

because that’s a profound pain.

It has to do with this Christmas idyll

bearing an underlying childhood promise

rooted in our culture.

It’s where we look for some kind of redemption

where it’s never to be found.

This is what I really want to show:

the loss of childhood forever.

Leaving your childhood behind.

This is why I had to

write the script on my own.

I had been looking for co-authors at first

but they all told me,

"You have got to do this on your own.

Nobody can help you with that."

In "Heimat"

you have been involved personally

because many events being described in the film

are based on personal experiences.

What happens to honesty

when while writing

you remember a situation

that was painful?

A quarrel for example.

I have no problem with being dishonest.

I want to feel free

to tell the story as I see fit.

This is not about justifying what I do

because I don’t consider myself being involved as a person at all.

If I base one of my character’s experiences

on my own

the image might be reliable at the beginning.

But as the story develops

I am free to change everything according to my imagination.

How long did it take you to write?

About three years.

I worked very consistently,

being at my workplace

at a reliable time like a bricklayer.

Every morning at 8 or 9 o’clock

I sit at my desk

regardless of whether I feel creative.

It isn’t important

whether I am in the mood for it.

Because when you have acquired a skill or knowledge of something,

it doesn’t vanish just because you are not in the mood.

That’s comforting.

So you are not the type that manically tires himself out.

You structure your life with full discipline according to a plan.

It’s hard for my to stop working at night.

And working nights gradually

weakens your impulses because

there is nothing you experience but work.

So my work suffers

when I stop seeing people

because I live in a

counter-rhythm to everyone else.

You get into a state of solitude

which isn’t very productive either.

"Your train leaves at 35."

"Are you done?"

There is a new model of a tub in front for babies.

Made of wood.

Yes.

Mr Reitz, could you look in Ms. Hepp’s direction, please?

Finding your second home ("Heimat 2")

I see in the great narrative context

of Goethe’s "Elective Affinities"

describing that you are born twice

in your life.

The first time physically from your mother

at a given place and time.

The second time from your own mind.

Namely the design I make of myself

and which I aspire to realise.

In this context you start looking

for other relationships than the natural ones.

That’s where the "Elective Affinities" come in.

Later in life there will be other people closer

to you than father and mother, brother and sister.

They are connected to you through love and work

and things you have in common.

This utopia of the elective affinities

I call second home ("Heimat 2").

It has made the film under the title of

"Heimat 2" so very successful in Italy.

The topic that cropped up

again and again

was ambivalence.

Finally we are allowed to enjoy being alive.

The film bringing this up

came as a redemption and

led to its massive popularity.

Why are the Italians so good at grasping this?

Compared to the Germans?

People were wondering about that.

In Germany,

"Heimat 1" was the greater success

when being broadcast.

Millions watching it,

it was a real blockbuster in 1984.

Homeland (Heimat) used to be a taboo in Germany

because of our terrible past.

The nazis were using the term

"Heimat" ideologically, imprinting it.

In the post-war era "Heimat" was exploited

for happy go lucky folklore and tourism and the

German heimatfilm (sentimental film in an idealised regional setting).

My film had the term "Heimat" relate

to something natural, non-kitsch for the first time.

People were grateful for that.

"Heimat 2"

shows young artists and their dreams.

Almost all protagonists

have artistic aspirations

as musicians, filmmakers,

poets, writers.

If the 19 year old daugther or son

of an Italian family dreams

of being an artist,

the whole family will be proud and happy.

If a German family’s child

wanted to become an artist,

everyone would worry.

For God’s sake,

what is the poor boy going to do with his life?

He is going to be unhappy

and it’s unacceptable for the German family.

That’s why the German audience

didn’t like "Heimat 2".

Hang on!

The team have just started portraying themselves

in their revolutionary process.

We’re filming each other commenting the events.

The revolutionary process starts within each one of us.

That has to go on record. Am I right?

Sound running.

Inventory 24 the first.

Recording.

Whoever exposes valuable raw film these days

bears responsibility.

Responsibility

for the social consciousness.

Feature film

can only painstakingly show

what had been staged and prepared for days

What our eyes are seeing

only becomes reality

when we are actually feeling it.

And then film it.

Since the camera

is only an emotionless machine,

it doesn’t make sense

to randomly point the camera as is often done on TV.

In order to get closer to truth

the cameraman

has to put his emotions into picture.

Reality is not truth.

Then there is "Heimat 3".

An unfortunate title

which reflects

the unfortunate relationship with TV.

I had suffered endlessly

before I could finally make the film.

Then German TV asked me

to call it "Heimat 3".

Which showed how totally

they had misunderstood the project.

The first film isn’t called "Heimat 1"

but simply "Heimat – A Chronicle Of Germany". The second is called

"Die zweite Heimat – Chronicle Of A Generation".

In German that doesn’t mean "Heimat 2",

but the term refers to

an elective affinity

or an adult home of your choice.

So the title "Heimat 3"

is misleading and wrong.

It’s devastating

that the people mistreating you so badly

are only employees

bound by instructions themselves.

Even people in high positions in broadcasting corporations.

Writing the screenplay took me seven years.

Eleven versions over seven years,

one after the other getting rejected and rewritten.

I was keeping a diary all those years

to make sure I won’t forget.

It has been documented for film studies forever.

But it has also hurt you.

Of course!

After 50 years of filmmaking

you suddenly find some young gun

telling you how to film.

That certainly hurt me.

The WDR (West German Broadcasting Corporation) told me

to be grateful

for having lived off them for so many years.

I’m not grateful!

Because as a

public broadcasting corporation

it’s their damned duty to foster the country’s talents.

Being an editor with such a broadcasting corporation

managing an annual budget of 30 million,

how does that make you feel?

It’s not his money.

It doesn’t belong to him.

He hasn’t earned it.

And all of them, with their pensions,

early retirement and such,

need to thank the audience.

They must never forget that they have a duty to fulfil toward the audience.

And this duty can only be to not dull their minds!

And not keep from them

what’s good and right.

What an attitude to say,

"This is beyond you"!

What an arrogance to say

that a programme is too good for the people!

What kind of attitude is that?

"Heimat" has often been described

as a universe,

a universe of life.

Every situation it shows

I wanted to mirror life

and the mistakes we make.

I think we have locked ourselves in.

We didn’t go down that far, did we?

This is like a scene in a play.

There’s a technical room.

You can’t go further!

Let’s see what a cinema looks like from the inside.

Now we are getting back inside through the front door.

You got to come too. Otherwise you won’t get out.

Unbelievable.

Quite a few of them

are not alive anymore.

Vadim Glowna.

from "Heimat":

Petra,

Mr Edel,

Elke,

Marita,

the Edgarian...

Willi died on us while we were shooting.

Yes.

Also dead.

The horse from "Cardillac".

Hermännchen, Werner Herzog.

Tales Of The Dumster Kid. Christine.

Salome from "Heimat 3".

Kluge with moustache.

Leni Riefenstahl, unbelievable.

Peter Kubelka,

famous filmmaker,

experimental filmmaker from Vienna.

My Florinchen.

Oh my!

Quite a gathering.

The lead in your "Heimat" films, Clarissa,

is your wife in real life.

Salome Kammer, singer and actress. What’s so special about her?

That’s hard to describe.

The reasons for getting along so well

had been there already, long before

we even got to know each other.

We have been together for more than 30 years.

That’s a long time.

There had been two women before that, though.

Yes, I was married twice.

You are always looking for someone,

but when you have found the right one, you stop.

So, love exists after all?

I don’t know whether or not it’s just love. There’s more to it.

I loved all of them.

Love, too,

is a utopia without boundaries.

Being in love

always means believing it’s forever.

It contains an aspect of eternity.

Without this claim to eternity

it wouldn’t be true.

But, we are repressing the fact that nothing is forever.

But you shouldn’t be disappointed.

The feeling to be alive,

to be part of the natural flow of things

is far more important.

It’s not about results.

Making films, too, isn’t about success.

Because success is static.

Only as long as we wish for things that cannot be fulfilled,

do we have a creative power in us.

If I could make a wish,

I’d be in a dilemma.

Would I wish for bad times?

Good times?

If I could make a wish,

I’d rather wish for a little bit of happiness.

Too much happiness would have me

longing for being sad again.

How come you think

it’s only your suffering,

your pain that’s great?

Don’t make a wish,

you stupid child,

its beauty only lasts

until fulfilled.

If I could make a wish,

I’d be in a dilemma.

Would I wish for bad times?

Good times?

If I could make a wish,

I’d rather wish for a little bit of happiness.

Too much happiness

would have me longing

for being sad again.

This is your favourite song and it was sung by your wife.

Yes.

One of the greatest wishes

I’ve always had

and mankind along with me is:

Stay!

The great moments in life

pass so quickly.

And the wish that they aren’t is never fulfilled.

So. - Empty.

What films tell you about

is always the passing of time

and the end of a shot.

That’s why saying goodbye

is the best movie theme there is.

It’s also saying goodbye to the theme.

It’s saying goodbye

to the memory stored within it.

But there is comfort:

we filmmakers can preserve time.

with Edgar Reitz and Anna Hepp

Written, directed and produced by

Conceptual Advisor

Editor

Script Editor

Director of Photography

Production Sound Mixer Production Sound Assistant

Set Photography

Sound Design

Sound Mix

Colour Grading

Production Manager

English Translation

Transcript and Subtitles

Subtitle re-spotting Frank Hammer

Music by courtesy of

Film Extracts by courtesy of Edgar Reitz Film Stiftung

Thanks to

Special thanks to

Produced by

With the support of