With visual grace and compelling re-enactments, Bauhaus: Broken Wings recounts the story of a group of artists who struggle to protect and maintain their artistic freedom and spirit against the rise of the Nazi regime.

Dedicated.

Bauhaus – Broken Wings is based on true circumstances set in 1930’s Germany. It depicts the story about students at the Bauhaus School of Arts and Architecture, who try to defend and protect their beliefs for Creativity and Freedom from the Nazis. After Hitler’s takeover, Bauhaus director Mies van der Rohe, cancels the student’s exhibition, whose preparation has already reached its final throes. One of the students, Jack Porter, however, won’t accept his fate and, together with his fellow students, organizes a protest. When he tries to protect his sculpture form the vandalizing NS-Myrmidons, he has to pay with his life.

The Thesis film invokes the grandee cinema of emotions, as we know and love them from Hollywood. All departments, which are important for such a film, are represented 1:1, for just that purpose; only the length of the film isn’t in accordance. Locations, Props, Wardrobe, and, last but not least, the actors, are all transformed by the camera in every possible and familiar variation. The editing, in collaboration, with the screenplay, subtly assembles the history, while at the same time (in the figurative sense) avoids to paint the story in black and white. Just like Director Mies van der Rohe, who at first, out of pragmatic reasons, bends to the will of the NS, but then, facing the raw violence, stands by the side of his students.

It’s a well-known fact, how little money student films receive, or can receive from their film schools. Therefore, we would like to commend the active help of some of the individual film companies, at this point, which all supported the production of the film. The support from Arri and Hollywood Intermediate for example: While one handed the executing students not only a camera, but also trained them on the equipment, including the lights, did the other work, with the possible Hollywood moguls from tomorrow, on the joint between digital and photochemical processing. The result from this collaboration is the movie’s sepia-like tint, which provides the film with an aura from the past. The Forest Foundation, on the other hand, supported the project with money. For them, subject matters like these are of the greatest importance. Of course, these are only three examples of the many factors that helped to bring this project to life. The score, too, is the cream of the crop, recorded by a Hollywood-Orchestra, that usually works for the most famous, and during Oscar Night highly admired, film directors. Are there any better premises for the offspring than these?

Besides all professionalism, however, one must not forget the enthusiasm, with which director Philipp Eierund exerts himself, through the use of adequate themes, to point to freedom, equality, and brotherliness as the moral fundamentals of the movie. At the end of the film, while the credits are rolling, he closes his round dance between fiction and documentary, when he shows us the photos of the real people, through which he came to his story.


Bauhaus – Broken Wings. B+R Philipp Eierund K Kenton D. Johnson SzB Will PilgrimMB Eleanor Wood KB Maria Petersson, Emily Alford T Evan Schrodek, Kevin Henson L Chikako Namba G Dan Reilly OP Matthew Netzley KA Juan G. Perez MA Simon England RA Stephen Nelson S Evan Schrodek, Sandrine Sahakians M Markus C. Riegler F 35mm, 1:1.85, Farbe L 22 min P California State University, Northridge / EmotionP, USA 2006 www.bauhausthemovie.com/

Kameramann, 2/2007, Page 58. By Karl Heil.