Heimat (film series)
| Heimat | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Edgar Reitz |
| Produced by |
Hans Kwiet Edgar Reitz |
| Written by |
Edgar Reitz Peter F. Steinbach |
|
Release date
|
16 September 1984 — 13 October 2013 |
|
Running time
|
3,205 mins |
| Language |
German Hunsrückisch |
Heimat is the overall title of several series of films in 32 episodes written and directed by Edgar Reitz which view life in Germany between 1919 and 2000 through the eyes of a family from the Hunsrück area of the Rhineland. Personal and domestic life is set against glimpses of wider social and political events. The combined length of the 32 films is 53 hours and 25 minutes, making it one of the longest series of feature-length films in cinema history.
The title Heimat (pronounced [ˈhaɪmat]) is a German word meaning "homeland". Its use is partly an ironic reference to the film genre known as Heimatfilm which was popular in Germany in the 1950s. Heimatfilms were noted for their rural settings, sentimental tone and simplistic morality.
Aesthetically, all three series are notable for their frequent switching between color and black-and-white film to convey different emotional states.
Before creating the Heimat series Reitz produced a documentary from 1980–81 about people from his home region, the Hunsrück, in which he later set the Heimat series. In Geschichten aus den Hunsrückdörfern ("Tales from the Hunsrück Villages") he showed people who hadn't left the region. This documentary is not considered to be part of the core Heimat series but set the stage for the work to come a few years later. It is further interesting because the documentary is about staying in the region, staying home, while the later series is about leaving home.
Berkeley Film and Media Professor, Anton Kaes (1989) argued that auteur film-maker Edgar Reitz's trilogy was autobiographical. Reitz and Paul Simon, his fictional character in Heimat had fathers who were skilled craftsmen. Edgar Reitz was born in 1932 and Paul Simon in 1898 in Hunsrück. They grew up there, then left when they were in their twenties and returned in their fifties. Like Hermann Simon, in the 1950s, Reitz left rural life for the world of German urban avant-garde arts and intelligentsia. Reitz worked at the Institute of Film Design in Ulm, while Hermann became a celebrated conductor in Munich. Wealthy American entrepreneur Paul Simon returned to Hunsrück only briefly when the war ended, but Hermann Simon's return was more permanent. He and his lover Clarissa restored a house overlooking the Rhine that lay in ruins, eventually composing music for representing and celebrating his relationship to heimat. Both Hermann and Reitz 'dramatized the tensions between staying home, leaving and returning (Kaes 1989:164)', Hermann through music and Reitz through film.
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