Book chapter
productive city: ruttmann’s düsseldorf: kleiner film einer großen stadt
The City Symphony Phenomenon, pp.56-65
Routledge, 1
2019
DOI: 10.4324/9781315619989-3
Abstract
Commissioned directly by urban PR departments and produced under the aegis of Germany's largest film company, these miniature city films have a decidedly different feel from Ruttmann's Weimar work. Dusseldorf was already known as Germany's premier city for art and exhibitions, where the largest exhibition of the Weimar Republic—the famous GeSoLei exhibition of hygiene, social welfare and physical exercise— had taken place in 1926. By contrast, Ruttmann's later city portraits were explicit exercises in branding, which sought to demonstrate the city's role in the national "reawakening" after 1933. The celebration of "productivity" as the thread of historical continuity forms one of the central rhetorical arguments of Ruttmann's post-1933 city portraits. Dusseldorf illustrates well how the formal means of experimental filmmaking could be applied to ideological ends after 1933. Dusseldorf takes part in a particular National Socialist narrative of urban "reawakening," which would find another expression two years later in the exhibition Schaffendes Volk.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- productive city: ruttmann’s düsseldorf: kleiner film einer großen stadt
- Creators
- michael cowan
- Contributors
- Steven Jacobs (Editor)Anthony Kinik (Editor)Eva Hielscher (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- The City Symphony Phenomenon, pp.56-65
- Edition
- 1
- Publisher
- Routledge
- DOI
- 10.4324/9781315619989-3
- Alternative title
- ruttmann’s düsseldorf
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2019
- Academic Unit
- Cinematic Arts
- Record Identifier
- 9984432509002771
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