6 February 2024

24th Academy Discussion: Film Criticism and Cinema Art

Andreas Kilb in a conversation with Bettina Henzler, Verena Lueken, Philipp Stadelmaier, Rüdiger Suchsland and Jeanine Meerapfel

Tuesday, 13 February 2024, 7 pm
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Press tickets at presse@adk.de, phone 030 200 57-1514

Film art, cinema, film criticism, film studies and the intermediation are inextricably linked. They influence the experience and perception of film in a special way. But how can this be determined in detail? To what extent do film reviews and the academic examination of narrative film forms correlate? And how can reviews, academic classification and intermediation contribute to saving the cinema as a mutual space for experiencing films?

Since 2018, Academy President and film maker Jeanine Meerapfel has been inviting film makers and film industry representatives to debates on film policy issues during the run-up to the Berlinale. Previous academy talk subjects have been the love of cinema, cultural film funding, international applications, streaming worlds and the future of festivals.

With:
Bettina Henzler, Professor of Film Studies at the ifs Internationale Filmschule Köln
Verena Lueken, author and critic
Jeanine Meerapfel, film maker and President of the Akademie der Künste
Philipp Stadelmaier, film critic, film scholar and writer
Rüdiger Suchsland, film critic and director
Presentation: Andreas Kilb, film critic and culture and entertainment correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Berlin

Bettina Henzler
has been a film studies professor at the ifs International Film School Cologne since 2023. She previously taught at Bremen University and the Konrad Wolf Film University and was a visiting professor at Freie Universität Berlin. She is the author of Filmästhetik und Vermittlung [Film Aesthetics and Impartation] (2013) and Filmische Kindheitsfiguren [Cinematic Childhood Figures] (2023). She also works as a freelancer in the field of film and impartation. She is currently researching film-aesthetic education processes in cooperation with Bremen University and the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle as part of the international film education project “Exploring cinéma, cent ans de jeunesse”.

Verena Lueken
is an author and critic. She was a features section editor at Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 1991 to 2021, worked in New York as a cultural correspondent for many years and was the features section deputy head for several years. Her work focuses on cinema, literature and America. She started working as a freelance author again in 2021. Her publications include Kinoerzählungen [Cinema Narrations] (published in 1995), New York. Reportage aus einer alten Stadt [Report from an Old City] (2003), Gebrauchsanweisung für New York [Instructions for New York] (2018) and her novels Alles zählt [Everything Counts] (2015) and Anderswo [Elsewhere] (2018). Her awards include the Michael Althen Prize for Criticism in 2019.

Jeanine Meerapfel
has been President of the Akademie der Künste since 2015.
The director and screenwriter has made numerous award-winning documentaries and feature films, including the documentary Im Land meiner Eltern [In the Country of My Parents] (1981) and the feature film Der deutsche Freund [The German Friend] (2012). Her latest film Eine Frau [A Woman] (2021) deals with subjects like emigration, remembering and forgetting. From 1990 to 2008, she was a professor for film/television at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. In 2020, she initiated the “European Alliance of Academies”, an association of more than 60 art schools that stand up for democracy and freedom in art.

Philipp Stadelmaier
is a film critic, film scholar and writer. As a film critic, he writes mainly for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Other texts were published in Filmbulletin and at Zeit ONLINE. In 2018, he was awarded the Clemens Brentano Prize for Literature by the city of Heidelberg for his essay Die mittleren Regionen [The Middle Regions] on the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, which was written in the form of a diary. His debut novel Queen July was published in 2019. In 2023, he published the study Die Kommentatoren des Post-Cinema. Serge Daney, Jean-Luc Godard und die Rephilologisierung des Kinos im digitalen Zeitalter [The Post-Cinema Commentators. Serge Daney, Jean-Luc Godard and the Rephilologisation of Cinema in the Digital Age].

Rüdiger Suchsland
is a film critic and director. In 1997 he became editor of the online film magazine Artechock. He writes as a freelance author for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Berliner Zeitung, Filmdienst, Telepolis and, above all, radio stations (Deutschlandfunk, SWR, WDR). He works for film festivals. His documentary Von Caligari zu Hitler – Das deutsche Kino im Zeitalter der Massen 1918–1933 [From Caligari to Hitler – German Cinema in the Age of the Masses] was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 2014. Hitlers Hollywood – Das deutsche Kino im Zeitalter der Propaganda 1933-45 [Hitler's Hollywood – German Cinema in the Age of Propaganda] was released in cinemas in 2018. He is a member of the advisory board of the German Film Critics Association.

Event dates
24th Academy Discussion
Film Criticism and Cinema Art
Tuesday, 13 February 2024, 7 pm
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Admission: € 6/4, free admission up to 18 years
Press tickets at presse@adk.de, phone 030 200 57-1514