ABSTRACT BY RÜDIGER SUCHSLAND
What kind of films would Romy Schneider (be able to) make today? Or Jean-Paul Belmondo?
Observations of a cinema-goer
In my lecture I will try to formulate some theses on the situation of cinema in the present. Roughly speaking, I would like to start by outlining a certain type of film that exists much less today, perhaps not at all. It is a type of film that combines high standards with sophisticated entertainment, excess with depth.
I call this type of film, for lack of a better term, “the third cinema”. This “third cinema” is neither a (post)modern blockbuster driven by fantasy and world transcendence, nor that (post)modern art cinema that has already halfway made it’s way into the gallery.
At the same time, “the third cinema” has always been the synthesis between elements of these two types of films.
In the lecture, quite classically without images, I try to define this blank space and formulate my assumptions about its reasons.
It is important to note: I am not arguing against a cinema that exists today, but I plead for a cinema that existed in the past and that I miss today.
I understand my lecture as an impulse to remember these films and the many unused possibilities of cinema again – if it goes well, then all the filmmakers present become quite wistful afterwards and immediately feel like making such films again themselves.