Berlinale Camera
At the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, film expert and Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kinemathek Rainer Rother will be honoured with the Berlinale Camera.
The Berlinale Camera was awarded to Rainer Rother on February 20, 2025, at the Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg. The laudatory speech was held by Thomas Krüger, President of the Federal Centre for Civic Education. As part of Berlinale Special, the award-winning Berlinale film Yella by Christian Petzold was shown.
Dr. Rainer Rother has been Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kinemathek and head of the Berlinale Retrospective since April 2006. He is also responsible for Berlinale Classics. For the Berlinale, he has curated retrospectives of works by directors such as Buñuel and Bergman or with a thematic focus on the work of female directors or independent films from the Kinemathek’s archives, but also with film aesthetic reflections on innovative processes such as Technicolor or 70mm. Rainer Rother has published extensively on film history and is the author of several books. From 2001 to 2019, he was a member of the selection committee for the Berlinale Competition.
Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle says: “We are honouring Rainer Rother for his many years of work in the service of preserving cinematic history and as a bridge builder between history and contemporary cinema. Under his leadership, the Deutsche Kinemathek has successfully made the living heritage of cinematic art accessible, created the conditions for digitisation and developed strategies to open it up to new audiences. We would especially like to thank Rainer Rother for his work as a passionate curator who has inspired countless visitors to the Berlinale with his work.”
“Show more than the Canon!”
The 2009 Retrospektive poster
Rainer Rother talks about his tenure as head of the Retrospective 2006 - 2025
You have been the Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kinemathek since 2006, and head of the Berlinale Retrospective since 2007 – a dream job that you are now stepping down from. Your era has been characterised by programmes with leitmotifs. Only three focussed on a person – Buñuel (2008), Bergman (2011), and most recently King Vidor (2020). Would you say that is your “signature”?
The thematic series are in a certain way a continuation of the Retrospective tradition. We have featured technical aspects of film. We’ve presented 70mm and Technicolor films – whereby in both cases, we basically seized the last chance, because for a 70mm screening, you need cinemas with the right projector and the technical staff to operate it. We have featured certain eras – but that was the case before my tenure as well. We have focussed on aesthetic aspects, by say comparing “Glorious Technicolor” with the “Aesthetics of Shadow” in black-and-white films. So there was definitely continuity with older retrospectives that dealt with, say, colour film or CinemaScope. We made a conscious decision to continue that tradition. But it is true that we have moved somewhat farther away from the canon in the last few years. But I think that’s also the times we live in. We don’t have to always present just big names. There is an audience that is curious and goes to films because they expect to discover something. Those discoveries are easier to make if you don’t just follow film series of Pabst, Murnau, Lang, and the other great directors. On top of that, I have a certain mistrust vis-à-vis the cult of genius in film. Cinema is an art very much shaped by the collective.
“Weimar Cinema Revisited” was one of the Retrospectives in recent years. Is the concept of “revisiting” old films a programmatic one?
There is a real “movement” afoot to comb through film history for work that has never been in the spotlight. You see it at festivals, but also at the universities. I find that very gratifying and “Weimar” is a good example. Among other things, we showed films that we had directors review. When you read how Wim Wenders sees Richard Eichberg’s Song. Die Liebe eines armen Menschenkindes (Show Life), or Dietrich Brüggemann’s reaction to Joe May’s Ihre Majestät die Liebe (Her Majesty, Love), or Andres Veiel to Der Katzensteg (Regina, or the Sins of the Father) by Gerhard Lamprecht – and you see the response to those texts: they are marvellous films – then you realise that certain qualities emerge in movies that for a long time were dismissed as entertainment or Prussian cinema. At this point, that has become an important mission for the Retrospective – to show more than just the canon, to surprise, to challenge. For my generation, filmmakers like John Ford, Jean Renoir, or Yasujirō Ozu were discoveries that opened up a whole new world of film. It is not so clear-cut anymore. Discoveries are now sought elsewhere.
Rainer Rother in conversation with Paolo Cherchi Usai from the George Eastman House, Rochester
Several of the Retrospectives were mounted in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At the end of last year, the Metrograph movie theatre in New York and the Academy Museum in Los Angeles showed films from the 2024 Retrospective “An Alternate Cinema – From the Deutsche Kinemathek Archives”. How important were those international contacts for your curatorial work?
We would never have been able to realise the Technicolor Retrospective without the wonderful cooperation with the George Eastman House. We could not have done “Aesthetics of Shadow” without the support of the Museum of Modern Art and the Japan Foundation, which was absolutely essential. For our Retrospectives, we work not only with universities; there is a network of archives that has become much stronger and meets regularly at festivals – including in Bologna and Pordenone, but also the Deutsche Kinemathek’s film heritage festival “Film Restored” in Berlin. We maintain an intensive exchange on what films we have seen and what we are working on.
Which finds and rediscoveries do you remember as most exciting?
In the Weimar programme, it was undoubtedly Der Katzensteg. It was made by Kinemathek founder Gerhard Lamprecht, so we all should have known about and appreciated it. But we didn’t. For the Retrospective, we only had a 16mm print in far from perfect quality to show. But it went on to have a second life – it was restored thanks in part to international cooperation with the archives in Belgrade and Prague, which had nitrate prints from the 1920s. So the film now looks much, much better and has been shown in that higher quality at festivals. But I also remember DEFA films from the Retrospective “Self-determined”, discoveries like Die Taube auf dem Dach (The Dove on The Roof) or Das Fahrrad (The Bicycle). Even just the 2019 Retrospective itself, dedicated entirely to female directors, was a discovery.
The actors of Katja von Garnier's Bandits - which was shown as part of the Retrospective ‘"Self-determined. Perspectives of women filmmaker" - came to the screening in 2019: Rainer Rother with Jasmin Tabatabai, Andrea Sawatzki, Nicolette Krebitz, Katja Riemann and Jutta Hoffmann
Unlike retrospectives of, perhaps, an individual who is no longer with us, you were often able to welcome guests to the Berlinale Retrospective. That must make it more exciting?
Of course, we always tried to bring as many directors, cinematographers, and actors into the cinemas as possible. It is great for the audiences. But it’s also a satisfying experience for us to bring guests into a movie theatre that is packed to the rafters. Not least because it is a wonderful feeling for the guests, the people who worked on the film. Sometimes they bring their whole crew with them. We have had some big crowds on the stage! Yes, that’s new for the Retrospective. It has become more lively. We value that greatly!
Thanks to digital restorations, many old films are being re-released, a trend that is evident in the “classics” section of international festivals, including your own Berlinale Classics. Are they the retrospectives of the future?
I very much hope that this is not the case! We want to reflect the developments in digitisation and restoration at the Berlinale, we owe it to the festival’s film heritage traditions, and it has turned out very well. But the Berlinale’s film historical traditions are really unique among A festivals – a curated series, which distinguishes it from the classics. The Berlinale Classics section is a selection from among submissions that we receive from all over the world, while the Retrospective is a conscious decision to focus on a theme, an era, a person. That curation provides a different perspective on film history. Since the Berlinale has long been the only A festival that has continuously provided that, and most recently attracted an audience of more than 23,000 to that “perspective”, I hope that in the future, with a better budget, we will once again be able to present more than 15 films.
That is very much to be hoped for your successor! What else do you hope for her?
Heleen Gerritsen will certainly bring her own ideas to the Retrospective. I hope that she has as much joy in working with the team as I have had.