MARLENE | Film + Vortrag von Wolfgang M. Schmitt

In the organizer's words:

Opening of the film series Latent Messages of Cinema, curated by Wolfgang M. Schmitt.

Latency in film is the hesitation before the answer, the pausing of the gaze. The selected films all convey latent messages. Latency turns the cinema into a space of waiting, in which meaning does not appear immediately, but arrives belatedly, but possibly at the right time. In this delay, time becomes tangible - as tension, as promise, as a game with the invisible. Spaces of possibility open up for the audience's projections and fantasies.
- Wolfgang M. Schmitt

The film series is part of the project Latent Space. Latent Spaces of Art, 14.11.2025 - 31.01.2026. A project of the Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf.

MARLENE
DE 1984 | 94 min. | OV | D: Maximilian Schell

With a lecture by Wolfgang M. Schmitt

The diva is absent and yet present. In 1982, Marlene Dietrich agreed that her fellow actor and director Maximilian Schell, with whom she appeared in The Judgment of Nuremberg , could interview her and record her on tape, but not film her. She has been photographed to death, we hear an old voice say, to which we see images of the eternally young screen legend Marlene. The latent structure creates a space of illusion and disillusion in equal measure. Marlene is a masterpiece about time, delay and an unsent letter.
- Wolfgang M. Schmitt

Further dates in the film series:

03.12. | 20:00 | Black Box - Kino im Filmmuseum
ARRIVAL (US 2016 | D: Denis Villeneuve)

09.12. | 20:00 | Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf
CACHÉ (FR/AT/DE/IT 2005 | D: Michael Haneke)

11.12. | 20:00 | Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf
THE THINGS OF LIFE (FR/IT 1970 | D: Claude Sautet)