In September 1929, a group of visionary filmmakers gathered at La Sarraz Castle in Switzerland to discuss alternatives to commercial cinema. The participants, including Sergei Eisenstein, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann and Luis Buñuel, want to explore new ways of independent filmmaking and challenge the bourgeois narrative film. Lutz Dammbeck takes up this historic meeting and pays artistic tribute to it with DDR-EXPERIMENTAL: HOMMAGE À LA SARRAZ. The film combines documentary elements with experimental image montages and explores the spirit of the avant-garde through a visual journey that allows the past and present to merge. The fragmentary narrative style and the deliberate use of alienating techniques make the film a reflection on the role of independent cinema in different political systems. HOMMAGE À LA SARRAZ was shown at international film festivals and recognized as a significant contribution to the history of experimental film. With this work, Dammbeck not only questions the historical significance of the meeting of La Sarraz, but also the conditions for creative independence in the GDR and beyond. Through its striking imagery and radical formal language, the film remains an extraordinary example of artistic resistance and the power of the avant-garde.
Icons & Media Art
12min
16+
DE
Sergei Eisenstein, Hans Richter and Luis Buñuel meet at La Sarraz Castle to explore new ways of independent filmmaking.
In September 1929, a group of visionary filmmakers gathered at La Sarraz Castle in Switzerland to discuss alternatives to commercial cinema. The participants, including Sergei Eisenstein, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann and Luis Buñuel, want to explore new ways of independent filmmaking and challenge the bourgeois narrative film.
Lutz Dammbeck takes up this historic meeting and pays artistic tribute to it with DDR-EXPERIMENTAL: HOMMAGE À LA SARRAZ. The film combines documentary elements with experimental image montages and explores the spirit of the avant-garde through a visual journey that allows the past and present to merge. The fragmentary narrative style and the deliberate use of alienating techniques make the film a reflection on the role of independent cinema in different political systems.
HOMMAGE À LA SARRAZ was shown at international film festivals and recognized as a significant contribution to the history of experimental film. With this work, Dammbeck not only questions the historical significance of the meeting of La Sarraz, but also the conditions for creative independence in the GDR and beyond. Through its striking imagery and radical formal language, the film remains an extraordinary example of artistic resistance and the power of the avant-garde.