Gero Gandert at 80: A Life for Film May 25, 2010

Gero Gandert at 80: A Life for Film
Lecture
Tuesday, May 25th 2010, 7:00 p.m.
Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, 5750 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 100, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Free of Charge
RSVP: + 1 323 5253388
Tracking Down the Hollywood Exiles
- A German Film Historian Recounts His Amazing Hunt
Introduction by Chris Horak, Director of the UCLA Film and Television Archives

Among the leading figures, who rendered outstanding services to the preservation of German Film Heritage, Gero Gandert's name isn’t mentioned that often, which is paradoxical, as he was instrumental at each and every decisive fork in the road.
He was a founding member of the “Friends of the German Cinematheque", co-founder of the Forum of International Young Film (a section of the Berlin Filmfestival) and has been a curator with the Museum of Film and Television since 1972.

As a student in Munich, he founded a filmclub. He moved to Berlin in 1952 and started writing about film.
In 1958, asking "critical" questions at a press conference of DEFA and after writing about the Karlovy Vary Filmfestival, he was arrested by the STASI , charged with “agitating against the state”, and convicted to three years in jail, most of which he spent in solitary confinement.
Released from jail, he went straight to the opening of the 1961 Berlin Filmfestival.
Subsequently, he would take an ever growig interest in the history of German Film.

The Museum of Film and Television ows him a lot, as Gandert was instrumental in the acquision of key pieces of the museum's collections on the German film exile.
With diligence and persistency - and many trips to Southern California- , he secured documents and entire estates from film legends, such as William Dieterle, Dolly Haas, Paul Kohner, Fritz Lang, Francis Lederer, Erich und John Pommer, Billy Wilder, Curt Siodmak, Marlene Dietrich and many more.

Recently, at the age of 80, Gero Gandert was able to witness the inauguration of his latest creation: The Boulevard of the Stars on Potsdamer Strasse in Berlin.
(Excerpts from TAGESSPIEGEL: Rainer Rother: Gero Gandert: Der Beharrliche)

Please join us, when Gero Gandert looks back on his search for the German film exile his run-in with the STASI.

Official Website: http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/los/ver/en6046710v.htm