Historical Sound Versions of Silent Films with Hans Richter’s Experimental Films as Case in Point

In the early 1920s, Hans Richter made a series of avant-garde films, becoming one of the pioneers of abstract and experimental film. Those earlier works are preserved as silent nitrate prints; any original versions of music to the pictures are considered lost. In exile in the USA, the artist continued working on his earlier films, adding new sound to them–collages from records and historical sound media. These scored postwar versions of his silent films now constitute a separate cycle of work, of which 16mm prints are widely distributed. In 2017, the Deutsche Kinemathek digitized Richter’s silent experimental films alongside their scored postwar counterparts jointly with the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum and the EYE Film Museum.

Workshop report by Julia Wallmüller (Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin)

In English

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