Ruttmann, Walter (1889–1941)

Born in Frankfurt, Ruttmann studied architecture and design, and started his career as a painter and lithographer before turning to film. His earliest films, Lichtspiel: Opus I–IV (1921–1925), were composed of animated shapes made of cardboard, wood, and plasticine. Some of these films were hand-colored. They are quite close in conception and execution to the experiments in "absolute film" – or "optical music" – developed by Hans Richter (the Rhythmus series) and Viking Eggeling (Diagonal Symphony, 1922) in the early 1920s. The success of the Lichtspiel series earned Ruttmann commercial film commissions. He designed some special effects for Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette animation The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) and made an animated sequence for Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen (1924). Ruttman’s fame, however, rests on his participation in Berlin: Symphonie of a Great City (Berlin: Simphonie der Grossstadt, 1927), an emblematic city film scripted by Carl Mayer and filmed mostly by Karl Freund, which Ruttmann himself edited. Occasionally criticized for its detached, superficial rendition of urban life, the film was successful with audiences and immensely influential on subsequent filmmakers.

Memórias, narrativas políticas e dicotomias da cidade: Olhares Fílmicos sobre Recife-PE

Este trabalho analisa o objeto do olhar a cidade do Recife-PE e as suas características espaciais e sociais a partir da perspectiva antropológica e fílmica. A discussão tem como ponto de partida a questão de documentar e ficcionalizar a cidade por meio das narrativas fílmicas do espaço urbano, e também de como o olhar sobre a cidade pode ser analisada através da ótica espacial e fílmica. Considera-se, portanto, os arranjos espaciais, imagéticos, identitários e estéticos presentes no âmbito urbano para então discursar acerca do problema central deste trabalho: os olhares fílmicos construídos da cidade do Recife-PE por meio das narrativas fílmicas dos curtas-metragens pernambucanos. Dessa indagação parte-se às contribuições do imaginário urbano, da memória e da identidade como elementos que constituem a construção do olhar para a cidade.Palavras-chave: Olhares fílmicos. Cidade. Recife-PE.Memories, narrative policies and dicotomies of the city: Film Looks on Recife-PE AbstractThis work analyzes the object of the look at the city of Recife-PE and its spatial and social characteristics from an anthropological and film perspective. The discussion has as its starting point the question of documenting and fictionalizing the city through the film narratives of urban space, as well as how the view of the city can be analyzed through space and film optics. The spatial, imaginary, identity, and aesthetic arrangements present in the urban context are then considered, and the discourse about the central problem of this work is considered: the film-based views constructed from the city of Recife-PE through the film narratives of Pernambucan short films. From this question we start with the contributions of the urban imaginary, memory and identity as elements that constitute the construction of the look for the city.Keywords: Film looks. City. Recife-PE.