UPCOMING EVENTS

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• San Francisco Silent Film Festival, May 6-10, 2026

Now in its 29th year, the festival will return to its original venue at the historic Castro Theatre, which was closed for two years during a $41 million renovation. The theatre’s iconic Art Deco interior from 1922 was fully restored and provides the perfect ambience for silent cinema. For the full program, click here.This year’s festival will feature four rare Weimar films, with live musical accompaniment by Günter Buchwald and Frank Bockius: Sensation im Wintergarten (Gennaro Righelli, 1929); Sein größter Bluff (Harry Piel, 1927); Lohnbuchhalter Kremke (Marie M. Harder, 1930); Die Gezeichneten (Carl th. Dreyer, 1922).

• Rethinking Weimar Cinema – a conference at Oxford University, June 17-19, 2026

The conference will feature speakers from twelve different countries and revisit Weimar film through fresh critical lenses and innovative methodologies. Papers will reconsider the cultural, political, and aesthetic significance of Weimar cinema, discuss new archival discoveries, and use interdisciplinary frameworks to reevaluate canonical classics. Keynote speakers include Paul Dobryden (University of Virginia), Sara F. Hall (University of Illinois Chicago), and Qinna Shen (Bryn Mawr College). Click here for the provisional program.

• Il Cinema Ritrovato -- Bologna Film Festival, June 20-28, 2026

The 40^th Bologna Film Festival will premiere the restoration of a major film by F. W. Murnau. – Top secret for now: stay tuned until May 12, when Il Cinema Ritrovato will release the announcement with the full schedule of the 2026 XL festival here.

• Le Giornate del Cinema Muto — The 45th Pordenone International Silent Film Festival, October 3-11, 2026

This year’s 45th festival edition will feature, among others, a film series titled "Taboos and Transgressions in Early Weimar Cinema,“ curated by Michael Cowan and Tony Kaes. For the full program, available in September, click here.

In dialogue with this film series, the fall edition of WeimarCinema.org will focus on transgressive, censored, or banned films from the Weimar Republic and explore broader theoretical questions of artistic freedom, state power, and the limits of representation. We invite readers currently working on these topics to contribute an essay or dossier to the next issue. Please send us a brief proposal at your earliest convenience.

OF INTEREST

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In Paris, the Cinémathèque française is offering a Weimar film retrospective titled ”The Demonic Screen” in honor of Lotte Eisner, who was Chief Curator there for 40 years. Eisner wrote for Film-Kurier in Berlin in the late 1920s before fleeing Nazi Germany. In 1952, she published “L’Écran démoniaque,” which was translated as “The Haunted Screen” in 1969. Alongside Siegfried Kracauer’s 1947 classic From Caligari to Hitler, Eisner’s book is considered a foundational work in the study of Weimar cinema. The film series, curated by Laurent Mannoni, takes place from March 18 to April 6, 2026. The titles of all 27 seminal films shown there and a two-minute trailer can be found here.

The Deutsche Kinemathek is now fully open at its new location in E-Werk on Mauerstraße 79, 10117 Berlin. Its inaugural exhibition, Screentime - Stories from Film, Television and Everyday Life,” features a walk-through media landscape spanning 130 years of German film history, and a display wall showcasing selected exhibits from the museum’s archives.

The 2026 meeting of the German Studies Association will take place in Phoenix from September 24 to 27. Seminars of possible interest to Weimar film scholars include: “Alternative Pasts: Reframing and Reimagining the Past in German Literature and Film”; “Queer and Trans Studies and the Future of German Studies”; “In Defense of Academic Freedom: Public Writing Workshop Seminar”; “The Power and Politics of Popular Culture in the Twentieth Century”; and “What Is Weimar Today?”. Full details are available here.

On December 10, 2025, the seventh annual Weimar 100 film screening took place, at the University of Warwick, marking the centenary of the release of G. W. Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse. Ian Roberts presented an introductory lecture on Pabst’s portrayal of social inequality, exploring the 'realistic' depiction of social deprivation that existed during the mid-years of Weimar Germany and Austria.

A new special issue of German Life and Letters, titled “Provincializing Weimar Culture” approaches Weimar Germany from and for the margins, foregrounding subaltern histories and cultural life beyond the metropolis. Inspired by Dipesh Chakrabarty, the issue was co-edited by Nicholas Baer, Jochen Hung, and Britta Schilling. Several contributors focus on cinema:

—Adrienne Merritt offers a new reading of F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), linking anxieties about the loss of colonial holdings and the Rhineland occupation to reverberations from the transatlantic history of slavery.

—Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk examine film culture in the Rhineland, where moviegoing largely took place under military occupation until at least the mid-1920s—a context often absent from accounts of German silent cinema.

—Anjeana K. Hans and Philipp Stiasny explore how the foreign-born actors Pola Negri and Franziska Gaal became major stars of Weimar film, which gains new meaning as an "accented cinema.”

From January 21 to February 22, 2026, the Goethe Institut Glasgow presented “Fokus: Films from Germany”, focusing on the theme “Women: Words and Worlds.” The series will include two screenings of Die Büchse der Pandora, with introductions by series curators Rastko Novaković and Paul Flaig (University of St. Andrews).

From February 18 to 23, the Berlin International Film Festival presented its “Berlinale Classics” section, featuring newly restored landmarks of early cinema. This year’s program included a restored screening of Geheimnisse einer Seele (G. W. Pabst, 1926), accompanied by an experimental new score composed by Yongbom Lee. The score featured a live translation of an ensemble member’s neural activity into light and sound, with electronic sounds produced by the violinist’s brain activity. The full Berlinale program is available here.

Fritz Lang’s film The Nibelungen (1924; restored in 2010) was presented in two parts at the Konzerthaus in Vienna in February 2026. The original score by Gottfried Huppertz was performed live by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Joshua Barone’s extensive review in the New York Times on February 19, 2026, titled “From Fritz Lang, a Ring His Way,” provides valuable historical context of Lang's five-hour epic. Barone also relates Lang’s film and its score to the current interest in Richard Wagner’s opera Der Ring des Nibelungen, which celebrated the 150th anniversary of its premiere. Comparing the staging of Wagner’s opera with this performance of Lang’s Nibelungen film, Barone writes: "The awe it inspires, I imagine, is not unlike what you feel at a performance of Wagner's 'Ring.'"

Read more...

ChatGPT is increasingly incorporating dossiers and essays from WeimarCinema.org to provide engaging information about Weimar film for its users. Although AI is not always accurate, many researchers are using it as a useful entry point into the complex and evolving history of Weimar cinema. By drawing on our website as a resource, we hope that our work will become accessible to a broader public.

Weimar weiblich: Filmpionierinnen des Kinos der Moderne (1918-1933) is a richly illustrated volume (edited by Daria Berten, Annika Haupts, Anna Katharina Heizmann and Kristina Jaspers) that spotlights the women working behind the camera during the Weimar era. Through archival materials and visual documents, the book explores how these women shaped the industry, navigated creative challenges, formed networks, and pioneered thematic and formal innovation. Emerging from an exhibition at the Deutsches Filminstitut and Filmmuseum, the project situates itself within broader discussions of gender, modernity, and film historiography. Set for release October 2025, this volume reframes the narrative of Weimar cinema from an inclusive and gender-conscious perspective. Available here.

From August 27-29, Berlin's Museumsinsel hosted the 15^th edition of the UFA-Filmnächte with open-air screenings of three restored Weimar-era silent films: Variété (E. A. Dupont, 1925), Der Rosenkavalier (Robert Wiene, 1925/26) and Der Sträfling aus Stambul (Gustav Ucicky, 1929). All films were accompanied by live scores from the UFA Syncopaters: Küspert & Kollegen, Metropolis Orchester Berlin, and PC Nackt.

The 41^st Bonn Internationale Stummfilmetage (August 7 to 17, 2025) took place in the open-air courtyard of the University of Bonn, offering free evening screenings of newly-restored silent-era films from around the world, all with live accompaniment. This year's programme highlighted early female directors and stars, including Lois Weber, Anny Ondra, and Luise Heilborn-Körbitz, and spanned genres from slapstick to avant-garde. Films were also available online for 48 hours after screening.

In May 2025, the Deutsche Kinemathek reopened at its new home in the historic E-Werk in Berlin-Mitte. Film viewings are now available in the film archive, and the library is also open. All other archives will be accessible again starting September 2.

Filming of the fifth and final season of Babylon Berlin began in February 2025 and is set to be released in Germany before the end of the year. This series will be set in February 1933 as the Nazi Party takes power.

Robert Eggers' long-awaited remake of Nosferatu had its world premiere on December 2, 2024 at the Zoo Palast cinema in Berlin. It was theatrically released in the United States three weeks later, on December 25, 2024 with a UK release on January 1, 2025.

The 2024 Pordenone Silent Film Festival (October 7 to 14) will feature the following restorations and rediscoveries from the Weimar Republic: Vanina (Arthur von Gerlach, 1922); Raskolnikow (Robert Wiene, 1923) Dagfin (Dagfin lo sciatore) (Joe May, 1926); and Saxophon-Susi (Miss Saxophone) (Karel Lamač, 1928. In addition, two films with Anna May Wong will be shown: Song (aka Schmutziges Geld ) (Richard Eichberg, 1928) and Großstadtschmetterling (Richard Eichberg, 1929).

On September 25, 5 pm (GMT), the Weimar Film Network hosts an online discussion about plans to represent Weimar cinema's first "nasty women" across various curatorial and archival initiatives. Participants are Kate Saccone (University of Amsterdam), project manager of the Women Film Pioneers Project as well as Maggie Hennefeld (University of Minnesota) and Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam), curators of the DVD/Blu-ray set Cinema's First Nasty Women. Register here!

Susan Neiman published a lengthy review titled "The Conformist" about Daniel Kehlmann's portrayal of G. W. Pabst in his biographical novel Lichtspiel. The review, which appeared in the June 12, 1925 issue of the New York Review of Books, coincided with the release of Ross Benjamin's English translation of Lichtspiel, published by Simon & Schuster, under the title "The Director."

German Film: From the Archives of the Deutsche Kinemathek is a monumental 1,000-page book featuring 2,600 illustrations of items from the Kinemathek's archives, including shooting scripts, music scores, cameras, and costumes. It also contains over 400 analytical mini-essays on individual films, directors, actors, genres, and concepts spanning 130 years of German film history. With nearly 200 pages of essays and illustrations dedicated to the period from 1918 to 1933, this book is an invaluable resource for the material history of Weimar cinema. The English translation was supported by the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts. The elegantly designed book is available in both hardcover and eBook formats. Read Jan-Christopher Horak's review here.

At the 2024 meeting of the German Studies Association, Sara F. Hall delivered the presidential address, "1924/2024: Reflections on a Cinema Centenary."

Silent Film in Berlin: Ufa-Filmnächte Ufa-Filmnächte: Kinomagie auf der Museumsinsel (August 21-23, 2024). The program can be found here. — Stummfilmfestival im Babylon (September 5-15). This film series focuses on German and international films released in 1924. The program features some of the best-known silent film musicians; it takes place at the Babylon, an iconic movie theater from the late 1920s; and the entire festival is free. For the full program, click here. — The Zeughauskino is showing several restorations of Weimar films with live-music from late November to mid-December. Click here for the program. Oliver Hanley presents his restoration of Was ist los mit Nanette (1929) on December 12. Click here for details.

Silent Film in Berlin: Ufa-Filmnächte Ufa-Filmnächte: Kinomagie auf der Museumsinsel (August 21-23, 2024). The program can be found here. — Stummfilmfestival im Babylon (September 5-15). This film series focuses on German and international films released in 1924. The program features some of the best-known silent film musicians; it takes place at the Babylon, an iconic movie theater from the late 1920s; and the entire festival is free. For the full program, click here. — The Zeughauskino is showing several restorations of Weimar films with live-music from late November to mid-December. Click here for the program. Oliver Hanley presents his restoration of Was ist los mit Nanette (1929) on December 12. Click here for details.

MEGALOPOLIS, Francis Ford Coppola's long-awaited film, premiered at Cannes in May 2024. Coppola wrote, directed and financed the film himself in order to maintain complete control over it. Not only in its title, but also in its futuristic urban setting, historical scope (from ancient Rome to the present), and philosophical ambitions about the future of humanity, Megalopolis is reminiscent of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It also echoes a lesser-known 1936 science fiction film, Things to Come, written by H.G. Wells, who published a scathing review of Metropolis in 1927. Coppola's Megalopolis is distributed by Lionsgate Films and will be released in U.S. theaters (including IMAX screens) on September 27, 2024.

Bauhaus and its relationship to National Sozialism will be comprehensively examined in three exhibitions at three locations in Weimar: "The Bauhaus as a Site of Political Contest, 1919-1933," at the Museum Neues Weimar; "Expelled - Confiscated - Assimilated, 1930/37," at the Bauhaus Museum; and "Life in the Dictatorship, 1933-1945," at the Schiller Museum. All are organized by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar and curated by Anke Blümm, Elizbeth Otto, and Patrick Rössler. The exhibitions run from May 9 to September 15. For more information, please visit the exhibition website. On the place of film in the Bauhaus movement, see Laura Frahm's recent book "Design in Motion: Film Experiments at the Bauhaus" (2022).

A new score for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was performed live at a screening at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt on February 17, 2024. The composer, former "Kraftwerk" musician Karl Bartos, worked for four years on this new electronic soundtrack, which is also available on CD. The film with the new score can be found here. For details about the music and a reading of Caligari as a "key work for transhumanism," see Andrian Kreye's enthusiastic review of the premiere ("Was für ein Triumph"). Bartos explains his "narrative music and sound design" project in this 12-minute video (in English).

The 27th San Francisco Silent Film Festival moves for the first time from the Castro Theater to San Francisco's historic Palace of Fine Art, April 10-14, 2024. Among others, the Festival will feature restorations of Die Strasse (Karl Grune, 1923) and G .W. Pabst's forgotten 1928 film Abwege (The Devious Path). For more information, click here.

The Stummfilmfestival Karlsruhe, directed and founded by Josef Jünger, will celebrate its 22th year of annual silent film festivals in 2024. There is also a new website with a list of previous festival programs and videos introducing rare silent films.

In a long review essay titled "Fragile, Resilient Weimar" in the NY Review of Books (February 8, 2024), Christopher R. Browning reflects on the precarious politics of the republic between Hitler's two attempts--in 1923 and 1933--to overthrow democracy. Browning's essay provides an important framework for examining Weimar films, which are inherently part of that history.

Fritz Lang made a brief audio recording ("Leitworte") about the universal language of cinema to mark the premiere of Metropolis in January 1927. The recording, transcript, and translation are here.

Filmportal.de offers a succinct introduction to Weimar film in English (with valuable links to historical documents in translation).

Geschichte des dokumentarischen Films in Deutschland, vol. 2, the authoritative 673- page history of documentary cinema in the Weimar Republic, is now available online. Edited by Klaus Kreimeier, Antje Ehmann and Jean-Paul Goergen, it was published by Reclam in 2005. Vol. 1 (Kaiserreich) and vol. 3 (Drittes Reich) are also online. Vol. 4 (nach 1945) is in production.

Zensurkarten -- An extensive collection of German film censorship records is now digitized and available online. (Thanks to Oliver Hanley for sharing this information here).

LETTER FROM BERLIN

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From our German correspondent Philipp Stiasny

Dear friends, scholars, and fans of Weimar cinema,

What’s new from Germany? Which events are on the horizon? Which restoration projects are underway, and which long-unseen films are finally returning to the screen?

It is perhaps worth noting that the unusually rich array of Weimar cinema programming we saw this past fall and winter is something of a rarity. Let me highlight just two series. First, the retrospective “Filmpionierinnen! Regisseurinnen in Deutschland 1917 bis 1932,” which ran from October to December 2025 at Berlin’s Zeughauskino and brought many lesser-known treasures to light.

Closely connected to this series was the first presentation of a major work of proletarian cinema from the Weimar Republic: the gripping and highly watchable Berlin unemployment drama “Lohnbuchhalter Kremke” (1930), newly restored by the Deutsche Kinemathek. It was directed with great assurance by Marie Harder, who was also an active film critic. Her earlier film “Der Weg einer Proletarierin” (1929) is now available online in the Federal Archives’ Digital Reading Room. Harder is a name worth remembering.

Beyond Germany, in Vienna, the Metro Kinokulturhaus hosted another remarkable silent film retrospective with superb live musical accompaniment in January and February 2026, dedicated to one of Weimar cinema’s most popular genres: the sensation film. Under the title “First Action Heroes: Blockbuster der Stummfilmzeit,” the program featured several new restorations from the Filmmuseum Düsseldorf, including Luciano Albertini’s “Der Mann auf dem Kometen” (1925) and Harry Piel’s “Was ist los im Zirkus Beely?” (1927). It is no exaggeration to say that this series marks a significant step forward in exploring and presenting the popular dimensions of Weimar cinema and their roots in the Wilhelmine era.

The Metro Kinokulturhaus in Vienna continued in February and March 2026 its Ellen Richter retrospective on the occasion of the publication of Ellen Richter. Die große Unbekannte des Weimarer Kinos (Vienna: Synema, 2026), co-authored by Oliver Hanley and myself.

Looking ahead to spring 2026, no comparably ambitious or innovative Weimar cinema series have yet been announced—at least none that I am aware of—so the following overview remains necessarily selective.

In January, the Film Preservation Weekend took place at the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in Frankfurt, presenting recent restorations under the heading “Filmerbe – digital”. Among them were two late German silent films: Erich Schönfelder’s crime thriller “Trust der Diebe” (1929), starring Eva von Berne as an undercover agent, and Gennaro Righelli’s circus film “Sensation im Wintergarten” (1929).

Also in January, the DFF presented the newly published volume Weimar, weiblich. Filmpionierinnen des Kinos der Moderne (1918–1933), edited by Daria Berten, Annika Haupts, Anna Heizmann, and Kristina Jaspers (Munich: edition text+kritik, 2026). This important collection promises to become a key resource for research on the women who shaped Weimar cinema as writers, directors, and producers.

From March 5 to 24, Berlin-based silent film musician Stephan von Bothmer presented his annual festival, this year devoted to the fantasy genre. Alongside “Nosferatu” (1922) and “Metropolis” (1927), the program includes rarely screened restorations from the Munich Film Museum, such as “Der Student von Prag” (1926), starring Conrad Veidt, and “Alraune” (1928), with Brigitte Helm—both directed by Henrik Galeen. This selection rightly places Galeen, known as the screenwriter of “Der Golem” and “Nosferatu,” in the spotlight as a director in his own right.

At the same time, Dresden hosted the 11th Dresden Silent Film Festival (March 8–15), where live musical accompaniment will once again lend special vitality to the screenings. Alongside “Buddenbrooks” (1923) and “Pandora’s Box” (1929), the program includes Fritz Lang’s visionary “Die Frau im Mond” (1929). A particular highlight is a full day devoted to animation, with a special focus on Lotte Reiniger. Her silhouette film “Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed” (1926), which premiered one hundred years ago, remains a masterpiece.

The centenary of “Prinzen Achmed” will likely lead to further screenings in the coming months, ideally with live music. One such occasion will be the International Silent Film Days organized by the Munich Film Museum in July. On July 17, the program will include a double feature of Marie Harder’s films, “Der Weg einer Proletarierin” and “Lohnbuchhalter Kremke,” as well as another screening of Harry Piel’s “Was ist los im Zirkus Beely?”

Munich will also host the premiere of a newly restored version of the Heimkehrerfilm “Die Hintertreppe” (1921) on July 10—a deeply moving chamber play written by Carl Mayer, with Henny Porten, Fritz Kortner, and Wilhelm Dieterle caught in a tragic love triangle.

For those unable—or unwilling—to travel to Berlin, Dresden, or Munich, television offers an alternative. In May, arte will broadcast the premiere of the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation’s new restoration of G.W. Pabst’s psychoanalytic drama “Geheimnisse einer Seele” (1926). First shown at the Berlinale in February, it features a newly composed score by Yongbom Lee, which may strike some viewers as either intriguingly experimental or unsuccessful.

Amid the focus on silent cinema, Weimar sound films tend to receive less attention. Yet they deserve renewed recognition. One example is Kurt Bernhardt’s historical war film “Die letzte Kompagnie” (1930), long dismissed as proto-fascist heroism. Now restored by the Murnau Foundation, this visually and acoustically impressive film premiered again in February 2026.

Looking ahead, the Filmförderanstalt (FFA) on behalf of the German Federal Film Board, approved funding for the restoration of several films of Weimar cinema as part of its program called Förderprogramm Filmerbe. Some of these restorations will soon be available for screening. Among these are “Das ewige Rätsel“ (1919, Josef Coenen), “Die Minderjährige” (1921, Alfred Tostary), “Brüder. Zwischen Himmel und Erde” (1922/23, Rochus Gliese) and “§ 173 St.G.B. Blutschande” (1929, James Bauer), restored by DFF; and “Der Farmer aus Texas” (1925, Joe May) and “Die Brüder Schellenberg (1926, Karl Grune), restored by the Murnau-Stiftung.

In fall 2025, more restoration projects for Weimar cinema were granted from FFA, and while we must be patient, these projects promise exciting rediscoveries—films both unfamiliar and full of promise.

For example, the Murnau-Stiftung is working on “Vendetta” (1919) with Pola Negri, Rochus Gliese's “Der verlorene Schatten” (1920), Ludwig Berger's “Ein Glas Wasser” (1922), Wilhelm Thiele's ‘Liebeswalzer’ (1930), and Alfred Zeisler's polit thriller “D-Zug 13 hat Verspätung” (1931); the Deutsche Kinemathek on “Jenseits der Straße” (1929) and “Cyankali” (1930); the DFF on Robert Land's “Venus im Frack” (1927), Anatole Litvak's “Das Lied einer Nacht” (1932) and Carl Froelich's “Gitta entdeckt ihr Herz” (1932), the Filmmuseum Düsseldorf on Rudolf Meinert's “Dudu, ein Menschenschicksal” (1923) and “Rasputin” (1932) by Adolf Trotz.

To close on a personal note: I am particularly looking forward to the FFA-funded restoration of Hans Steinhoff’s London underworld thriller “Nachtgestalten” (1929), as well as the spirited riot girl comedy “Die Republik der Backfische” (1928), starring Käthe von Nagy.

In difficult and uncertain times, it is reassuring to see the continued preservation and rediscovery of Weimar cinema. There is every reason for optimism—the best may still lie ahead.

Yours sincerely,
Philipp Stiasny