Lothar Baumgarten's URSPRUNG DER NACHT (Origin of the Night, FRG 1973/77) was shown in the Berlinale Forum in 1983. Now we have a print that was restored and digitalized with help from the German Federal Cultural Foundation that we are pleased to present in the presence of Lothar Baumgarten. The film does not have a narrative thread, its logic of development is visually grounded, it unfolds in images. Observation and lens, the "ethnographic eye" defines the procedure and time of release. Content develops from form, the story develops from symbolism. What is visible is invisible, there is only certainty in what is invisible. Binary oppositions such as inside and outside, day and night, the new and ancient world, myth and travel, nature and culture are in their antagonism and on alternating levels present at the same time. The structure of the images is as multilayered as the levels of a tropical forest and its myths, its smells and sounds. (lb) (27.2.)
