Giornate fetes Edgar Reitz

A film legend who stands out in the annals of the Venice Film Festival ever since 1984 and the premiere of the first series of Heimat, when the world discovered his remarkable talent, Edgar Reitz returns to the Lido tomorrow for a special award, a hotly anticipated masterclass, and the premiere of the restored version of Heimat 2 exactly thirty years after the film triumphed at Venice and went on to screen at Nanni Moretti’s Nuovo Sacher cinema.

Now, just about to turn ninety (on this coming November 1st), the master filmmaker, co-founder of the Ulm Film School with Alexander Kluge, will be honored with the special award instituted for the 75th anniversary of the Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo, handed to him by its president, Father Davide Milani. The awards ceremony takes place tomorrow, September 8th, at 10:30 am at the Hotel Excelsior.

In the afternoon, Edgar Reitz will be onstage for the third masterclass arranged in collaboration with the Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia together with Giornate degli Autori and Isola Edipo. For the occasion, the first two episodes of the restored Heimat 2 will have their world premiere at Venice. The talk moderated by Ilaria Ravarino with film historian Giovanni Spagnoletti will be held in Sala Laguna at 4 pm.

Right after Venice, the Heimat legend will be rekindled in Rome, in a joint initiative between Italian distributor Viggo and Rome’s Goethe Institute. Starting mid-September, at the Casa del Cinema, every weekend until the end of the year first-time audiences and Reitz fans can watch the complete version of the monumental trilogy on German history, including the extra chapter, Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision, from 2013. It’s an unprecedented marathon, one for the record books, sure to thrill fans of great auteur cinema, who finally have the chance to experience all the epic sweep of a work that chronicles all the transformations of the century just past.