Arte Preview: Umberto Eco. My Life
A film by Teri Wehn Damisch
Sat, October 06, 2012 8 pm CEST, Film Screening
His novels − above all "The Name of the Rose" − have brought Umberto Eco worldwide fame. However, the Italian is far more than a writer: he is essayist, media theorist, semiotician and expert scholar of the medieval period. With is talent for mediating complex scientific content in a comprehensible manner he delights both public and expert circles alike.
For the present portrait "Umberto Eco. Mein Leben" (ARTE France 2012, 52 Min., German), filmmaker Teri Wehn Damisch visited Eco at his home close to Rimini, and accompanied him to Milan and Paris. Surrounded by his huge collection of books, Umberto Eco holds forth on mementos and archival pictures. Always cheerful and generous, in interview, he also revealed himself as gifted story-teller: Eco recounts his eventful life, talks of his relationship to religion and to his success, and elaborates on his passion for crime novels and the city of Paris. The portrait was produced shortly before Eco‘s 80th birthday in January, 2012. It shows an immensely educated and, as always, energetic man bursting with ideas, who is currently working on numerous writing projects and who holds lectures throughout the world.

The ZKM | Karlsruhe shows "Umberto Eco. Mein Leben" as a preview for the first time in Germany after an introduction by Peter Weibel. Scheduled for broadcast on ARTE: October 10, 2012, at 9.35 p.m.

The French director, producer and scriptwriter, Teri Wehn Damisch was born in Paris and grew up in New York; she has been living and working in France since 1975. Damisch has realized numerous films, above all, thematizing the influence of the artists and scholars of contemporary history, such as set designer Alexandre Trauner, photographer André Kertész from Hungary, French philosopher and art historian Hubert Damisch, Canadian film maker and artist, Michael Snow, American artist Robert Morris, Canadian architect Phyllis Lambert, and Bulgarian literary theorist Julia Kristeva. Teri Wehn Damisch is married to French philosopher and art historian Hubert Damisch.
Organization / Institution
ZKM
Partners

Centre Culturel Franco-Allemand Karlsruhe ; arte