Dynamik der Großstadt – zum Ursprung der Großstadtsinfonien

In his avant-garde film »Dynamik der Großstadt« László Moholy-Nagy portrays the endless flow of big city life. It is one of the first attempts in film history to visually capture the manifold moments of movement in a modern metropolis.

The typofoto film »Dynamik der Großstadt« [Dynamics of a Big City] (1921/1922) became part of a new genre that emerged in the 1920s in several places at the same time: die Großstadtsinfonie [The Big City Symphony] (even though Moholy-Nagy's film could only be realized after his death). The curators of the exhibition »bauhaus.film.expanded« Markus Heltschl and Thomas Tode give an introduction to the theme of »Die Großstadtsinfonie«.

The genre was also used by Schroeter and Berger. Their film »Dynamik der Groß-Stadt« (1922/2019) used the graphically exciting template as a starting point for an animation, which was set to music by Jonas Holfeld. In his interpretation of »Dynamik der Großstadt« (1988), Sascha Hardt used Moholy-Nagy's sketch for a video montage. The working group around Andreas Haus at the Berlin University of the Arts implemented the sketch as a 3-screen projection in their interpretation of »Dynamik der Groß-Stadt – Ein filmisches Experiment nach László Moholy-Nagy« (2006).

In addition, excerpts from Walter Ruttmann's »Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großstadt« (1927) will be shown. The Bauhäusler Lore Leudesdorff also played a central role in the production of Ruttmann's film, to which no explicit reference has been made so far. In addition, previously unpublished interviews from the 1980s shed new light on the famous film.