Vox Humana

The interview archive of the filmmaker and film critic Gideon Bachmann (1927–2016) contains over 500 interviews with film personalities from 1955 to 2012, making it one of the most comprehensive interview archives in the field of film history after World War II and orally conveying the transformation from Hollywood's studio system to New American Cinema and the European Nouvelles Vague. The archive was acquired by the ZKM in 2014. 

Gideon Bachmann was an outstanding interviewer, whose archive contains authentic recordings of the most important film personalities of the 20th century.

Born in Heilbronn in 1927, Bachmann had studied in Hans Richter's film class at City College in New York and founded a film club and a film magazine together with Jonas Mekas. From 1955 to 1964 he produced the radio shows »Film Forum« and »The Film Art«, which were broadcast weekly on the New York radio station WBAI. In the 30 minute shows, Bachmann commented and reviewed current film productions and introduced the people behind the films in interviews. Bachmann let the interviews happen as it was offered: without a catalogue of questions or restraint and with a lot of eloquence and understanding. He argues, laughs and flirts with his guests.

In the first programs, filmmakers and artists from his New York circle of acquaintances stepped up to the microphone: Shirley Clarke, John Cassavetes and Robert Frank are all representatives of New American Cinema. Over time, interviews followed with well-known directors and actors of classic Hollywood film, such as Lillian Gish, James Stewart and Frank Capra. But Bachmann also interviewed European filmmakers who emigrated to the USA, such as Jean Renoir, René Clair or Hans Richter. However, Bachmann conducted most of his conversations with the young, then largely unknown filmmakers of European auteur films, including Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini. Bachmann recorded the unedited interviews on more than 450 ¼ Zoll magnetic tapes, which were restored, digitized, recorded and indexed at the ZKM in cooperation with students of the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe (HfG).

Text: Christian Haardt

Contributors to the digitization / inventory
Max Clausen (HfG)
Marie Falke (HfG)
Víctor Fancelli (HfG)
Hans Gass (ZKM)
Christian Haardt (HfG)
Olivia Toffolini (HfG)
 

Artists represented in the Vox Humana Archives

Fahrid Murray Abraham, Gianni Agnelli, Guido Alberti, Nick Alexander, Lewis M. Allen, Irwin Allen, Néstor Almendros, Aleksandr Alov, Hollis Alpert, Robert Altman, Francesco Aluigi, Sergio Amidei, Lindsay Anderson, Joseph L. Anderson, Lindsay Anderson, Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, Theo Angelopoulos, Jean-Jacques Annaud, George Antheil, Emile de Antonio, Michelangelo Antonioni, Fanny Ardant, Peggy Ashcroft, Olivier Assayas, Gideon Bachmann, Carroll Baker, Yannis Bakoyannopoulos, Burt Balaban, Gian Vittorio Baldi, Victor Banerjee, Uri Barbash, Julian Barnes, Paul Bartel, Cecilia Bartoli, Joy Batchelor, Jean-Jacques Beineix, Vito De Bellis, Marco Bellocchio, Jean Benoît-Lévy, Luigi Benzi, Antonio  Ber Ciani, Candice Berger, Ingrid Bergman, Ingmar Bergman, Luis García Berlanga, Bernardo Bertolucci, Liliana Betti, Laura Betti, Pietro Bianchi, Theodore Bikel, Gunnar Björnstrand, Maurice Blackburn, Betsy Blair, Alessandro Blasetti, Hans Christian Blech, Humphrey Bogart, Peter  Bogdanovich, Radost Bokel, Mauro Bolognini, William Bradford Huie, Stan Brakhage, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Marlon Brando, Tinto Brass, Michel Brault, Albert Brenner, Robert Bresson, Peter Brook, Louise Brooks, Edith Bruck, Michael Cacoyannis, Michel  Caen, Michael Caine, Frank Capra, James Card, Jack Cardiff, Claudia Cardinale, Barbara Carrera, John Cassavetes, Enzo Girolami Castellari, Liliana Cavani, Nino Cerruti, Charlie Chaplin, Sergio Citti, René Clair, Shirley Clarke, Geneviève Cluny, Robert  Cohen, Henri Colpi, Luigi Comencini, Sean Connery, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Grauco Cosmi, Constantin Costa-Gavras, Kevin Costner, Guy L. Coté, Nicole Courcel, Paul Cox, John Crosby, Salvador Dalí, Tom Daly, Damiano Damiani, Jules Dassin, LaNoue Davenport, Desmond Davies, Judy Davis, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gene Deitch, Tonino Delli Colli, Mylène Demongeot, Maya Deren, Rolando Diaz, Thorold Dickinson, Marlene Dietrich, Edward Dmytryk, Plácido Domingo, Helen van Dongen, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Istvan Dosai, Ray Doyle, Dan Drasin, Robert Drew, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Mojmír Drvota, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Lillian Duff, Bret Easton Ellis, Umberto Eco, Lotte Eisner, Denholm Elliott, James Ellroy, Herman Engel, Soraya Esfandiari-Bachtiari, Ernestine Evans, Maddalena Fabbri, Franco Fabrizi, Edna Fainaru, Rossella Falk, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Robert Favre Le Bret, Federico Fellini, Ida Fellini, Ricardo Fellini, Mel Ferrer, Marco Ferreri, Mary Field, Barbara De Fina, Peter Finch, John E.  Fitzgerald, Francis Flaherty, Frances H. Flaherty, David Flaherty, Monica Flaherty Frassetto, Peter Fleischmann, Hugh M. Flick, Jürgen  Flimm, Harrison Ford, Carl Foreman, John Foreman, Georges Franju, Robert Frank, Peter Freuchen, Peter Frye, Edra Gale, Bruno Ganz, Jack Garfein, Romain Gary, Armand Gatti, Rinaldo Geleng, Sergei Gerassimow, Pietro Germi, George Gershwin, Piero Gherardi, Lou Gilbert, Lillian Gish, Jimmy Giuffre, Scott Glenn, Anna Gobbi, Jean-Luc Godard, Jack Goelman, Menahem Golan, 0 Goldin, Lelia Goldoni, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Johnny  Green, Peter Greenaway, Germaine Greer, Cynthia Grenier, John Grierson, John Griffin, Richard Griffith, Fernande Grudet, Beatriz Guido, Alec Guinness, Mark Hamill, Bernie Hamilton, Curtis Harrington, Hilary Harris, Hal Hartley, Laurence Harvey, Cyrus Harvey Jr., Wojchiech Has, Nigel Havers, Ron Havilio, Monte Hellman, Frank Herbert, Janos Herskó, Werner Herzog, Fred Hift, Patricia Highsmith, Jerome Hill, Howard Hodgkin, David Hollister, Kenyon Hopkins, John Houseman, Ian Hugo, Harvey Humphray, Isabelle Huppert, John Hurt, John Huston, Jerald Intrator, Teiji Ito, Joris Ivens, Wladimir Iwaschow, Aleksander Jackiewicz, Glenda Jackson, Lewis Jacobs, Miklós Jancsó, Stole Janković, Derek Jarman, Vojtěch Jasný, Knut Erik Jensen, Freddie Jones, Erland Josephson, Sergei Jutkewitsch, Michail Kalatosow, Shindō Kaneto, Pierre Kast, Boris Kaufman, Ömer Kavur, Irvin Kershner, Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács, Edward Kingsley, Nastassja Kinski, Alexander Kluge, Arthur Knight, Masaki Kobayashi, Kenyon Kopkins, Barbara Kopple, Rosalind Kossoff, Stanley Kramer, Sylvia Kristel, William Kronick, Václav Krška, Rodolfo Kuhn, Francis Lacassin, Gavin Lambert, John Fancis Lane, Fritz Lang, Léo Lania, Alberto Lattuada, Edouard de  Laurot, Richard Leacock, David Lean, Wim van Leer, Lotte Lenya, Sergio Leone, Carl Lerner, Carlo Levi, Albert Lewin, Gunnel Lindblom, Viveca Lindfors, Ernest Lindgren, Carlo Lizzani, Enrico Lo Verso, Ken Loach, Julia Loktev, Gina Lollobrigida, Ephraim S. London, Pare Lorentz, Joseph Losey, Linda Lovelace, Nanni Loy, George Lucas, Sidney Lumet, Susan Lynn, Rolf Lyssy, Lorin Maazel, Ruggero Maccari, Dwigh Macdonald, Guy Madison, Anna Magnani, Dušan Makavejev, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Curzio Malaparte, Louis Malle, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Daniel Mann, Roger Manvell, Dacia Maraini, Félix Máriássy, Francesco Maselli, Giulietta Masina, Marcello Mastroianni, Thomas Mauch, Juliette Mayniel, Jim McBride, Norman McLaren, Jonas Mekas, Adolfas Mekas, Jean-Pierre Melville, Bianca Mercatali, Roberto Mercatali, Melina Mercouri, Sidney Meyers, Bolesław Michałek, Andrei  Michalkow-Kontschalowski, Toshirō Mifune, Kate Millett, Sandra Milo, Vincente Minelli, Walter Mirisch, Taijana Mogilansky, Alberto Moravia, Al Morgan, Ilan Moshenson, Andrzej Munk, Fredi Melchior Murer, Don Murray, Vladimir Naumov, John Navone, Alfred Newman, Maja Niles, Susan Oliver, Ermanno Olmi, Jean Oser, Irene Papas, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Donn Alan Pennebaker, Mark Peploe, Curtis Bill Pepper, Wolfgang Petersen, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michel Piccoli, Christopher Plummer, Sidney Poitier, Roman Polanski, Martin Poll, Gerald Pratley, Otto Preminger, Gerald Pretley, Schanna Prochorenko, David Puttnam, Diana Quick, Anthony Quinn, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Tony Randall, Satyajit Ray, Stanley Reed, Karel Reisz, Edgar  Reitz, Jean  Renoir, Alain Resnais, Tony Richardson, Donald Richie, Hans Richter, Leni Riefenstahl, Nelo Risi, Martin Ritt, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Glauber Rocha, Melonee Rodgers, Lionel Rogosin, Michail Romm, Brunello Rondi, Francesco Rosi, Roberto Rossellini, Nino Rota, Paul Rotha, Jean Rouch, Carlo Rustichelli, Winona Ryder, Gilbert Salachas, Samson Samonow, Alain Sarde, John Sayles, Johannes Schaaf, Dore Schary, Volker Schlöndorff, Maria Schneider, Xaver Schwarzenberger, Jules Victor Schwerin, Hanna Schygulla, Martin Scorsese, Jean Seberg, Jakow Segel, Ousmane Sembène, Takashi Shimura, Kaneto Shindō, Vittorio  De Sica, Charles A. Siepmann, Simone Signoret, Vittorio Sindoni, Robert Siodmak, Douglas Sirk, Andrzej Skawina, Jehoschua Sobol, Fernando Solanas, Susan Sontag, Alberto Sordi, Mark Sorkin, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Harry Dean Stanton, Cecile Starr, Frank Stauffacher, Aleksandr Stefanovič, Bernice Stegers, Rod Steiger, John Steiner, Bert Stern, Josef von Sternberg, James Stewart, Ingeborg Steyer, Paolo Stoppa, Henri Storck, Louis Clyde Stoumen, David Stratton, Jean-Marie Straub, Joseph Strick, Arne Sucksdorff, Donald Sutherland, Richard Sylbert, István Szabó, Julianna Szaniawska, Maryan Talbot, Daniel Talbot, Alain Tanner, Andrei Tarkowski, Jacques Tati, Paolo Taviani, , Virgil Thomson, Ingrid Thulin, Lionel Tiger, Roger Tilton, Daniel Tinayre, Jerzy Toeplitz, Aldo Tonti, Leopoldo Torre Nillson, Vincent Tovell, Fabio Traversa, Leopoldo Trieste, Margarethe von Trotta, Grigori Tschuchrai, Parker Tyler, Lucy Ulrich, Peter Ustinov, Florestano Vancini, Agnès Varda, Gianni Di Venanzo, José Luis de Vilallonga, Luchino Visconti, Roman Vishniac, Monica Vitti, Amos Vogel, Andrzej Wajda, Jerry Wald, Ruth Waldburger, Eli Wallach, Franz Waxman, Lazar Wechsler, Helene Weigel, Jiří Weiss, Mel Welles, Wim Wenders, Lina Wertmüller, Walter Wood, Roger Young, Vernon Young, Robert Youngson, Anja Zahringer, Krzysztof Zanussi, Cesare Zavattini, Franco Zeffirelli, Fred Zinnemann.