Literature and Film: Günter Kunert

Lecture by Film Historian Günter Agde

In German language

Throughout his life, the German poet Günter Kunert (1929–2019) wrote numerous texts for the cinema, and his films form a significant, yet hitherto largely unknown, part of the German cinematic repertoire. Kunert's short story "Zentralbahnhof" (1972), a work full of Kafkaesque ciphers and timeless and placeless allusions, has inspired quite a few German filmmakers to adapt this prose for the cinema.

Film historian Günter Agde presents Kunert's original text and two extremely contrasting films (made in 2008 and 2012), each dealing with Kunert's riddles and metaphors in its own way - and at the same time representing independent films still produced in analogue form. Kunert's text proved to be a provocative stimulus without abandoning the author's world skepticism or questioning his literary artistry.