Ella Bergmann-Michel

A documentary about unemployed people who bought fruit and vegetables at moderate prices at the wholesale market and sold these in the streets of Frankfurt. Since they had no permits they were constantly with their bulky carts on the run from the police. One part of the film was shot at the fairgrounds in front of the wholesale market. Newspaper and lottery ticket vendors, propagandists offering their ware for a few pfennigs, all convey the mood of a time when need made people inventive.

A documentary about the artist Ella Bergmann-Michel, who was born in Paderborn in 1895 and died in Eppstein im Taunus in 1972. The film focuses primarily on her work: drawings and collages, photographs, and sequences from her documentary films from the late 1920s. The film brings together what is often mistakenly separated, namely the painter on the one hand and the documentary filmmaker on the other.

This video portrait by Prof. Gerd Roscher and Sünke Michel, Bergmann-Michel's daughter-in-law and photographer, explores the making of Ella Bergmann-Michel's experimental documentary films. It features still photographs from her films, which had not yet been recovered at the time, and handwritten intertitles are commented on by her son Hans Michel.

Ella Bergmann-Michel′s second movie "Erwerbslose kochen für Erwerbslose" was a assignment of the association of Frankfurt’s "Erwerblosenküchen" that during the world economy crisis could no longer serve meals for thousands of unemployed persons. The film was shown as a supporting film in many Frankfurt cinemas as well as in outdoor screenings at Frankfurt′s Hauptwache.

Ella Bergmann-Michel aborted her last film "Wahlkampf 1932 (Letzte Wahl)" about the election campaign in Frankfurt because of political reasons. During the shooting of the film Bergmann-Michel was arrested und parts of the films were destroyed. The film only exists as a fragment.

The 1931 documentary "Wo wohnen alte Leute" for the Dutch architect Mart Stam exhibits the modern and forward-looking architecture of the Budge home in Frankfurt. Its residents live in a comfortable in light-flooded environment with state-of-the-art single rooms. The film focuses on the presentation of an architecture that with its spatial structure supports the sociability of its residents.

The documentary shows water landscapes as transparent surfaces, transfigured views of nature without technical effects. Close-ups, fragments, and views without a horizon create the impression of flatness. Plants with their symmetrical mirror images on the water turn into graphic elements. Similarly the sharp reflexes of light on the waves, the shadows of the fish, like echo sounders, make visible the uneven ground of the riverbed.