Advertising, Rhythm, and the Filmic Avant-Garde in Weimar : Guido Seeber and Julius Pinschewer’s Kipho Film

Ce texte a déjà paru dans la revue October, N° 131, Winter 2010, p. 23–50. Nous remercions Michael Cowan de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici.

In September of 1925, readers leafing through Der Kinematograph or Lichtbildbühne or another such film journal might have encountered a strangely familiar sight : in an advertisement for a major exhibition of the German film and photography industries entitled “Kipho” (“Kino und Photo”), which was to be held in Berlin from September 25th to October 4th, there appeared the following sentence : “You must go to the Kipho ! [Du musst zur Kipho gehen ! ].” With its enigmatic injunction, the advertisement recalled another famous advertising campaign from the early days of Weimar cinema, namely that surrounding Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of D^r. Caligari (1920) . In the weeks before Caligari ’s release, advertisements had appeared in the public spaces of Berlin—and in trade journals such as Der Kinematograph—containing the enigmatic sentence “You must become Caligari ! [Du musst Caligari werden ! ].”