In “Comic Book Confidential,” Ron Man profiles the best-known comic artists from the USA. A gallery of comic classics emerges that spans Jack Kirby’s “Captain America” through Will Eisner’s “The Spirit” to the underground comics of the 1960s and ends with “MAD” magazine. The documentary film links questions of politics and society with graphic answers. Along the way, it traces the history of the emancipation of a literary genre and its artists.
When: Monday, 7 June 2010, 7.30 p.m.
Where: Jewish Museum Berlin, Education Room, Old Building, Level 1
“Waltz with Bashir” narrates the overcoming of trauma: The scriptwriter and director Ari Folman fought as an Israeli soldier in the first Lebanese war. His protagonist has lost his memory and starts a talking cure. The memories slowly return and original film recordings burst into the animated film scenes.
This Israeli/German/French coproduction has been awarded several prizes since its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
When: Monday, 14 June 2010, 7.30 p.m.
Where: Jewish Museum Berlin, Education Room, Old Building, Level 1
Robert Crumb is entwined in a wealth of stories, most of them true. He paid for the house in which he now lives in France with six sketch books. Shortly before Crumb moved there in 1993, Terry Zwigoff managed to find a way into the comic artist’s otherwise hermetic existence and paints an intimate portrait in this film. Interviews with Crumb, his brothers Maxon and Charles, and his wives and girlfriends give an insight into the life of the controversial hero of underground comics.
When: Monday, 21 June 2010, 7.30 p.m.
Where: Jewish Museum Berlin, Education Room, Old Building, Level 1
Even as a child, the comic artist Harvey Pekar was eccentric and at odds with his environment. Later too, in his filing job in a hospital, he sees his life as a disaster. The comic hero of the same name is not in much better shape. In the semi-autobiographical film portrait “American Splendor,” both have their say: the artist and his comic hero, as well as the artist’s family and friends and their comic figures.
The film combines comic animation with acted scenes and documentary recordings and creates an intense portrait of an artistic personality.
When: Monday, 28 June 2010, 7.30 p.m.
Where: Jewish Museum Berlin, Education Room, Old Building, Level 1
Georg Stefan Troller interviews - insistently and with cinematic brilliance - known and unknown contemporaries. “Von Katzen und Mäusen,” (Of cats and mice) is the name of his portrait of Art Spiegelman, whom he accompanied on a trip to Poland in 1987.
In this unusual documentary Art Spiegelman talks about his childhood and the power of comics, about his time in the New York and San Francisco underground scenes and last but not least about his successes and creative crises.
When: Monday, 5 July 2010, 7.30 p.m.
Where: Jewish Museum Berlin, Education Room, Old Building, Level 1
From here Layout elements with no regards to the content: