White Films

White is more than a color, and certainly more than a blank surface, but rather the sum of all other colors. It brightens up, and glistens like nothing else. And yet it is considered to be "achromatic". In the cinema, white is the color of beginnings, and even a precondition: Without a white screen, the film cannot be projected, at least not in the way it was intended. As the velvet curtain opens, we look at the screen in anticipation, waiting for the images to appear. Children often conquer it enthusiastically before or after a movie, because it is an ideal space for shadow play. In countless films, white assumes an almost metaphysical meaning: It signifies innocence, purity, silence, emptiness - or peace. In stark contrast to such lofty concepts, advertisers for detergent have felt the need to transcend it in a very mundane way. They want us to believe that perfect laundry must be whiter than white. Our collection brings together films that explore many aspects of cinematic whiteness. Sometimes it shines "innocently," even in black-and-white films like "Battleship Potemkin," when the baby carriage carrying a baby in spotless white laundry tumbles down the stairs in Odessa. In "Pawo," a short feature, white is the source of all storytelling: only the artful strokes of a draftsman create figures out of the white void that come alive, move, experience something, experience themselves. In some films, white snow covers the world and all sorrows with fresh innocence, in others, white in its "purity" becomes a stylistic tool that allows us to focus on architecture, structure, and form. In any case: white in the cinema always leads to new discoveries to make you marvel.