Filmtank - Nature Before Us Die Natur vor uns (2008)
Nature Before Us
aka Die Natur vor uns
Alfred Ehrhardt (1901-1984) is regarded as one of the most important photographers of the new objectivity. Its large Fotozyklen come from the Wadden Sea, the Curonian Spit and from Iceland. His films also, the parallel to his photographic work, deal with these natural areas, as well as with the architecture of the housing of bivalve molluscs, sea snails and corals. He was awarded several Bundesfilmpreise for his films and numerous awards at international film festivals. The nature of the documentary records the work before us Alfred Ehrhardt's in the various places of his creation. In the northern German Wadden Sea, and in the countryside as well as Iceland and the Curonian Spit at the Bauhaus in Dessau, the Ehrhardt in the 1920s by the painters Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky received important impulses for his artistic work.
Ehrhardt was a “conservative modern”, who, with his photos and movies a respectful treatment of nature. He was the understanding of nature as a pure resource for the people in question. The film examines, on the basis of Alfred Ehrhardt's work, but also our present day understanding of nature and landscape: As edification and resource has at the same time subject to the human nature. That exceeded the limits of the exploitation are quickly and the stock of the species and thus also of the shapes of the “artist” in nature is at risk have already decades ago, artists such as Alfred Ehrhardt recalls.