uni'alumni 2012_ENG

There are movie theaters that get along without plush seating and ­expensive sound systems. The aka- Filmclub is one of them. Lecture hall 2006 in Collegiate Building II at the Uni- versity of Freiburg is transformed into a cinema up to four times a week. It is ­neither glamorous nor comfortable, but the room fills up when a classic is on the program. Then the students fold down the bare wooden chairs and un- pack what they have brought with them: apple tart, salad, beer. The club was founded by law student Helmut Götte and medical student Wolfram Dischler in 1957. The idea was to “introduce a lit- tle nostalgic flair into Freiburg’s cinema landscape,” as Götte recalls today. In the early years the team was small. There were four people to hang up post- ers, organize the projector, and pick up the heavy film reels from the train sta- tion with a handcart – sometimes not until 5 p.m., two hours before the screening. “We got pretty nervous, but we usually managed to get everything ready in time.” The films were shown in various lecture halls, in the theater of the Old University, and on the week- ends in the “Kamera,” a tiny movie the- ater above the theater passage. The hall was always full to capacity: “Some- times it was so packed we had to show the film a second time.” The club kept to certain standards in its selection of films, showing classics like The Blue Angel, The Battleship Potemkin, or ­silent films by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and Fritz Lang. Everything from the Muppets to Lars von Trier Today the aka-Filmclub has around 40 active members. One of them is ­Johannes Litschel, who studies forest science and is active in the club’s com- mittee. He has always been interested in films, says the 27-year-old, and so he decided to go to one of the club’s meet- ings a few years ago. He had expected to find an elite group of cinema buffs who knew everything about even the most obscure films, but the club’s struc- tures are open. Everyone who is inter- ested can get involved. A meeting is held each semester at which all mem- bers vote on which films to include in the program. The club still adheres to the goal of only showing “artistically valuable” or “historically and sociologi- cally significant” films as described in its charter, but that doesn’t stop it from including films like The Muppet Christ- mas Carol in the program during advent. “Generally speaking, we have two types of screenings,” explains Litschel. “We have film series and individual films, some of them even fairly recent, like Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. Today the distributers send the films directly to the club’s office. They are still heavy, and they have to be wound onto two big reels. “We bring them into KG II on a handcart. That part hasn’t changed,” says Litschel. The technology, on the other hand, has undergone some improvements: The club and the univer- sity recently invested in a surround sound system and improved the acous- tics of the hall. Now the only thing miss- ing is plush seating. Stephanie Streif Helmut Götte (right) founded the film club in 1957. Johannes Litschel is the current chair. Photo: Streif aka-Filmclub The first meeting of the Academic Film Club, aka-Filmclub for short, took place on 22 November 1957. The first screen- ing was 18 days later. The title of the film: All the King’s Men. The aka-Film- club is a registered association and has supported itself since its founding. It has a 35 millimeter film projector, several Super 8 cameras, and its own office with a darkroom, a library, and a crank machine. The club shares a pro- jector for DVD screenings with the uni- versity. Patrons have to purchase an ID card for 2.50 euros per semester and then pay 1.50 euros for admission to each film. » www.aka-filmclub.de PortrÄt The aka-Filmclub Is a Freiburg Institution with Open Structures Fuller than for a lot of lectures: The club shows its films in lecture hall 2006. Photo: aka-Filmclub Academic, Demanding, Different 27