Other Media
Bob Dylan and Bertolt Brecht:
Lisa Mullins (of BBC "The World") speaks to American-Croatian singer Bettina Jonic about her 1975 album “The Bitter Mirror,” a Bob Dylan and Bertolt Brecht song cycle. http://www.pri.org/stories/2010-12-09/bettina-jonics-bitter-mirror
Hear IBS members Robert Cohen (New York University) and Marc Silberman (University of Wisconsin) interviewed on the BBC's "The World" program (09/15/2009); scroll down to the 7-minute MP3 podcast "German musings on American capitalism."
“The Threepenny Opera turns 75” (National Public Radio podcast, 2003, 8 mins.), with Kim Kowalke: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1416135
Smithsonian / Folkway Recordings offers several selections available for purchase (on CD or for download) with Brecht in English. Click this link here to access Smithsonian Folkways.
Discogs maintains a list of over 90 CD and vinyl recordings with Brecht material: http://www.discogs.com/artist/457141-Bertolt-Brecht
Der Hörverlag offers a 2 CD set produced by the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv with historical recordings of Brecht under the title An die Nachgeborenen: http://www.randomhouse.de/Hoerbuch/An-die-Nachgeborenen/Bertolt-Brecht/e387845.rhd
The Kurt Weill Edition at Capriccio recordings offer several of the Brecht-Weill musical dramas on CD: http://www.capriccio.at/kurt-weill-edition
Kreuzberg-Records in Berlin offers several CDs with Brecht songs and recording of Die Horatier und die Kuriatier: http://www.kreuzberg-records.de/verlag/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=brecht
Kuhle Wampe, or Who Owns the World? is available in a digitally restored and newly subtitled DVD. Special features: Slatan Dudow’s 1929 short on How the Worker Lives, and a 1974 documentary on Dudow by Volker Koepp with footage of Brecht and Dudow together in Paris. For pricing and orders: www.umass.edu/defa or email to defaorder@german.umass.edu. Also available from Suhrkamp Verlag (no subtitles, Region 2).
John Walter's film Theater of War (2008, 95 min.), starring Meryl Streep and based on Tony Kushner's adaptation of Brecht's Mother Courage, streams on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/110775691
Georg Wilhelm Pabst. The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper / L’Opéra de Quat’Sous). Based on the original musical play by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. German and French versions of 1931 with English subtitles. London: British Film Institute. BFIVD 661 [2 DVDs, Region 2 only]. http://www.bfi.org.uk/distribution/the_threepenny_opera
A new film by Peter Voigt called "Bertolt Brecht: Bild und Modell" (2007).
Click here for more information. For information on Voigt: http://www.petervoigt.info/Arbeit/Bertolt-Brecht---Bild-und-Mode/bertolt-brecht---bild-und-modell.html
Philippe Vincent (director). Fatzer: Ein Film nach dem Fragment von Bertolt
Brecht und nach der Montage von Heiner Müller. Aus dem Deutschen von
François Rey. Lyon: Compagnie Scènes, 2003. [DVD 100 min., b/w, in French
with German subtitles]
Bertolt Brecht Practice Pieces
1964; 28 mins.
Available from Facets in Chicago (www.facets.org)
Lotte Lenya, Roscoe Lee Browne, Micki Grant, and Oliver Clark are shown rehearsing two of Bertolt Brecht's largely unknown and seldom performed "Übungstücke für Schauspieler" (Practice Pieces for Actors). Brecht wrote these scenes to train actors in his own method for doing classical drama. Contains scenes from Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and a brief discussion of the theater of Brecht with Lenya and translator Michael Lebeck.
The Jewish Wife
New York: Phoenix Films [1978], 29 min.
A dramatization of Brecht's scene from “Fear and Misery of the Third Reich”. Director, Jeff Young; produced by Daniel Wigutow, Clark Worswick. Viveca Lindfors, Harris Yulin. Originally released by Play/Data Bureau, Inc., Strolling Players, Inc., 1971.
Bertolt Brecht
Princeton, NJ : Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1998. 53 min.
A Clark Television production for BBC Worldwide Television. Producer: Bob Portway; camera: Steve Cripps; music: Ed Kielb. Voice of Brecht: Philip Hurdwood. Originally produced in 1996.
"The German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer who developed the drama as a social and ideological forum is the subject of this program, in which those who knew him discuss his life and many works. Excerpts from plays such asMother Courage and Her Children, The Life of Galileo, The Good Woman of Setzuan, and Antigone highlight the development of Brecht's austere form of irregular verse. A later work, “The Short Organum for the Theater”, is the embodiment of Brecht's idea of true Marxist drama."
Brecht on Stage
Cicero, IL: Roland Collection of Films on Art, 1989. 25 min. A production for the Open University, BBC.
Director, writer: Richard Bessel; producer: Amanda Willett. Contemporaries and scholars of Bertolt Brecht discuss his work and its impact on modern theater.
Syberberg filmt bei Brecht 1953 (Puntila, Urfaust, Die Mutter)
Mit eingesprochenem Kommentar von Hans Mayer
Alexander Verlag, 90 min. ISBN 3-923854-80-3 By Hans Jürgen Syberberg. http://www.alexander-verlag.com/programm/titel/202-Syberberg_filmt_bei_BRECHT.html
The documentary images of scenes filmed at the Berliner Ensemble are silent and often blurred, but they are valuable as the only available cinematic documentation of Brecht rehearsing scenes at this own theater.
