The rhizomatic oeuvre of the German filmmaker Bernhard Marsch, a total filmmaker par excellence, constitutes a special cinema-micro cosmos unto its own. Simply put: His cinema miniatures open a viewer’s heart. Perhaps this is due to the mix of nostalgia and a spirit of optimism or departure that characterizes his films; it is certainly due to the poetry and drive that permeates his work. Added to this is his precise and loving gaze at the seemingly trivial. With his short films, Marsch in a sense writes a minor history of Germany from the margins: a trash-history, a Ramsch-history (“Ramsch”[junk or trash] is the name of his film production company).
Marsch, a member of the “Cologne Group” of contemporary German cinema (The Ross hosted two other filmmakers from this group in fall 2011) will be present to introduce and discuss with the audience his short film program consisting of a sample of the short films he’s made since 1986.