25 April 2022

19th Academy Discussion [and …]
The journey to Portbou / In search of Walter Benjamin

Film screening and discussion with Selma-Lou Hass, Sophie Narr, Uwe Timm, Erdmut Wizisla and Jeanine Meerapfel

Monday, 2 May, 7 pm
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
Press tickets from presse@adk.de, Tel. 030 200 5715 14.
Reservations requested

While fleeing from Germany’s National Socialists, Walter Benjamin took his own life in Portbou in 1940. Accompanied by the Walter Benjamin Archive and KUNSTWELTEN, the education programme of the Akademie der Künste, secondary school leavers from the Rosa Luxemburg Gymnasium in Berlin studied Benjamin’s life and work and, from 18 to 23 September 2021, retraced his steps across the Pyrenees. Sophie Narr’s documentary film of the trip will be screened for the first time. In memorable images she has captured the various stages of the trip, the visit to the Passagen memorial created by Dani Karavan in Portbou, the crossing of the Pyrenees and the conversations on site – conversations on the historical events and the relevance of refuge and exile today.
The film screening will be followed by a discussion with Selma-Lou Hass, Sophie Narr, Uwe Timm, Erdmut Wizisla and Jeanine Meerapfel of the value of and need for cultural education projects.

The project initiated by Akademie President and filmmaker Jeanine Meerapfel is the result of a special collaboration between KUNSTWELTEN, the Akademie der Künste’s programme for cultural education headed by Marion Neumann, and the Walter Benjamin Archive directed by Erdmut Wizisla, an institution of the Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur at the Akademie der Künste.
Filmmaker Sophie Narr was a fellow of the JUNGE AKADEMIE in 2009 (Film and Media Arts) and has since repeatedly held film workshops with children and adolescents as part of the Akademie’s education programme. Akademie member Uwe Timm also meets schoolchildren, most recently in Ueckermünde in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in readings and talks. Selma-Lou Hass, one of the school-leavers who went on the trip, will take part in the subsequent discussion.

About the film
BERLIN – PORTBOU. Auf den Spuren Walter Benjamins
Director: Sophie Narr, documentary film, D/ES 2021/2022, 86 min

The next issue of the Journal der Künste (mid-May) will include a diary The Journey to Portbou. The text is available in advance on request. The Journal der Künste is a publication of the Akademie der Künste.

Event details
19th Academy Discussion [and …]
The Journey to Portbou / In search of Walter Benjamin
Monday, 2 May 2022, 7 pm
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
In German
Admission € 6/4, free for under-18s
Ticket reservations: 030 200 57-10 00; ticket@adk.de
Online tickets: www.adk.de/tickets 
Press ticket reservations: 030 200 57–15 14, presse@adk.de
Current hygiene rules