Bauhaus: Broad Underground Film Series
An influential art school operational in Germany from 1919 to 1933, the Bauhaus championed the union of art and design. In 1926, Bauhaus master László Moholy-Nagy proclaimed, “give me or the Bauhaus an experimental film laboratory, then we can begin our work.” While Moholy’s plan for a film school at the Bauhaus failed to materialize in Germany, the school’s faculty and students experimented widely in film and moving images.
This program gestures to the range of Bauhaus enthusiasm about film by recreating a program of “Absolute Film” first screened at the sold-out, 900-seat Ufa Palast in Berlin in 1925 and later repeated at the Bauhaus the following year. Featuring major works of the European avant-garde that intersected with Bauhaus aesthetic strategies and utopian aspirations, our selections expand on the Absolute Film program to also include a few examples of Moholy’s own filmmaking and film theory, from early experiments in Germany to films produced during his rebooting of the Bauhaus in Chicago. There and through World War II, Moholy finally realized his ambitions for an “institute of light.”
Broad Underground is an ongoing collaboration between the MSU Broad, Michigan State University Film Studies program, and the Department of English at MSU. This year’s partnering venue is The Robin Theatre in REO Town, Lansing. Special thanks to the Abrams Planetarium and Lansing Public Media Center for their continued support.
Plan to arrive early to check out the galleries before this event! Our galleries close to the public at 7pm.
