Herbert Achternbusch's anarchic universe
He is known among film connoisseurs as the author of the story from which Werner Herzog adapted his film 'Heart of Glass'. The prodigious author of about 37 books, 18 plays, and numerous radio dramas, Achternbusch claims to have taken up filmmaking because it hurt to sit after writing so much. A critical evaluation of his work is extremely difficult.
A very brief list of his acknowledged influences gives an indication of a very complicated frame of mind: Jerry Lewis, John Ford, Charlie Chaplin, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and perhaps most important, Bavarian satirist of the 1920s, Karl Valentin. His films are set in a no-man's land between dream and reality, but made with references to actual events and to his own life. The living and the dead encounter each other on the screen, and no one questions the validity. The films that Achternbusch has made comprise one of the most fiercely individualistic oeuvres in film history.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. As a director he was censored, his paintings were often misjudged and in his literary texts, he remains always undeniably autobiographical. Like no second artist and Bavarian, he unites anarchy with art. Herbert Achternbusch is one of the wildest spirits of Bavaria. Achternbusch always faced difficulty with public manifestation of his work. In all ranges, he follows his own way as a loner and a 'troublemaker'. He is extraordinarily productive. In order to lend to his subjective expression, he usually plays the main roles himself. He is always at the centre of his creative universe. Only in the 1990s, a retrospective of his films was organised. In 1994, Achternbusch was elected a member to the Bavarian Academy of the Arts.
The Goethe Institut Dhaka and Zahir Raihan Film Society jointly present six of Achternbusch's films from 8th to 10th June 2004 at the Germen Cultural Centre at Road No. 9, Dhanmondi.