A good helping of the Ruhr.

If this year you should find yourself going up the escalator in the Dortmund U while next to you a scantily clad miners’ band is playing a medley from "La Paloma" and the "Foreman’s Song" in a minor key – then film maker Adolf Winkelmann is responsible. This expert in droll characters will be transforming the inside and exterior of the U-Tower with magical pictures, fictional window scenes and surprising perspectives. An interview.

Actor August Zirner and Adolf Winkelmann in rehearsal for one of the window scenes from the film installation "Flying Pictures“.
Photo: Winkelmann Filmproduktion GmbH 2009

Mr Winkelmann, what exactly are you planning to do with the U-Tower?

Visitors will be greeted in the entrance foyer by 11 connected screens, showing panoramic pictures of the Ruhr, taken at crossings, by canals, in factories, in the countryside... On the high vertical wall of the first, second and third storeys visitors will be introduced to people of the Ruhr – not real people, but rather a distillation from all the characters I have come across during 50 years in the Ruhr. They will be performed by actors such as August Zirner, Dietmar Bär or Peter Lohmeyer. These Ruhr characters live in the window recesses; they tell the viewer of their minor sins, or they play a medley of “Glück auf [Good luck]” and “La Paloma". Right at the top of the tower film scenes will be projected that will be visible from far away: the U will thereby be transformed into a giant aquarium, or a pigeon loft, or the track of the Six-Day Cycle Race.

How were all these films produced?

The effort was certainly comparable with that required by a feature film. The shooting took me to places I’d never been before: I climbed 100 m high on a wind turbine, harnessed myself onto a moving robot in an automatic warehouse and filmed the conveyor belt of a refuse sorting plant. For the 360° panoramas which, like in a documentary, show a completely normal scene somewhere in the Ruhr, we worked with a swivel head usually used by astronomers to photograph stars with a one-hour exposure time. This was the only way of making the photographs exact enough.

Is there a message at the core of your films?

The visitors will actually be coming into the U for another reason: to buy a ticket, to fetch their coat. I want to make sure they get a good helping of the Ruhr at the same time, by showing pictures that are fascinating and also unstereotypical. I want to reach people who wouldn’t feel comfortable going into a traditional theatre. This building is magical to me and I would like my installation to enable it to remain enigmatic, to ask questions. Visitors should still be seeing something new on their third visit.

Adolf Winkelmann made his films for the Dortmund U in such places as on a wind turbine, in a refuse sorting plant or in an automatic warehouse.
Photo: Michael Wiczoreck

As a film maker I am attracted to the idea of treading new paths. The moving picture has developed very quickly – these days films are to be seen everywhere, usually for the purposes of advertising. I want to reclaim the medium for art.

As a child you could see the U from your bedroom window ...

The building didn’t have the U on the roof at that time. But even then I looked forward to a light: it was always a sign that Christmas was near, when there were four illuminated fir trees on the roof. The city wasn’t lit up as it is now, so the four trees were a real attraction.

The whole building will be an installation of moving pictures, inside and outside. Is there a precedent for this?

No, not that I know of. There is also sound for every film scene. We are still working on making the sound for the exterior works audible for the viewer. We don’t intend to use loudspeakers, we’re thinking more of a transmission via mobile phone. If we succeed, it would be the first media façade in the world, so “Flying Pictures” is also a research project.

Further Information - About Adolf Winkelmann

Adolf Winkelmann (born 1946) is a film director and producer from Dortmund. His feature films and TV-films have won many awards. Recently his TV-film "Contergan" [Thalidomide] was awarded the German Television Prize, a Bambi and the Golden Camera. He teaches at one of Dortmund’s Universities [Fachhochsschule Dortmund] as Professor for Film Design on the Film/Television course. To see his newest films, you don’t have to go to the cinema or watch television, but just look up at and within the Dortmund U. Winkelmann’s film installation “Flying Pictures” will be the crowning jewel of the building’s opening in 2010.