Klaus Wyborny

To mark his 80th birthday in June 2025, we are releasing seven films and six short films by Klaus Wyborny, personally selected by him. They are now available to stream free of charge.

Heinz Emigholz writes about Klaus Wyborny's films on this occasion:
His magnum opus Birth of a Nation (1973, 70 min) exemplifies the rise and fall of a human society in the desert and, simultaneously, the construction and deconstruction of his cinematic means. The artist as a man of suffering and protagonist in a science fiction video: in 2084 (1982, 78 min), he must deliver annual reports on the progress of his theoretical work Projections of the Principle of Causality at the End of the 20th Century in order to guarantee his survival; progress that he is not making. What begins as a parody of a sandal film degenerates into the stream of consciousness of the sexually charged proconsul Sulla (1990-2001, 121 min) and develops into a sentence-by-sentence adaptation of his own novel. The film From the Age of Lightheartedness (1994, 80 min) takes an autobiographical look back at the places “I have seen.” Musically organized images and language, interrupted by harsh piano chords: sentimental bombast at its best. In the feature film The Open Universe (1990, 94 min), a cosmological theory is exemplified with restrained gestures, suple allusions, and minimal super signs—a melancholic journey through a world of flourishing and fading industries, which also cannibalizes the acting skills of its stars Tilda Swinton, Christoph Hemmerling, and Hanns Zischler in its maelstrom. In the end, there is nothing left to say except “Say something!” A chance Meeting Werner Schroeter (2008, 11 min) in Portugal: The two are not friends, as is evident, but there is a strange atmosphere of mutual respect. Syracuse (2004-2012, 85 min): Wyborny's collaboration with Durs Grünbein: the poet and filmmaker agree that they need to visit foreign places in order to find and absorb energy for their work. Klaus Wyborny, alongside Hellmuth Costard, Werner Grassmann, Helmut Herbst, Alfred Hilsberg, Werner Nekes, Dore O., Kurt Rosenthal, Thomas Struck, and Franz and Ursula Winzentsen, was a key member of the Hamburger Filmemacher Cooperative (Hamburg Filmmakers Cooperative, 1968–72), which made a significant contribution to the temporary intellectual charge of German filmmaking with its Hamburger Filmschauen (Hamburg film screenings, 1968–73).

Stefan Ripplinger writes about Klaus Wyborny's 80th birthday in the “nd”:
This man is so far ahead of us that it will be difficult to even follow him from a distance: filmmaker and writer Klaus Wyborny, who turns 80 on June 5, thought through the German disaster long before it became a matter of national interest, and he poked fun at “artificial intelligence” when hardly anyone knew what that was supposed to be.
He is a physicist by training. He once joked that he could have stayed in physics if he hadn't taken so much LSD while studying in New York. After that, he said, he was only good enough for art. It should be added that he was good enough for art twice over. In any case, art rarely has such a rich intellectual background as it does with him. (Full article)