What this is: a guide to using old-school press techniques to get preview features to bring audiences to your arts events (from a performance artist & press specialist with 12+ years of successful press campaigns under her belt)
What this is not: television coverage, national press, new media (twitter, youtube, fb etc.)
1. Creating a Press Contact List
2-a. Writing a Listing
2-b. Writing a Press Release
3. Images
4. Contacting the Press
5. Cookies Don’t Hurt
Warning: Contains Spoilers
If you were to discuss German Expressionism in film circles, it’s doubtful the conversation would go more than two minutes without someone mentioning The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). In addition to the fact that it’s one of the earliest films of the genre, it’s one of the most marked examples of German Expressionism’s propensity for focusing on the darker aspects of the human psyche. Moreover, the film utilizes what is perhaps the most extreme example of the dramatic, stylized aesthetic that became a calling card of the German Expressionist genre.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (directed by Robert Wiene) is the story of a young man named Francis, who goes with his friend Alan to a carnival. While there, a presenter named Caligari introduces a man, Cesare, who has supposedly been sleeping his entire life, but who is capable of answering any question put to him. When Alan asks what the date of his own death will be, Cesare responds, “At first dawn.” Sure enough, Alan is found dead the next morning, and what follows is a horrifying thriller in which Francis puts himself and his fiancée Jane in danger as he tries to expose Caligari’s secrets.
Warning: Contains Spoilers
Many films of the German Expressionist era are stories of monsters and supernatural villains. Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and The Golem are prime examples. Pandora’s Box (1929), more like Fritz Lang’s M, focuses directly on the evils that come from extreme human desire and uncontrolled behavior. Pandora’s Box is the story of Lulu, a young, beautiful prostitute and entertainer played by American actress Louise Brooks. The combination of Lulu’s naïve, narcissistic, and overtly sexual behavior results in intense suffering and multiple deaths, including her own.
Warning: Contains Spoilers
The Golem (1920), directed by Paul Wegener and Carl Boese, is a retelling of the Jewish story from the 1500s about a rabbi who creates a man from clay—the Golem—and brings him to life. Rabbi Löw’s intent is to use the Golem to protect the Jewish citizens of the Prague ghetto from the aristocracy, who blame the Jews for the death of Christ. As you can imagine, using magic to bring an inanimate creature to life has unintended and disastrous consequences. In this telling, the Golem is played by writer/director/actor Paul Wegener, who was instrumental in the creation of the German Expressionist film genre.
Laurence Kardish’s Weimar Cinema, 1919-1933 is an excellent resource for cinephiles new to the German Expressionist film movement and German Expressionist enthusiasts looking for an encyclopedia of films from the genre. The book is broken up into two sections: the first is a collection of essays about the German Expressionist film aesthetic and discusses competing theories of the genre’s origins as well as explanations for the genre’s critical, and sometimes commercial, success; the second is a 150-page catalog containing titles, technical specifications, and summaries of German Expressionist films, as well as still photographs from the productions.
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