What's new in 2024 ?

 

We decided in late 2022 to wind down our hunt for new posters and film ephemera. Last year  we acquired only six film posters –- four of which were either designed by or represented films produced by, Karl Ritter --  one of our major collection focuses. New acquisitions of importance shall be added to this page as the year 2024 unfolds......  and we will continue well into the future adding new pages and images and themes to this website and keeping it as current as possible.

Thank you for visiting, and returning,  to this website.

 

------

 

Update: 22 January 2024:

Due to logistical issues beyond our control, the large two-sheet Italian poster for Karl Ritter's Pour le Mérite is still in Europe. This poster is shown in our "What's New in 2023?"  webpage as having been won at auction in December 2023. It required an export licence approval under the Italian laws regarding cultural heritage protection.  We should have the poster in our possession no later than mid–year. UPDATE: As at 20 April this  huge Italian poster is in our possession and we have added it to our Poster Gallery.  It is 200,00 x 140,00 cm /  78.74 x 55.12 in. large.

 

A book review of our latest volume  Hitler Youth Quex – A Guide for the English–speaking Reader is set to appear in a forthcoming issue of the prestigious academic journal The Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television (U.K.) and also in the next issue of Germany's premiere film journal, Filmblatt. These reviews have been confirmed to us by their respective Editors.

Update at 29 February 2024:

The Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television (U.K.) book review of our Hitler Youth Quex – A Guide for the English–speaking Reader has now appeared, and amongst other comments it says:

[T]he greatest merit of Gillespie’s book is that he not only brings together many sources that are – if at all – difficult to access, but also that he makes them accessible to an English-speaking audience.
Hitler Youth Quex: A Guide for the English-speaking Reader’s unique selling point ….is the way it presents and discusses a range of different primary sources and embeds them in the historical context.

"Gillespie's book is a treasure trove for scholars of history, film history and propaganda more generally. This includes graduate and postgraduate students, early career researchers and more established academics. As such it is recommended for the essential classroom reading lists on any course dealing with film propaganda."

The senior official at a major German film institution has read the HJFR&T review and subsequently wrote us as follows:

" Congratulations to your book and I absolutely agree with Hochscherfs recommendations. This should result in the book's presence in many libraries and will help students a lot to understand the film."

 

 

 -------------

We have in this Collection a great selection of original materials on Leni Riefenstahl's two trail-blazing Olympia films.  We own eight original posters from France, Belgium, Imperial Japan, Finland and from Czechoslovakia.  The two Czech posters are mirror images of the original German posters, but with Czech language text. They are so rare that Leni's cameraman and later husband, Horst Kettner, offered to buy them for her private Collection in 2008, which he owned after her death. We also have a superb variety of promotional materials from France, Spain, and  Germany  such as press-books, colour advertising pieces, etc. We also have 85 lobby cards and  3 press-photos for the two films.

On February 3rd we won at auction the ultra–rare Tobis film studio cinema owner's guide to both of the Olympia films -- the Werberatschlag -- which we had never seen before either in film archives nor in any collection in 30+ years. It is 56 pages long and has over a dozen pages of B&W illustrations of the German film posters and all the marketing materials available to cinema owners in 1938 to promote both films. This is an outstanding addition to our Collection and caps it off perfectly.

 

 

  ----------

April 2nd update:

We shall be updating this page over the next months as we spend time in Europe,  should we discover any significant "must–have" film treasures.

We shall add in translation any quotes from the forth–coming German journal FILMBLATT's  review of our Hitler Youth Quex – A Guide for the English–speaking Reader book.

We shall be changing our "Poster of the Month"  again in September.

 

-----------

We have never owned a large number of film lobby cards or press photos from the excellent biopic Bismarck, starring Paul Hartmann in the title role. We have a number of original posters for the film from various countries.  We could therefore not resist scooping up 27 press photos with their mimeographed photo captions glued to the reverse sides.Here are a few of them as per the seller's website:

 

----------------

In Berlin.  the weekly radio program guide for 1933 was found in an Antiquariat, and we purchased all 52 loose issues and then re-sold all issues leading up to mid-September that year as superfluous to requirements.. The magazine had one page devoted to a new film each week, as well as a guide of where each film was screening in metropolitan Berlin. The sixteen issues we kept for our Collection are those which document the Greater Berlin cinema run of Hitlerjunge Quex from its premiere at the Ufa-Palast-am-Zoo cinema through to the first week of  January 1934. The film was running at various movie theatres every day for those three and a half months. In all, including the Ufa-Palast-am-Zoo, at one hundred and eleven  different cinemas.  Our page on this phenominal activity can be found here.

 

--------------

 

 

 

A friendly dealer who is enthusiastic about our Karl Ritter books and bought our new Quex book, found this second edition copy of Der Hitlerjunge Quex in a flea market in Leipzig and sold it to us at no profit, for €38.  He was happy that it could be part of our extensive Quex collection.  The dust jacket is damaged, as can be seen, but is ultra, ultra–rare. The dust jacket was used on the first five editions of the book between December 1932 and mid-1933, when the DJ with Jürgen Ohlsen replaced it, in conjunction with the Ufa film release.  We have a first edition of the book --also incredibly rare - and this DJ will grace it soon.

 

 On the rarity of the book's first five editions from a major German literature reference book:

"No designer could be identified for the dust jacket from 1933 onwards. Unfortunately, the dust jacket of the first edition from 1932 could not be found either, despite intensive nationwide research. Of great interest in this context is the question of how the dust jacket was designed before the film was made. The 1932 editions identified only have a plain linen cover and the spine bears the author's name and the title in Gothic script."

 --  Michaela Menger, Der Literarische Kampf um den Arbeiter, ©2016, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston, page 214, footnote 75.

Our first edition has now answered this question.

--------------

The  Spanish Civil War film written by Francesco Franco under a pseudonym, Raza (Race), is a historical biographical melodrama about four siblings from a distinguished naval lineage whose lives unfold amidst the Spanish Civil War; despite ideological differences, their paths intersect triumphantly, revealing the enduring strength of familial bonds, and they are reunited at last in a Franco-led parade in Madrid.  The film took two years to reach German cinemas in a synchronised dubbed version in 1944. We have won at auction the German poster, which is in the pre-1945 traditional A0 sized format. The poster was won at auction in the USA  and has now arrived and been  re-photographed and added to our Poster Gallery. An English- language subtitled version of the Spanish version of the film, uncensored, is available through International Historic Films in Chicago as a DVD. We assisted IHF with bonus materials and background information when the DVD was produced, and despite our decision in 2022 in ceasing to purchase further film posters, we have made an exception for this one.

 

In a Spanish magazine we found the photo below, which relates to the film's premiere in Germany. The photo caption we have translated.

THE LABOR DELEGATE IN GERMANY, MR. PÉREZ HERNÁNDEZ, ADDRESSING THE AUDITORIUM OF SPANISH SOLDIERS AND WORKERS BEFORE THE FIRST EXHIBITION OF THE FILM RAZA IN BERLIN., April 1942.

-------------

 We have acquired, thanks to a terrific gift of Joel Nelson, three very rare Cinema Owners' Promotion Guides (Werberatschläge) for the classic WWI Emelka Film Kreuzer Emden by Louis Ralph, for which we own three original German and Austrian posters; for the Franco film Raza / Blutzeugen / Martyrs for which we have the ultra-rare German poster, and one for the Romolo Marcellni Italian Fascist film, Sentinelle di bronzo, which was called Schüsse in der Wüste in its German cinema marketing.  We have no film poster or ephemera for the last film.  Here is a page from the Emden guide showing two of the posters:

 

 We are most grateful to Joel for donating these Guides to our collection.

---------

A fascinating 1940 publication aimed at cinema owners from the Ufa film studio was acquired as it is a catalogue of their films from 1930 to 1940 which were being made available for re–release as worthy older films from their archives.  We have translated the entiure introduction to this catalogue as it worth reading in full:

The call from theater owners and audiences for valuable and successful repeat films has become so loud that we are compelled to make it easier to track down UFA films for new screenings with this brochure, which we give the motto:

"If you bring a lot, you will bring something to many, and everyone leaves the theater satisfied."

It has been observed and proven for years that UFA films of great quality are always experiencing a new spring of success in new screenings. Many UFA films have so captured the hearts and minds of moviegoers in the last decade that the longing to experience these works again and again arises. If the first screening of a high-quality film was years ago, a young generation has grown up in the meantime who will join its old fans when it is re-released - and a full and satisfied theater is guaranteed.

Other films, on the other hand, did not attract the attendance they deserved when they were first released because their idiosyncrasies once contradicted the public's taste. did not meet their expectations sufficiently. Only after years do they suddenly bring in the full box office they deserve, because the time and people have now become ready for the previously unrecognized film work.

How often does the increased popularity of an actor or actress offer an old film surprising prospects of success?  Our time is rich in film creations that are only a few years old and that can and should be remembered again and again.

And yet no misunderstandings! The theater owner, the administrator of artistic film assets in public, must first and foremost carefully exploit the new and latest film work. That is the most important rule of his actions. But he should never lose sight of the films that the state has awarded with distinctions and that film fans have cheered. It is the task and duty of today's theater owner to bring these films, which are to be seen as important milestones in the rise of German film to art, back into the spotlight in good time. The cinema-goers who are used to thinking about film and film art, beyond the first film evening, and not least the film-making artists, all of them will be grateful to the theatre owner for every carefully prepared and responsible new performance.

The catalogue has a section on films approved for Youth, and there are 57 feature films listed, including, not surprisingly, Hitlerjunge Quex, Triumph des Willens and Verräter.

-----------

We have acquired at auction our second poster since December last year...The companion Italian poster for the German biopic Bismarck starring Paul Hartmann. We could not resist owning both of these original postrers for the film.  We shown a small image of it below: