She was immediately drawn to the large poster of Asta Nielsen as Hamlet.

Even if it hangs somewhat hidden behind the door to the German producers' bequests and estates.

Eva Hielscher is still getting to know her new job: since January 3, she has been the head of the three major collection areas of the German Film Institute and Film Museum (DFF): the archive and study center on Eschersheimer Landstraße, the text archive including the library, the one in the German National Library is set up, and the image archive, which is located under the umbrella of the DFF film archive in Wiesbaden.

Eva Maria Magel

Senior cultural editor of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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How practical that Hielscher has been living in Wiesbaden for some time.

This is due to a short professional detour to the Wiesbaden-based Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation, where she worked on restoration and digitization.

Rounding off the portfolio with which the 41-year-old film scholar has made a name for herself in recent years: she has looked after collections and worked as an exhibition curator, researched in university contexts and curated film series, among other things she is new to the International Silent Film Festival in Bonn works as a co-curator, a festival with which the DFF is again involved with film contributions.

"I know the house"

It is not the only circle that closes: As a student, Hielscher completed an internship at the outsourced archive center in Rödelheim.

“I know the house, not only through the internship, but also through film festivals and working on projects where we met.

The DFF is incredibly active,” says Hielscher.

At least that was the case before Corona.

At the moment it is rather deserted in the archive center, which is probably not a bad start to familiarize yourself with the collection and make plans.

And only a few months ago, Hielscher was a guest in the new archive and study center on Eschersheimer Landstrasse as a kind of "customer" or rather as a user.

The exhibition “Close Up.

Hamburger Film- und Kinogeschichten” opened in the Altonaer Museum, which can be seen there until July.

Along with the fruits of Frankfurt research: Hielscher received Polaroids from searches for motifs for Wim Wenders films and documents on costume designer Irm Pauli in Frankfurt.

A different look at what is already there

"I had a good first impression there," she says, but then it all went "quickly" with the change to the other side: in November 2021 the promise to take over the management of the archive as the successor to Hans-Peter Reichmann, in the middle of preparing for the exhibition in Hamburg.

Hielscher intends to continue organizing exhibitions with the archive team in the future.

Above all, however, she wants to make the "wonderful materials accessible to a wide audience and inspire people," she says.

Exhibiting and making accessible does not necessarily have to be physical and analogue: the 41-year-old film scholar can very well imagine new and supplementary forms of presentation between digital and analogue.

After all, the archive of the DFF has had good experiences with digital processing of, for example, the work of Volker Schlöndorff or the estate of Curd Jürgens.

Digitization, she says, is the big issue for all film archives. She sees less the competition from German and European institutions than a common goal: to preserve the film heritage and make it accessible.

"It's such an extensive task for everyone, the exchange, especially in digitalization, is very valuable.

Not everyone has to reinvent everything,” she says.

She was able to gain and deepen this experience over many years in nearby European countries: she received her doctorate from the University of Ghent on a topic that is still close to her heart today, the image of the big city in modern silent films, such as that found in Walther Ruttmann's "Berlin: Symphony of a Big City" (1927).

Her love for silent film had been strengthened in a previous training station, she had found this focus for herself at the University of Utrecht during an Erasmus stay.

It was not clear from the start that Hielscher would become a film scholar and film historian: Something about media, the desire of many high school graduates, had led her to study media culture in Weimar, and her love of archiving grew through silent film.

Logically, Hielscher added a Dutch master's degree in film heritage and presentation to the German diploma at the University of Amsterdam.

She has been familiar with Dutch for a long time, the first professional stations were in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Now she is making acquaintance with the collection and drafting cornerstones for future procedures.

Your predecessor Reichmann is still available in an advisory capacity with his expertise and his memory, a kind of "biocomputer", as he calls it.

"Because I look at the objects differently and don't know the complete story straight away, I also have new possibilities," says Hielscher: a different view of what is already there, new types of linking and, also that, acquisition.

The openness and low-threshold nature of many cultural and museum offerings in the Netherlands and Belgium helped shape Hielscher, an attitude that is likely to influence their approaches to presentation in the future.

The motto: “Share everything that is possible.”