Black Films

"To see something black" (to be pessimistic about something): We know this frequently used expression, with which we indicate that we do not expect anything good from the future and look ahead rather pessimistically. We associate everything bad, threatening, sinister with black and sometimes fall into deep mourning: black (mourning) clothes, black cats, black magic, black thoughts that arise when something is black as night. In cinema, too, the darkest of all colours takes on similarly dark meanings: in black - i.e. macabre - comedies and even in its own genre, the "film noir", the "black film", which with its gloomy view of the world (first in Hollywood) shaped crime thrillers, detective stories and comedies of the early 1940s and 1950s. And yet: Black fascinates us again and again! Like the colour white, a so-called achromatic colour, it arises when any visual appeal is missing - and yet "black" films appeal to us, indeed, we cannot let go of them. They play with "being blind" in both the real and figurative sense, casting long shadows, creeping into the darkest corners, caves and cellars - until the light finally flares up! The films in our collection play with the colour black, sometimes concretely, sometimes metaphorically.