Filmprogramm: Die unbekannte Sammlung

Film Program: The Unknown Collection
In the autumn of 1991, a collection of 16 anonymous 16mm amateur films dating from the late 1920s and early 1930s entered the Filmmuseum’s holdings. Their provenance remains unclear, and the person who delivered them can no longer be contacted. Consequently, the films themselves became the primary source of information. A car’s license plate and an apartment door plaque marked the starting point of an investigation; its findings—at least for the time being—linked the collection to two names: Julius Edgar Boehm, a Jewish lawyer from Berlin whose life story could be reconstructed in detail, and a woman named May Fürst, about whom only fragmentary information exists. The Boehm family survived the Holocaust and managed to flee. Left behind were the films documenting their lives prior to their escape: smoking beside a portable gramophone with Aunt Marie Boehm in Neubabelsberg, traveling across Europe in a Gräf & Stift touring car with a French bulldog on the back seat, and dancing in a forest clearing. In 2026, descendants of the Boehm family were located in England and Canada; they will be present at the screening. (Stefanie Zingl/Florian Haag)

In the presence of Philip Reuben and Nancy Beaumont