Das alte Köln in Farbe

In the organizer's words:

A historical film journey by Hermann Rheindorf

Once again this year, the open-air cinema in the Rheinauhafen is reserved for the successful production (Amazon documentary charts) "Das alte Köln in Farbe" - we are very pleased!

Speaking in the supporting program: Willi Ostermann

Talk & music: Hermann Rheindorf & guests

This film shows the undestroyed Cologne of the pre-war period in the most beautiful original footage available of the old city and a number of new discoveries that have never been seen in public before. In outstanding image quality and, for the first time, elaborately colored in vibrant colors. These are the impressive fruits of over 20 years of research, which the Cologne journalist Hermann Rheindorf has collected from all over the world and presented to us here: We mingle with the people at the cathedral in the days of Kaiser Wilhelm and stroll with you up close along Hohe Strasse, cheer on Prince Carnival at Neumarkt, visit Cologne's first sports ground or enjoy a more than 100-year-old tracking shot along one of the oldest streets in Cologne. Our visit to the original old town with its markets and alleyways, the terrain of musicians and Cologne's Pänz, is more extensive than ever. A stroll around Cologne's Romanesque churches in their original state is priceless, as is a tour of the then still new rings, with many views that are completely unknown today.

The selection of film footage from all corners of the city is overwhelming. And yet old Cologne is far from an ideal world. Large sections of the population are destitute, the consequences of the First World War and the crises of the Weimar era are omnipresent. This makes the speed at which Cologne is transforming into a modern metropolis in these years all the more astonishing.

Christian Brückner, one of the most renowned narrators of our time, tells the often astonishing stories behind the oldest moving images of Cologne. This film is a gift for the present and the future.

Hermann Rheindorf is a musician, journalist, filmmaker and ass-huh speaker.