The Video Projects

Judy Sutcliffe wrote the following in a letter on 17June 1993.

I spent 2 1/2 hours with Rita Nasser, the young film director/writer from Köln who is entrepreneuring a film documentary on Lotte. She has the funding to do the LL documentary at least at video level, and she will attempt by Fall to get enough more money to do it in Super 16mm. She was happy because she had shot video interviews of Frances (Holden, Lehmann's long-time friend) that afternoon. Rita has quite a bit of snippets of interesting footage from old films Frances turned up in a drawer, now safely converted to video. Some of it is so old the images have ghosted into double exposures where wound tightly, and she is using some of these evocatively in sections where Lehmann is singing. She has one second of LL's husband Otto, which she will extend with slow motion. There are images of flowers, houses, animals, Santa Barbara, New York, Germany, Australia...There is also a segment of Lotte singing in Australia with a bird...on each hand. But in general, she will be making a film of a singer with very little moving picture original footage.

She will be returning to the US in October 1993 with a German film crew, and they will do interviews in New York with Grace Bumbry and Risë Stevens and then proceed to Santa Barbara.

If any reader knows of Lehmann on film, even one second on old 8mm film, please contact us at the Lotte Lehmann League as soon as possible, and we will pass the informatlon on to the devoted Rita Nasser. Let's make this an international effort. [Website readers note: the film was made, but we're always looking for Lehmann footage.]

Another Lehmann Video note: Ernest Gilbert of VAI in New Jersey is actively pursuing his goal to produce videos of Lehmann master classes. The only lead he has is the NET productions from 1967 at the Music Academy of the West. If any films exist from Lehmann's master classes in London, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, or ?, please let us know soon.