The director and author Rosa von Praunheim has died. He was 83 years old. Several media outlets report this unanimously. Just last week, von Praunheim married his long-time partner Oliver Sechting. The filmmaker, born Holger Radtke in 1942, made film history with more than 150 short and feature films.
With works like “It’s not the homosexual who is perverted, but the situation in which he lives” (1971), the filmmaker became a pioneer of the modern gay movement. The documentary brought the taboo topic of homosexuality into public consciousness. The film was only shown on national television two years after its release. Bayerischer Rundfunk stopped broadcasting on ARD.
Von Praunheim once called himself the world’s most prolific gay filmmaker. From the 1970s onwards, the filmmaker repeatedly traveled to the USA. There he made the documentary “Army of Lovers or Uprising of the Perverts” (1979) about the work and goals of the homosexual emancipation movement in the United States.
However, his commitment to the movement now known as queer or LGBTQIA* also caused controversy. In order to take action against discrimination against homosexuality, the director forced the RTL talk show Explosive In 1991, celebrities like Hape Kerkeling and Alfred Biolek indirectly came out. In front of the camera, he called on her by name to make her homosexuality public.
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