“Hungry for History” is the work of Marco Erbrich and Florian Greth from Flyvision Media, both of whom were students at the Film Academy in Ludwigsburg until 2014. Erbrich and Greth’s film plays with the aesthetic of classic monster films. In it a gigantic shiny silver creature suddenly appears in a series of historic film sequences from the company’s archives. The Museum-shaped monster has a huge appetite for iconic Mercedes-Benz-branded vehicles. The succinct story lasts around a minute in length and all becomes clear in the final shot. The monster grew out of a digital animation of the Museum’s façade.

This stop-motion animation was made by three students from the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design – Annarita Matuschka, Eduard Losing and Dirk Michael Flach – plus Stefan Heller, a freelance artist and animated film maker. Their short film, which lasts around two minutes, invites the viewer to see the history of the Mercedes-Benz brand in a new dimension. The stars of the short film include the inventors of the automobile Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler along with two female protagonists: Bertha Benz, who made the world’s first long-distance car journey with her sons in 1888, and Mercédès Jellinek, who gave her name to Daimler’s car brand in 1902. The individual scenes are told with skilfully drawn figures, along with buildings and scenery. The creative use of scissors, pen and paper has brought the two-dimensional protagonists to life. When it came to creating the animation, the most important tools were the film makers’ own hands and their voices which feature on the accompanying soundtrack. They also used various models which they built themselves and a computer, and the music was specially composed. From the screenplay to post-production, the film is the result of intensive teamwork.