The cutting down of a cherry tree becomes the starting point of an intimate dialogue about transgenerational trauma between a mother and a daughter. The line between the need for investigation and the desire for healing becomes blurry when a persistent camera depicts the felling of the tree. The short documentary is an attempt to find a shared language for the unspeakable consequences of child sexual abuse within my own family. Content warning: The film contains descriptions of experiences of sexual violence.
As a dancer coming from an immigrant family, Çağdaş often feels more like a performer around them than on the stage. When he decides to contact his estranged father in Turkey, the boundary between real and performed begins to blur as his story is woven into the production of a new piece by internationally renowned Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. How much does the absence of his father and the traumatic silence that has filled the void contribute to him feeling like an outsider in the only place he's ever called home? In Four Movements weaves dance and documentary through an intimate journey of self-discovery as Çağdaş faces his past, his performance, and his desire for belonging.
An unpleasant examination by a meticulous doctor leads to a supposedly inevitable medical intervention that leaves the young patient scarred in body and soul.
She knew this day would come and the choice she'd have to make. But as it finally comes, Maya cannot wrap her head around it. A mole – it's so small, so insignificant, just a mark... How can it be so hard to part from it? Can Maya ever feel whole again when a bit of her is taken away?
Three filmmakers research the history of a chemical factory in Cologne-Kalk. Off- and online archives teach them the art of weeding out and throwing away, the art of daring the gap.
In their documentary film, the three filmmakers Lea Sprenger, Franca Pape and Amelie Vierbuchen set out to find material about the Kalk chemical factory in Cologne. During their research at the Archive “Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv zu Köln”, they meet archivist Dr. Christian Hillen, who has a lot to say. While the archivist struggles with the 16mm film, the filmmakers dig through the chaos of sources and capitulate to the resistance of the material. Who decides which stories are saved or thrown away? A fast paced film about searching, throwing away, about gaps and mistakes and about one's own inability, which is repeatedly met with self-irony.
A sensitive examination of an abuse scandal in an evangelical children’s home in Baden-Württemberg. Victims’ testimonies are confronted with the shameful relativisations of the church.
The pastor is encouraging forgiveness, many people in the parish feel that it's time to put the matter to rest – and the former child victims are fighting for recognition and dignity…
Korntal, a little town in the south of Germany, is the scene of the greatest abuse scandal ever to rock the Protestant Church in Germany. An estimated 150 former children from homes run by the Pietist Brotherhood have broken their silence: they are revealing the physical and mental horrors to which they were exposed. Many of them were victims of sexualised violence there at an early age. The 9,000-person town and its parish have responded to the accusations with disbelief and denial. They cannot imagine that this could have happened in their God-fearing town. However, pressure is mounting on the Protestant Brotherhood – which still runs children's homes – and an inquiry is initiated. There is much contention about compensation and how to proceed with the inquiry. Many victims are being re-traumatised by their testimonies being called into question and are describing the inquiry as further abuse. The film gives 6 protagonists the chance to tell their stories and to put right what they feel the inquiry report fails to disclose. A sensitive, profound treatment of a highly topical subject.
I recently saw someone that looked like you. I realised quickly that he was not you – but he moved like you. Ran his hands through his hair like you. And had the same backpack in the same shabby state. So I decided to follow your not-you for a while.
“The world in one garden” – with this claim of omnipotence, the construction of the Botanical Garden in Dahlem began. The deeper one enters, the clearer the traces of imperialist thinking emerge.
The film Showhouse portrays the botanical garden as a magical place, the charm of which lies in the interweaving of time spaces and world areas, and at the same time explores the abysmal nature of the botanical project. Plants have been shipped to European cities since the beginning of colonialism, gathered there and put on display. The exhibition of plants from around the world was intended to provide the metropolitan public with an image of the colonised territories. In addition, plants were cultivated and gardeners and colonial officials were trained to guarantee their economic productivity on the plantations in the colonies. Thus, botanical gardens were a part of European colonialism and its legitimisation.
A look back at the history of the botanical garden is combined with a look at present ideas of the future: while colonial plant collections of the late 19th century tell of the categorisation and domination of the “other”, in times of climate catastrophe, notions of gardens expanding into space, soothe fears about the limits of late capitalist civilisations and impending catastrophe.
A pair of socks lose sight of each other during the spin cycle of the washing machine. Being suddenly alone gives rise to new encounters and puts the socks’ friendship to a tough test.
In the spin cycle of the washing machine, a pair of socks get lost from sight! How terrible, the sock thinks at first until it notices the other garments for the first time. These new acquaintances put the sock friendship to the test. But the sock couple manages to accept that they both have their own interests.
It's a film about old friendships that are changing and new ones that are just forming.
A consensual union becomes a brutal assimilation that ends in death and a new beginning. Powerfully moving colours and fascinating sounds transport irritating emotions.
In this film, two individuals with strong personalities are ultimately driven to ruin by selfish possessiveness. But in the end, their death, and their rebirth after corruption is just a part of this continuum called natural life, no matter whether their behaviours should be morally criticised or introspected by us.
Is ADHS the fashionable diagnosis of a society geared towards efficiency and Ritalin the perfect doping agent? A personal journey to the heart of chaos and back – from a deliberately female perspective.
What does the rise in the diagnosis of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and other mental illnesses since the 90s have to do with the efficiency-driven and dumbed-down civilisation in which the grid of normal is becoming ever narrower? Are ADHD drugs the doping of the performance society? And who actually determines what is normal and what is not?
With five different female ADHD sufferers, Sick Girls gets to the bottom of these questions and gives insight into the personal difficulties of living with ADHD. Director Gitti Grüter examines their own ADHD and interacts with their protagonists partly in front and partly from behind the camera, addressing chaos, lack of concentration, relationship problems, addiction, depression, insomnia and impulsivity. Gitti builds a bridge between the hardships and joys of the affected women and a society that blows back at them in the form of stigmatisation and stereotyping of the feminine and the desolate.
Through its cinematic devices, Sick Girls gives the audience a momentary sense of having ADHD and digs into the social contexts of this “anomaly”.
A young refugee is stabbed to death in the north German town of Celle. An approach to structural racism via investigation files, football and the filmmaker's growing up in Celle.
The 15-year-old Yezidi Arkan Hussein Khalaf is stabbed to death in Celle in northern Germany. The police questions, interrogates, autopsies, searches, reconstructs, preserves, records – 1700 pages. An approach to structural racism via investigation files, football and growing up in Celle. The essayistic documentary reads the files and asks about their performativity: Which terms find their way into the verdict, and which get lost? It examines the imprints of those writing the narrative about the crime. Major football events from 1990 to 2014 serve as chroniclers of the formation of German identity: from Helmut Kohl, the attacks of the early 90s, to the patriotism of the summer fairy tale of 2006, and the myth of the diverse world champion in 2014. It contrasts this with Arkan's family. How did they experience the night of the crime? Why is it clear to them that it was racism? The film dives through files, newspaper articles, archive material, images of small-town idylls and football matches. It explores the migration history of the Yezidi as so-called “Gastarbeiter” in Celle, forgotten right-wing attacks and the filmmaker's own growing up in Celle. As part of the white-dominant society, she feels her own longing: let it be a coincidence that it hit Arkan. What’s behind this longing?
sounds for a wounded landscape – Activities on the Ground
sounds for a wounded landscape – Activities on the Ground
Frauke Berg, Oliver Gather
New German Short Films
Documentary Film
Germany
2023
11 minutes
English
International Premiere open
Trailer
Synopsis
In view of the question of a new way of dealing with our resources, there is also the question of a new way of dealing with landscape. How can humans enter into a relationship with the landscape, beyond a subject-object relationship that degrades everything “non-human” to an available mass of exploitation?
As a self-experiment, the sound artists Frauke Berg and Anja Lautermann play and listen into the large hole of the Garzweiler open-cast mine. The camera observes the conflict at the hole, looks and listens into it. Like a collage, the film links all with all and finds a form for the fact that everything takes place with consequences in and on the same ground.
All attempts to alleviate or stop the wounding of the landscape seem fragile, helpless, and perhaps even futile.
After their hunger strike, 5 climate activists reunite. Lina has joined the “Last Generation”, her comrades prepare for the upcoming eviction of Lützerath. How far will they go?
On 31st August 2021, 5 young people go on a hunger strike in Berlin's government district to draw attention to the climate crisis. 6 months later, part of the group meets again. Lina is now with the “Last Generation” and wants to put pressure on the government through means of civil disobedience. This form of protest does not go far enough for Taura, Guerrero, Charly and Fuchs: in order to stop the impending tipping points, they want to go other ways…
Filmmaker Felix Maria Bühler accompanies his five protagonists for a year. He takes part in actions with them and gives an insight into the climate movements in Germany: “Fridays For Future”, “Extinction Rebellion”, “Ende Gelände” and “Last Generation”.
The film delves into the world of radical climate activism in an intimate way. While Taura, Guerrero, Charly and Fuchs discuss new strategies among themselves, Lina sticks to the streets with the “Last Generation”. At the same time, the bucket-wheel excavator is digging ever closer to Lützerath and Guerrero, Charly and Fuchs have to prepare for the upcoming eviction. Above all, the question: Where are the limits of the individual and how far will the group go to stand up for their ideals?
The drama around the eviction of an environmentally sensitive forest forms the common thread of a film about the dashed hopes of the younger generation for a better future.
Two thousand cops challenge two hundred tree squatters in an ancient forest in the middle of Germany that is to make way for a nonsensical motorway. The political and legal struggle against the construction of this motorway has been going on for forty years, but now the state, on behalf of the federal government, has decided to wrestle it out – against all resistance. The drama around the eviction of the forest squatters from the environmentally sensitive Dannenröder Forest forms the common thread of a film about the dashed hopes of the younger generation for a better future. It revolves around their growing anger, the ignorance of politicians in the face of the greatest crisis upon mankind ever, and the seemingly indestructible stranglehold of capital interests over supposed intentions to build a sustainable future.
Medieval time travellers on a short visit to the future, so-called present and not-so-grey prehistory encounter burgers, SUVs, esoterics and a mammoth before (spoiler alert) returning to the past.
Tricky Disco traces various forms of spatial and cultural appropriation. The film unmasks the attempted appropriation of the techno and house movement as a “German cultural asset”.
Tricky Disco traces various forms of spatial and cultural appropriation, initially following the traces in the author's biography.
The film focuses on (self-)empowerment through participation in the techno subculture of the late nineties. However, the emancipatory and political potential of this subculture is countered by another dimension in the course of the narrative: using photogrammetric images and analogue video footage, the work draws parallels in the urban development of Berlin and Frankfurt. It unmasks the attempted appropriation of the techno and house movement as a “German cultural asset” and depicts how efforts are made to monetise it through hasty musealisation.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.