What if from one day to the next, you’re no longer seen but instead, you're stared at? The leading characters in All You See have ended up in a new world where suddenly nothing seems to align. In their new lives in the Netherlands, they unintentionally provoke reactions on a daily basis. Even after many years, they still hear the same questions over and over again: Where are you from? Do you speak Dutch? Do you tan in the sun?
A ghostly search for traces, based on the 1965 U.S. embargo against “communist” real hair wigs from Asia. Is every wig inhabited by a ghost from the imperial past?
This film is about the haunting memories of Asia’s late-20th-century modernisation. The story departs from a 1965 United States embargo on the hair trade, known as the “Communist Hair Ban”. In every wig resides a ghost from the imperial past.
In Blind Date 2.0, Paul once again receives the filmmaker at his home – this time in order to shoot a sex date. Far from the spectacularly pornographic, but also from amateur porn, there is room to first of all clarify preferences, and consensus is established. Since both men are rather on the passive side and the double dildo fails to win over the visitor, they agree on a blowjob and find a practicable middle ground in mutual masturbation. Blind Date 2.0 does not aim at producing arousal but constitutes a doubly empathetic approach – that of the filmmaker to his protagonist, and that of the protagonist to his rather monosyllabic visitor. In targeted, unspectacular framing, the film captures the sex-positive in the ordinary, in the non-standardised, and above all in the context of social interaction: comprehensible, moving, and with a memorable cigarette afterwards.
Emile Zuckerkandl talks about his grandmother's salon, Hitler's arrival, and his escape to Algeria. A network of personal memories interwoven with world history.
Emile Zuckerkandl jotted down in his diary, “I write it down, so that I can remember it later.” Eighty years later, his memories are vivid and clear when he talks about his grandmother's salon, Hitler's arrival after the “Anschluss,” and his escape to Algeria. Rainer Frimmel stays very close to his charismatic protagonist in recording a network of personal memories interwoven with world history.
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.
A storm of queer norm-busting archive images. The creative arrangement is as sensual as the material, including purple colour explosions and a jazz music leitmotif.
Between birth and death, is the power to love and live. Political rules, religious orders, social norms and cultural taboos control who we love and how we love. The right to love is controlled and regulated by how we live. But the erotic has the power to emancipate. With spoken word and archive sources, love is unboxed from categories in queer expression and a celebration of eros as the power to change our attitudes to life and to allow others to live their lives without judgment or prejudice.
Twenty years ago, the filmmaker fled from Bagdad with his family – why has always been a taboo. For his son, he breaks his silence in this filmic family therapy.
Twenty years ago, filmmaker Wiam Al-Zabari and his family fled Baghdad in the middle of the night. His father was waiting for them in the Netherlands. Since then, no one in the family has spoken about it. Now that Wiam is a father himself, he is confronted with his past life in Iraq. This raises questions. Why did they have to flee in the first place? And what are the repercussions of the escape from Iraq and their arrival in the Netherlands? To find out, Wiam breaks the silence for the first time and starts talking to his family. Can he let go of the past to embrace a future in the Netherlands?
How do you grow up on a planet that is being destroyed by humanity? The two friends Bo and Luca are enthusiastic climate activists whom the film follows for four years.
How does one grow up on a planet that is destroying itself? Filmmaker Pieter Van Eecke provides a possible response to this urgent question. For four years, he has followed the beautiful and mischievous friendship between Bo and Luca, two teenagers who are as enthusiastic in their ecological activism as they are in their experience of the contradictory and surprising travails of growing up.
Rosl’s Suitcase is the story of my Jewish grandmother, who left Vienna for New York with my father in 1939 and of my own fact-finding quest about truth and what I had been told.
Rosl’s Suitcase is the story of my Viennese and Jewish grandmother, who emigrated to New York with my teenage father in 1939. The contents of the suitcase reveal discrepancies in what I had been told. With this discovery, I begin my quest to find out what really happened and what had been hidden.
Rosl’s Suitcase interweaves current-day Vienna with home movies and recordings by three generations of women: great aunt Ada's 1947 movies after her arrival in the U.S.; Aunt Helen's audio descriptions of her youth in Vienna and immigration to New York; my own 1960's Northern California coming-of-age 8mm films and light show movies.
French-American singer of Viennese origin, Adah Dylan Jungk, reads/performs Rosl's letters against backdrops and front projections of the Vienna High Court, the University courtyard and wartime films of the city. We follow Adah to “locations of memory”, crosscutting between places today and the same places shown in historical film archives. The city's landmarks are recharged through the prism of the pre-and post-war Vienna of my grandmother, father and my own lens.
Lockdown, easing, lockdown: Vienna in the Covid-19 pandemic from March 2020 to December 2021. Generous tableaus document paralysis, fear, learning, anger – and incipient repression.
The Standstill shows Vienna and its surroundings along with encounters with people during and after the Covid-19 crisis. The film tells of the immediate and the long-term effects, which can only be evaluated and classified in the future.
A high-rise in Kyiv, an apartment on the 15th floor. A zoom out of a still image. On the telephone, Mariia shares her memories of this place, of coming-of-age and community – before the war.
Three windows on the southwest and a balcony on the southeast is what you can see on the facade of Mariia's apartment. In three conversations, Mariia reflects on her experiences related to the place of her upbringing in Kyiv and attempts to claim back the image of her home.
Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers takes us along on her epic quest to map the world's fungi networks and understand their behaviour before it's too late.
Beneath our feet lies a mystery. A complex underground network of mycorrhizal fungi keeps our ecosystem alive by exchanging nutrients and carbon with almost all plants on Earth. Remarkably, no one knows exactly how these sophisticated and ancient systems operate, or how they are affected by climate change.
The Underground Astronaut follows evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers, named one of the 2022 TIME100 Next Innovators, on her quest to map the world's fungi networks and understand their behaviour before it's too late. A fragrant and high-stakes journey into the soil. “No fungi, no future.”
The Underground Astronaut is part of Ammodo Docs, a series of short documentaries about original minds in arts and science.
Vienna Calling delves into Vienna's music culture, far from mainstream. It's a unique blend of documentary and theatre, offering an eccentric panopticon.
In Vienna, Europe's faded music capital, an underground scene thrives, marked by the city's wryness and sombre romanticism. The camera explores Vienna's streets, bars, and dark corners, unearthing the music and charm of local artists hidden beneath the city's polished exterior. The film weaves musical performances into an eccentric mosaic, far from the mainstream. It transforms into a docu-musical showing the diverse face of the new Vienna. A poetic glimpse into a historic metropolis infusing tradition with a new spirit.
Surrealist observations at the Italian Adriatic, where seasonal workers toil for the holidaymakers. An unvarnished look behind the façade of the “carefree” beach holiday.
Vista Mare is a poetic and surrealist documentary revealing the hidden labour behind “a holiday in the sun” in Italy's Northern Adriatic coastal resorts. Shot over an entire working season (February to October), it takes viewers on a journey through an artificial landscape built to amuse vacationers. Vista Mare's camera purposefully watches a multi-national army of seasonal labourers toiling from dawn to dusk. Workers test remote-controlled umbrellas, meticulously prepare meals, and most importantly, jolly the patrons into having a good time. Meanwhile, on the shoreline, thousands of guests paddle in the waves and enjoy carefully scheduled fun. Little wonder the demands of their jobs drive the workers to chant “Slaves? Never!” in a protest carefully overseen by the police. In an absurdist loop, Vista Mare watches the workers, who watch other workers play, until the sky turns cloudy, the beaches empty, and the last umbrella closes.
Weightless tells the story of Max' self-realisation in an environment not yet ready for it. What feels like an intimate conversation, reveals a lot about our society.
The essayistic documentary Weightless circles around the topics of identity, mental struggle and self-realisation. It does so through an intimate conversation with the protagonist, Max, about his rather complicated growing up. But Max himself is never shown in the images, which creates a special audio-visual language and unique dynamics of the spoken. The images of significant places charge the spoken with wider meaning and ambivalence.
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.