In a cabin in the forest, Jean and Mana listen to various animal species and catalogue voice recordings. When they hear unfamiliar sounds, their curiosity to uncover a secret is aroused.
Jean lives as a hermit in a forest. From his cabin, he listens to and records the sounds of the animals that inhabit the surrounding area. One night, he hears the cry of an unknown animal. Along with Mana, a young girl who sings with the birds, he goes in search of the mysterious creature.
The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology
Jim Finn
Though consumed with antisemitism and fascism, historically the Apostle Paul was a revolutionary. A psychedelic montage, a wild ride through 2000 years of rabid propaganda.
The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology
The Apocalyptic Is the Mother of All Christian Theology
Jim Finn
Camera Lucida
Documentary Film
USA
2023
64 minutes
English
German premiere
Synopsis
A psychedelic portrait of the founding theorist of Christianity. The story of Paul the Apostle’s life, ideology and influence is told by piecing together 20th Century 16mm and cassette propaganda, board games, animation, reenactments, Roman Empire doom metal and covers of Catholic liturgical music. The gentle Paul themes with flute, acoustic guitar and mellotron contrast with the Demonic Roman Empire themes of electric guitar, drums and synth. Performance artist Linda Montano and filmmaker Usama Alshaibi portray Paul on his journeys. The film tries to capture the disturbing reaction Paul and his letters had in the early days of Christianity. The use of live-action, animation, found footage and original music was a way to recover his biography from the brains of 20th Century humans so that in some perhaps misguided Utopian impulse, we can build something new out of it for the future.
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.
A journey through places and times that shaped the life of Turkish writer and human rights activist Aslı Erdoğan. She writes against silence, especially in exile.
Shattered photos, excerpts from newspapers and pieces of words become voices that spread through the alleys of a city until they reach the house of a writer, who’s writing a page. These fragmented voices tell the story of Aslı Erdogan, a Turkish author forced to live in exile in Europe after being imprisoned for her political ideas.
The voices narrate her life, from her childhood in Istanbul and her feminist commitment to the years as a researcher in Switzerland, the fugue to Brazil before returning to Istanbul, the heart of her lost country. Footage of travel and migration in search of work, images from physics laboratories, videos of protests against the authorities in Istanbul: these materials get mixed in a visual and sound flow becoming the essence of our collective memory, shared by every discriminated person, among them Aslı Erdogan during her exile. Meanwhile, the process of writing has erupted: the page contains words.
A box of film material from Tito-era Yugoslavia becomes a narrative engine. With dry wit and philosophical verve, this essay burrows through family and contemporary history.
The sixties and the seventies of the 20th century in our former country, a country that ceased to be. A young family moves from a rural environment to a small Slovenian town, where factories are being built and the need for a workforce is increasing. The brothers are growing up in that shaky but magical in-between, soaked in the everyday rhythms of the community, infused with the ideology of the time. Then, it happens: the sudden spectrum of film; the mystique of time itself.
In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village and became an internationally acclaimed actor. Years later, her filmmaker daughter returns there with her.
In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters.
Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter, Lina, returns with her to the village and questions for the first time her mother's bold choices, her chosen exile and the way the women in their family influenced both their lives. Set between past and present, Bye Bye Tiberias pieces together images of today, family footage from the nineties and historical archives to portray four generations of daring Palestinian women who keep their story and legacy alive through the strength of their bonds, despite exile, dispossession, and heartbreak.
In southern California, date palms from the Middle East grow, tales from One Thousand and One Nights are told and a volcanic eruption is expected. A document of enchanting simultaneity.
Along the San Andreas fault line in Southern California, indigenous palm trees and date palms imported from the Middle East flourish. The people who tend to them reflect a landscape of frictions and affections shaped over generations by agriculture, luxury real estate, and border politics. Like the infinity storytelling of The 1001 Nights, stories fold into dreams and back into stories, a constellation of voices settle over mountains and into the earth. Intertwining colour 16mm with textural black and white film hand processed with the dates leftover from harvest and plants native to the valley, Feet in Water, Head on Fire is a sensory, polyvocal evocation of place.
In search of memories of her childhood, Asmae El Moudir recreates her Casablanca neighbourhood as an elaborate miniature and in the process comes across a trauma of Moroccan history.
Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir wants to know why she only has one photograph from her childhood, and why the girl in the picture isn't even her. When her family refuses to answer her questions about the past, she hits on another solution: on a handmade replica recreating the Casablanca neighbourhood where she grew up, El Moudir begins to interrogate the tales her mother, father and grandmother tell about their home and their country. Slowly, she starts to unravel the layers of deception and intentional forgetting that have shaped her life. The truth is hard to face, but in this sometimes surreal nonfiction film, El Moudir begins to draw what's real to the surface.
There is Portugal, there is the Portuguese language and there is a Ukrainian filmmaker who learns the language and approaches the role of the potential migrant. There is also a play of words: zangar and o zangāo. How is it possible to express such an empowering emotion like anger in the fragile attempts of a beginner? The video essay is woven from the filmmaker's narration, language classes, personal videos and archival images from Kyiv – revealing the split reality of anyone who is finding a safe place abroad while longing for home, which is under the constant danger of war.
Tubas are stolen from Californian schools. What does the lack of a particular sound do to our perception of music? An entertaining, multilayered reflection on hearing and not hearing.
When tubas are stolen from Los Angeles high schools, many questions remain unanswered. The Tuba Thieves is not about thieves or missing tubas. Instead, it asks what it means to listen.
Universe Department Store existed in Cheonho-dong, Seoul in the 1980s. There was a spaceship ride in front that unfolded a vast universe for me when I rode it. The universe I saw at the time merged with places in my childhood and would appear in my dreams as strange shapes. What is the source of these strange dreams that make sudden visits even to this day? In order to solve this lingering question, I began to dig into my memories of the Universe Department Store and the places from my childhood.
Women look after a grave on an island cemetery. Observing this process triggers an experimental, visually inventive reflection on female bonding and vanished men.
This hybrid film takes us on a journey into a world without men, where women choose the image that will represent them after they are gone. The author silently questions: how does it feel to have a family tree consisting only of women? And what do our ancestors whisper from their silent portraits?
DJ Vika is 84 and a star of Warsaw’s nightclubs. She refuses to grow old and sit at home. Instead, she wants to celebrate life, enjoy herself and music.
84-year-old Vika is a star of the Warsaw clubbing scene. A charismatic DJ and a colourful bird she surrounds herself with young people, repeating that age is just a number. But when her health suddenly begins to deteriorate, Vika can no longer deny the passing of time. Will she find meaning in sharing the joy of life with other seniors by encouraging them to live their lives to the fullest?
Vika! is a bittersweet portrait of a woman who intends to celebrate life to the very end, a true inspiration for both the silver generation and our future selves.
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.