In heated, often hostile debates about homosexuality, trans and sex work, a young Armenian family tries to assert some kind of queer normality for themselves and others.
Carabina, a gay artist, transvestite, and ex-sex worker, is married to Hasmik, a heterosexual lawyer. They have just become parents and are facing a dilemma: Should they raise their child in Armenia, where 93% of the population is against homosexuality?
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.
Design as a political act? In this animated collage, a contemporary advertising graphic designer explores the uncompromising work of the photomontage pioneer and anti-fascist John Heartfield.
The graphic designer Stefanie is in a creative crisis. Boring advertising assignments and a boss who does not value her work. On a visit to a museum, she is magically attracted by the satirical photomontages of the world-famous colleague and Nazi opponent John Heartfield. Then the miracle happens. She ends up in his studio, where she finally picks up scissors and paper again. An adventurous journey through Heartfield's extraordinary life 100 years ago begins.
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.
Invited by a mysterious friend, a film team sets out on a journey into a hidden Yenish Europe that stretches from dusty banlieues in France to the forests of Carinthia. Told by the voices of young and old Travellers, a kaleidoscopic panorama of their lives unfolds: Diverse people relate to each other, bound together by their love of freedom but also by deep wounds from the past. Their otherness is mirrored and reflected not least in the exchange between the filmmakers and the Yenish.
Snajka is a participative-observational documentary about a just-married Croatian-Roma couple, Tea and Mirsad, their daughter Frida, and their attempt at a life together, suspended between expectations from families and communities from culturally irreconcilable backgrounds that do not accept diversity.
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.
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.
A filmmaker goes on a journey of a lifetime: after receiving his grandfather's WWII diary, he decides to follow in the footsteps of the Soviet army and discover today's reality.
An extraordinary document leads Hakob Melkonyan to undertake the journey of a lifetime: after receiving his grandfather's WWII diary, the Armenian filmmaker decides to follow in the footsteps of the Soviet army and discover today's reality in those territories. The War Diary is a road movie through four countries: Armenia, Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine. It confronts the history of the Second World War with today's reality in these former Soviet republics. Having become independent after the fall of the USSR, they are now torn apart by numerous deadly conflicts in Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine.
The War Diary is a very personal quest but also sheds light on the geopolitical context of these countries that once fought side by side. Today, however, with the invasion of Ukraine, it has become an essential project.
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.
Željko is the head of the union at the Gredelj railway car factory. His deputy, Mladen, committed suicide after a large public protests and clashes within the union. Željko is torn between the guilt he feels because of Mladen's death and the expectation of the workers to lead a strike.
In Jirkuff's animation, based on a story by Ilse Aichinger (1921–2016), the parts of a house develop a life of their own. Along with the handrail and the wallpaper, even the white drawing surfaces are affected: Jirkuff's charcoal strokes and the coal dust from Aichinger's text colour them grey (after all, coal is stored in the cellar where the narrating voice ultimately ends up). Here, as previously in Vermessung der Distanz (2019), Susi Jirkuff's interest is not only in the spatiality of the building but also in the (non-) behaviour of fellow humans. No one asks: “Didn't you live next door to us just yesterday?”
The story appeared in 1955 in Stillere Heimat, the literary yearbook of the city of Linz. Aichinger had survived the era of national socialist terror in an apartment near the Vienna Gestapo headquarters. The yearned end of the war did not promise liberation – the same people were sitting in the offices; they talked the same and acted the same. The housing office told the severely depleted family whose close family members had been murdered, a sister and an aunt able to flee to England: “Sleep in hammocks.” Who really cared about such matters back then? And who's really concerned about the living situation of endangered people nowadays? (Andreas Dittrich)
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.