Film Archive

Retrospective 2023
Filmstill Uprisings in the Soviet Sphere of Influence
Uprisings in the Soviet Sphere of Influence
Ralph Giordano, Hans-Ulrich Barth
Communism as a history of crises: The authors examine the various uprisings in the Soviet sphere of influence and search for similarities and differences.
Filmstill Uprisings in the Soviet Sphere of Influence

Uprisings in the Soviet Sphere of Influence

Aufstände im sowjetischen Machtbereich
Ralph Giordano, Hans-Ulrich Barth
Retrospective 2023
Documentary Film
FRG
1961
24 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

The history of communism as the story of its crises: The two authors Ralph Giordano and Hans-Ulrich Barth take up various uprisings and protests to demonstrate the discrepancy between the claim to power and the reality in “socialist imperialism.” A more nuanced light is shed on individual uprisings, while at the same time feeding into stereotypical Cold War images of the enemy.

Katharina Franck, Andreas Kötzing

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ralph Giordano, Hans-Ulrich Barth
Producer
NDR Norddeutscher Rundfunk / German TV ARD Network
German Competition 2022
Filmstill Uncanny Me
Uncanny Me
Katharina Pethke
What does it mean for our perception of the world when virtual duplicates of ourselves can be made to look so deceptively real that human being and avatar become indistinguishable?
Filmstill Uncanny Me

Uncanny Me

Uncanny Me
Katharina Pethke
German Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Germany
2022
45 minutes
English,
German
Subtitles: 
German, English

Do computer-generated figures now look as “real” as “genuine” humans? For 26-year-old Lale, this question is not only exciting in theory, but in practice. She works as a model but would rather spare herself exhausting shoots by getting an avatar. But when she has taken the first steps towards “doubling” herself, she has second thoughts. What does it mean, in actual, legal and moral terms, to bring a virtual duplicate of oneself into the world?

Katharina Pethke accompanies her young protagonist on this process. The intellectual game turns into a test on the living subject, a weighing of possibilities and fears. What does it mean for our perception of the world (and for documentary film, too, of course) that the promise of reality of visual media has long since become a gradual one? In the age of omnipresent self-dramatization, deepfakes and extended reality, we are embarking on a journey to our joint (media) future. It’s no coincidence that it ends at a place that already inspired Plato’s ideas on reality and its shadows.
Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Katharina Pethke
Script
Katharina Pethke
Cinematographer
Christoph Rohrscheidt
Editor
Daniela Kinateder
Producer
Christoph Rohrscheidt, Sven Michael Otto
Co-Producer
ZDF / 3sat
Sound
Michael Thäle
Sound Design
Kuan-Chen Chen, Christian Riegel
Animation
Vinzent Britz
Broadcaster
ZDF / 3sat
Commissioning Editor
Udo Bremer
Nominated for: VER.DI Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness, Young Eyes Film Award
Re-Visions 2020
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Uncle
Adam Elliot
Clay empathy: An uncle you’re never sure you would like to have yourself but for whom you still shed hot tears when he will have died in the end.
Media Name: ccc45ff2-3992-4dc9-8d6a-df8cdfd035a8.jpg

Uncle

Uncle
Adam Elliot
Re-Visions 2020
Animated Film
Australia
1996
7 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
None

An uncle you’re never sure you would like to have yourself but for whom you still shed hot tears when he will have died in the end. The essential material of this touching story – apart from the clay the figures are made of – is empathy. This melancholy farewell to a cranky old geezer deals with a small subject. But it’s about everything.

Ralph Eue

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Adam Elliot
Script
Adam Elliot
Editor
Adam Elliot
Producer
Victorian College of the Arts University of Melbourne
Animation
Adam Elliot
Panorama Short Film 2022
Filmstill Uncle Vakho’s Dream
Uncle Vakho’s Dream
Joanna Roj
For the over eighty-year-old Vakho, the ice-covered mountainous region in the Georgian Caucasus is a self-chosen exile – out of deeply felt guilt about the death of his brother.
Filmstill Uncle Vakho’s Dream

Uncle Vakho’s Dream

Sen wujka Vakho
Joanna Roj
Panorama Short Film 2022
Documentary Film
Poland
2022
23 minutes
Georgian
Subtitles: 
English

According to mythology, Prometheus was bound to the rocks of Mount Kazbek, more than 5,000 metres high and covered in ice. For Vakho, this mountainous region in the Georgian Caucasus is a self-chosen exile – out of deeply felt guilt. 48 years ago, he lost his brother in tragic circumstances that had previously come to him in a dream: “I couldn’t let go of the past”, the man, now in his eighties, explains in this visually impressive debut short film portrait.

Jan-Philipp Kohlmann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Joanna Roj
Script
Joanna Roj
Cinematographer
Sandro Wysocki
Editor
Joanna Roj
Producer
Ewa Jastrzebska, Jerzy Kapuscinski
Co-Producer
Stanislaw Roj
Sound
Michal Jr Kosterkiewicz
Retrospective 2023
Filmstill Undefeated
Undefeated
Marek Drążewski
This taboo could not be broken until 30 years later: The Poznań protests of 1956, narrated as a collage of previously unpublished photos, footage and memories of participants.
Filmstill Undefeated

Undefeated

Niepokonani
Marek Drążewski
Retrospective 2023
Documentary Film
Poland
1984
75 minutes
Polish
Subtitles: 
English

Poznań, June 1956: For a long time, the “forgotten uprising” in which dozens of people lost their lives was a taboo in Poland. It was only in the mid-1980s, in a period of liberalisation, that Marek Drążewski could make this astonishingly frank review, in which he condenses the dramatic events using private photos, footage and memories of contemporary witnesses.

Katharina Franck, Andreas Kötzing

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Marek Drążewski
Script
Marek Drążewski
Cinematographer
Jacek Siwecki
Editor
Małgorzata Rodowicz
Producer
Janusz Skałkowski
Sound
Ernest Zawada, Andrzej Lewandowski
Score
Jan A.P. Kaczmarek
DEFA Matinee 2022
Filmstill Unima Festival (DEFA-KINOBOX 1984/38)
Unima Festival (DEFA-KINOBOX 1984/38)
Angelika Andrees
In 1984, people from forty countries convened in Dresden for a congress of UNIMA, the Union Internationale de la Marionnette. Impressions from the world of puppetry.
Filmstill Unima Festival (DEFA-KINOBOX 1984/38)

Unima Festival (DEFA-KINOBOX 1984/38)

Unima-Festival (DEFA-KINOBOX 1984/38)
Angelika Andrees
DEFA Matinee 2022
Documentary Film
GDR
1984
4 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

Around 1,500 people from more than forty countries met in Dresden for the 1984 congress of UNIMA, the Union Internationale de la Marionnette. Founded in 1929, UNIMA claims to be the oldest international theatre organisation and has been promoting the global development of puppet theatre to the present day. This Kinobox item offers affectionate impressions of the high art of puppetry.

Philip Zengel

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Angelika Andrees
Script
Angelika Andrees
Cinematographer
Jürgen Hoffmann
Producer
DEFA-Studio für Dokumentarfilme
Filmstill Universe Department Store

Universe Department Store

Yunibeoseu
Taewoong Won
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
South Korea
2022
80 minutes
Korean
Subtitles: 
English

Our memory is not to be trusted; it is interwoven with wishful thinking, dreams, romanticisations or repressions, superimposed or replaced by accidentally glimpsed images. If you want to make sure of your history, you might seek out the places of your childhood or youth to embark on a journey into the past. But what if those places are long gone, themselves as fleeting as the memories of them?

Director Won Taewoong was born in 1981, at a time when the city of Seoul, devastated in the civil war, was rapidly developing. Under the South Korean military dictatorship rice paddies turned into business and residential areas, multi-storey department stores with long escalators and attractions for children were built. In front of the Universe Department Store in Cheonho-dong on the eastern outskirts of the city, a space shuttle was erected that made the children’s imaginations run wild. But while modernisation was picking up speed, most of these malls closed down again after a few years. “Universe Department Store” is an attempted reconstruction. In conversations with peers whose memories often show enormous discrepancies and in hypnosis sessions, the director gets to the bottom of what memory is and discovers a dazzling universe between fact and fantasy.

Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Taewoong Won
Cinematographer
Taewoong Won, Suyu Lee
Editor
Taewoong Won
Producer
Il-kwon Kim
Sound
Suhyun Kim
Sound Design
Jiyoon Lee, Sungyui Lee
Score
Minkook Kang
Animation
Taewoong Won
World Sales
Sol ah Jin
Winner of: FIPRESCI Prize