A New Era
Boris Svartzman
A long-term observation of the upheavals in China, exemplified by a group of resistant islanders. They refuse to be resettled, they defend their homes, they achieve …
A
Film Archive
A New Era
Documentary Film
2019
71 minutes
subtitles:
English
Over ten years, the director and photographer Boris Svartzman repeatedly visited the inhabitants of a plot of land in China. The houses and gardens there are in dispute, above all because of their specific location: an island in the Pearl River, in the middle of the megalopolis of Guangzhou. The area is to be transformed into a “nature paradise” with residential estates and parks for the new Chinese middle class. But the people resist. Their homes were destroyed in 2008. Life went on, just in ruins. They were ejected and returned. Life went on, but not necessarily in the new settlements they were given. Their gardens were destroyed. Life went on, in the gardens they rebuilt.
Loud and quiet resistance against the modernisation that’s going on all over the world seems especially dramatic in China. Svartzman captures in detail the co-existence of a modern, Western-inspired lifestyle and ancient traditions and architectures. This turns the life story of the old gentleman who always cordially welcomes the foreign guest like a ghost into a requiem. The West, fixated on cities, Svartzman says, could have learned a lot about “rural democracy” from China – had the Far East not trampled down its rural spaces and people in such a Western fashion.
Saskia Walker
Loud and quiet resistance against the modernisation that’s going on all over the world seems especially dramatic in China. Svartzman captures in detail the co-existence of a modern, Western-inspired lifestyle and ancient traditions and architectures. This turns the life story of the old gentleman who always cordially welcomes the foreign guest like a ghost into a requiem. The West, fixated on cities, Svartzman says, could have learned a lot about “rural democracy” from China – had the Far East not trampled down its rural spaces and people in such a Western fashion.
Saskia Walker
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
A Tiger with No Stripes
Raúl “Robin” Morales Reyes
A tiger without stripes? Can the animal that terrifies the other inhabitants of the jungle be a real tiger at all?
A Tiger with No Stripes
Animated Film
2018
8 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
A tiger without stripes? Can the animal that terrifies the other inhabitants of the jungle be a real tiger at all? To stop being laughed at the little tiger goes in search of his stripes. He discovers them as shadows on his fur, paints them on with mud, but nothing lasts. How else can he get his stripes?
Marie-Thérèse Antony
Marie-Thérèse Antony
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Ayahuasca – Kosmik Journey
Jan Kounen
Guided by the meditative chants of a virtual Shipibo healer we embark on an inner journey. Kaleidoscopic visions create a meditative state whose intensity is heavily dependent on our level of attention.
Guided by the meditative chants of a virtual Shipibo healer we embark on an inner journey. Our companions are snakes, beetles and scorpions. The destination of our journey is a world that seems to be pure geometry. Kaleidoscopic visions create a meditative state whose intensity is heavily dependent on our level of attention.
Lars Rummel, Marie Hinkelmann
Lars Rummel, Marie Hinkelmann
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Big Wolf & Little Wolf
Rémi Durin
The big wolf leads a contented life. Until one fine morning the little wolf turns up and moves in with him.
Big Wolf & Little Wolf
The big wolf leads a contented life: He reads books under his tree, grumbles over bills and listens to music, quite undisturbed. Until one fine morning the little wolf turns up and moves in with him. The little wolf listens to his records, turns the newspaper into paper planes and, to top it all, snores. The big wolf doesn’t need this kind of companionship. Or does he?
Marie-Thérèse Antony
Marie-Thérèse Antony
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Black Hole
Arnaud Deshayes, Emmanuel Grimaud
Two French filmmakers trawl the unconscious for clues to find the ghosts of India’s colonial past there. Therapeutic, hypnotic, richly emblematic.
Black Hole
A dark room. The focus is on a woman’s relaxed face. The cherry-red lips are starting to move. The eyes are closed. In trance, a young Indian woman slips into her earlier incarnations – for example the role of a liberal man who fought for equality and freedom. While her body seems to fade into the black background, her re-experience becomes clearer and more visual.
Trupti Jayin, a well-known hypnotherapist in Kolkata, uses the image of the black hole for her patients. If they dare make the leap into the dark nothingness, they may be able to enter more deeply into their subconscious, find or even come to terms with repressed memories. In India’s colonial history, though, the so-called “Black Hole” has a different meaning. The eponymous 18th century prison where some British soldiers died is still regarded as a historical blind spot today, where myth and reality have become indistinguishable. The French filmmakers Emmanuel Grimaud and Arnaud Deshayes go in search of traces in the subconscious to confront the ghosts of the past there. In private and in public. Because in addition to the hypnotherapy sessions, we follow a group of ghost hunters who chase the restless souls through the dark alleys and empty houses of the West Bengali capital.
Julia Weigl
Trupti Jayin, a well-known hypnotherapist in Kolkata, uses the image of the black hole for her patients. If they dare make the leap into the dark nothingness, they may be able to enter more deeply into their subconscious, find or even come to terms with repressed memories. In India’s colonial history, though, the so-called “Black Hole” has a different meaning. The eponymous 18th century prison where some British soldiers died is still regarded as a historical blind spot today, where myth and reality have become indistinguishable. The French filmmakers Emmanuel Grimaud and Arnaud Deshayes go in search of traces in the subconscious to confront the ghosts of the past there. In private and in public. Because in addition to the hypnotherapy sessions, we follow a group of ghost hunters who chase the restless souls through the dark alleys and empty houses of the West Bengali capital.
Julia Weigl
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Bread, Revenge?
Stefan Hayn
A filmed reading, the past evoked. A historical-political essay about how to deal with German guilt, based on texts by the French resistance fighter Robert Antelme.
Bread, Revenge?
In 1944, the French resistance fighter Robert Antelme was captured by the Germans. He was taken to Gandersheim, a satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. In the last months of the Second World War, Antelme got to experience the whole extent of dehumanisation under National Socialist tyranny. Soon after his liberation he wrote the book “The Human Race” about it, which today is a classic of coming to terms with the past.
Stefan Hayn already dealt with Antelme in his film “Straub” (2014). Now he examines in more detail a series of texts which contributed to the post-war debate about how to deal with German guilt. Hayn calls his film a “lecture filmée” in the opening credits, a “filmed reading”. It is of crucial importance that the texts (including reflections on a theft of bread among prisoners) are present in the French original, even if recited by German native speakers. Different forms of “reading” that culminate in a sketch-like scenic re-enactment are interlaced with contemporary shots of memorial sites today to form a multi-layered film essay, historical-political in the best sense.
Bert Rebhandl
Stefan Hayn already dealt with Antelme in his film “Straub” (2014). Now he examines in more detail a series of texts which contributed to the post-war debate about how to deal with German guilt. Hayn calls his film a “lecture filmée” in the opening credits, a “filmed reading”. It is of crucial importance that the texts (including reflections on a theft of bread among prisoners) are present in the French original, even if recited by German native speakers. Different forms of “reading” that culminate in a sketch-like scenic re-enactment are interlaced with contemporary shots of memorial sites today to form a multi-layered film essay, historical-political in the best sense.
Bert Rebhandl
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Ceuta’s Gate
Randa Maroufi
A performative reconstruction sketches and condenses everyday life at the border between the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and Morocco, crossed illegally by all kinds of goods.
Ceuta’s Gate
Credits
Said Hamich, Sophie Penson, Randa Maroufi
Randa Maroufi
Luca Coassin
Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis
Everything seems tidy at first in Randa Maroufi’s performative reconstruction. Prettily sorted cars queue up, market women tie up their baggage, security officers do press-ups. On the monotonous grey background the scenes appear schematic, like a blueprint where suddenly everything is graphically condensed, though, with the otherwise observant camera drifting disorientedly in the middle. Everyday life at the border between the Spanish exclave of Ceuta and Morocco, which is crossed illegally by all kinds of goods.
André Eckardt
André Eckardt
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Deep Waters
Alice Heit
An opulent film essay celebrating autonomous female sexuality. Its attitude and style playfully take up the feminist departure of the 1970s, but are firmly aimed at the present.
Deep Waters
In the early 1970s, countless women in Western Europe and the U.S. fervently set out to explore their own bodies in self-help groups. Alice Heit’s film draws on this historic space of experience, opening on the sound level with personal reports of female sexuality affirming itself. Soon, a wide-ranging visual journey rich in associations develops, exploring and celebrating the physical phenomenon of female ejaculation suppressed in popular images of sexiness. Vulva-shaped sculptures and small statues of ancient mother goddesses lead the way to the spiritual emanations of the sexual and to creation myths in ancient India and Anatolia.
The shimmering Super 8 images, manually developed by the filmmaker (and looking beautifully homemade on all levels!) spread retro feelings on the formal level, too. Stop motion animations of crawling starfish evoke the surrealist film avant-garde. Other ingredients of this sex film of a different kind overflowing with motifs: lots of seawater. Dark snakes on pale skin. Trance-like chanting. And (with a title banner raised by two female divers underwater) perhaps the most poetic opening credits in the history of cinema.
Silvia Hallensleben
The shimmering Super 8 images, manually developed by the filmmaker (and looking beautifully homemade on all levels!) spread retro feelings on the formal level, too. Stop motion animations of crawling starfish evoke the surrealist film avant-garde. Other ingredients of this sex film of a different kind overflowing with motifs: lots of seawater. Dark snakes on pale skin. Trance-like chanting. And (with a title banner raised by two female divers underwater) perhaps the most poetic opening credits in the history of cinema.
Silvia Hallensleben
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
HanaHana Full Bloom
Mélodie Mousset
Odd shapes stand in a desert landscape. At the push of a button, countless hands sprout from the ground. Hands, hands everywhere.
HanaHana Full Bloom
Credits
Mélodie Mousset
Mélodie Mousset
Joe Williams
Christian Heinrichs
Vinicius P. Faria
Thibault Brevet
Mélodie Mousset
Victor Beaupuy, Tom Frackowiak
Jean-Marc Benoit
Marietta Eugster
Odd shapes stand in a desert landscape. At the push of a button, countless hands sprout from the ground. Hands, hands everywhere. Modelled on the Anime character Nico Robin who can make body parts grow anywhere at will, we are asked to contribute our own narratives and physical, intellectual and sensual impressions to this desert. The result is satisfying, in a surprising way.
Lars Rummel, Marie Hinkelmann
Lars Rummel, Marie Hinkelmann
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Heart of Stone
Olivier Jobard, Claire Billet
Ghorban, then thirteen, travelled alone from Afghanistan to France. In Paris at last, he hopes to be allowed to go to school. This long-term observation follows him over eight years.
Heart of Stone
Documentary Film
2018
89 minutes
subtitles:
English
French
Thirteen-year-old Ghorban arrives in Paris after having made the 8,000 kilometre journey from Afghanistan on his own. In France, however, he is faced with an absurd situation: He’s stuck. “There is neither a beginning nor an end”, is his own diagnosis. They can’t just send him to school. One of the reasons is that there is a date that doesn’t exist on his birth certificate: 31 November. Another administrative file to be re-opened.
Claire Billet and Olivier Jobard followed the sensitive boy, whose great goal is to arrive in a society, over eight years. Fixed points are provided not only by Ghorban’s constantly changing hairstyles and his ever improving French, but also by regular conversations with a therapist that provide deeper insights into his mental state. For in addition to the difficulties brought by assimilation, relatives he left behind and is now gradually contacting again are still meandering through the back of Ghorban’s mind. Still, the final chapter of this long-term observation which ends in a return to Afghanistan reveals how deep the chasm has become after a youth spent in France.
Carolin Weidner
Claire Billet and Olivier Jobard followed the sensitive boy, whose great goal is to arrive in a society, over eight years. Fixed points are provided not only by Ghorban’s constantly changing hairstyles and his ever improving French, but also by regular conversations with a therapist that provide deeper insights into his mental state. For in addition to the difficulties brought by assimilation, relatives he left behind and is now gradually contacting again are still meandering through the back of Ghorban’s mind. Still, the final chapter of this long-term observation which ends in a return to Afghanistan reveals how deep the chasm has become after a youth spent in France.
Carolin Weidner
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
History of the Revolution
Maxime Martinot
An equally intelligent and psychedelic essay trip through the visual and intellectual worlds associated with the word “revolution”: yesterday and today, in success and failure.
History of the Revolution
Credits
Quentin Brayer
Maxime Martinot
Robin Fresson, Théophile Gay-Mazas
Maxime Martinot
Victor Praud
The history of the revolution – but which one? Or isn’t it rather a history of the term “revolution”, the variety of its meanings and uses in the here and now as well as in history, in words, images and deeds? Maxime Martinot undertakes an equally intelligent and psychedelic essay trip through the visual and mental worlds of transgression, struggle, success and failure of all things revolutionary.
Frederik Lang
Frederik Lang
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Home Away 3000
Héloïse Pétel, Philippe Baranzini
The astronaut is stranded on an alien planet far away in outer space. The broken spaceship must be repaired, but his tools are stolen by the only inhabitant of this orb!
Home Away 3000
Animated Film
2018
11 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
The astronaut is stranded on an alien planet far away in outer space. The broken spaceship must be repaired, but his tools are stolen by the only inhabitant of this orb! With only his potted plants and no tools, it looks like he won’t be able to leave the planet. A scouting expedition gives him an idea how he might get home after all.
Marie-Thérèse Antony
Marie-Thérèse Antony
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Home Sweet Home
Chaïtane Conversat
Grandmother’s house is full of treasures! Every visit reveals new things to discover and she loves to talk about the adventures she had in search of the shells, buttons and leaves.
Home Sweet Home
Credits
Reginald de Guillebon, Florence Adam
Chaïtane Conversat
Patricia Dallio
Nadine Buss, Sara Sponga
Hervé Guichard
Pierre-Luc Granjon, Antoine Lanciaux, Chaïtane Conversat, Marjolaine Parot
Chaïtane Conversat, Pierre-Luc Granjon
Loïc Burkhardt
Grandmother’s house is full of treasures! Every visit reveals new things to discover and she loves to talk about the adventures she had in search of the shells, buttons and leaves. But with every visit there are more crates in the house so that it becomes harder and harder to find grandmother at all. One day she disappears behind her crates. Will her granddaughter manage to free her?
Marie-Thérèse Antony
Marie-Thérèse Antony
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
I Invite You to My Execution
Nino Kirtadze
The dramatic publication history of Boris Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago” in the Cold War, when literature could be a danger to the state and its publication life-threatening.
I Invite You to My Execution
Documentary Film
2018
56 minutes
subtitles:
English
“This summer I committed the greatest crime a Soviet writer could commit. According to Soviet rules here, publication of a book abroad before it comes out in the Soviet Union is an illegal act of which I would severely be punished. I don’t know how.” Since he saw no prospect for his epochal work “Doctor Zhivago” to be published in the Soviet Union, the writer Boris Pasternak smuggled several copies of his manuscript abroad. He had worked on his first and only novel for almost ten years. Rejected as “anti-Soviet” because of its supposedly critical view of the October Revolution, a publication of the work, which had been finished in 1956, in its country of origin had become inconceivable. Pasternak would have stopped at nothing to save the text. “Doctor Zhivago” was first published in 1957 in an Italian translation; its author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in the following year – which had consequences. Using archive documents, interviews and Pasternak’s own notes, the film reconstructs a dramatic story from the Cold War period when literature could be a danger to the state and its publication life-threatening.
Frederik Lang
Frederik Lang
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Insectopedia
Antoine Fontaine
600 film reels of insect recordings – a flea market find leads to the psychological study of a Brussels surgeon and a type of man who shares his habitat with audibly scurrying chitin carapaces.
Insectopedia
Over 36 years, an unmarried surgeon filmed and dissected insects in his Brussels apartment. 600 reels of wonderful, obsessively precise recordings and increasingly confused commentary paint a strange psychological profile. During his research on Dr. Veroft, Antoine Fontaine comes across a species of man whose social behaviour is conspicuously focused on six-legged creatures and who share their habitat with audibly scurrying chitin carapaces and Darth Vader figurines.
André Eckardt
André Eckardt
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
L’Ultimu Sognu
Lisa Reboulleau
An old man alone in the forest, with a gun, a dog, a torchlight – and the memory of Lucia, the woman who was in touch with the animals. She’s dead, but her voice comes back.
L’Ultimu Sognu
Documentary Film
2019
33 minutes
subtitles:
English
The woman who was in touch with animals was called Lucia. She is no longer alive, but her voice comes back, bringing images, coarse-grained and analogue, from a time when people still knew that there is a connection between the death of the animals and the death of the people. Today, in the digital present, there is only an old man alone in the forest, with a gun, a dog, a flashlight and the memory of Lucia. What do the sheep dream of, he wonders? And the donkeys?
Lukas Foerster
Lukas Foerster
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.