D
Film Archive
Agnosis
Animadoc
Germany,
Ukraine
2015
39 minutes
subtitles:
German
As in “Chthonic City”, the painter Anita Müller gives wings to her filmed material in the catacombs of Odessa: statements re-connote documentary images, additions visualise dreams or thoughts. She takes associative liberties that suggest comparisons with jazz. The invisible protagonist who lost his way on a spiritual search of the underworld and disappeared without a trace may have felt as ephemeral and fluctuating as her visual creations.
Cornelia Klauß
Cornelia Klauß
Akt
Mario Schneider
Nude models in Leipzig: nudity motivates reflections on injuries and human warmth. A declaration of love to life and bodies that wear their scars with dignity.
After his award winning Mansfeld trilogy Mario Schneider returns to Leipzig with a simply astonishing film. The basic idea is brilliant: on one level, it’s the story of three people who pose nude at the local art academy. This creates a point of intersection from which the film credibly moves in and out of the protagonists’ worlds while linking the work with art with the work of life. At the same time, the scenes where they pose nude invite us to contemplate the human body.
In these moments the stories we just followed – a childhood memory, the beginning of a love story – find surprising physical correspondences that invite us to take a look at ourselves. Another layer is added to this narrative structure, introduced by an art student who poses nude herself and is searching for the artistic expression of an old question: how does human closeness work? Intelligently deployed in the dramaturgy, this subject merges the individual narratives into a social experience that is artist Mario Schneider’s real motif. Multilayered, masterfully edited and timed and sustained by its excellent cinematography, “Naked Beauty” is a declaration of love to the human body that bears its scars with dignity.
Matthias Heeder
In these moments the stories we just followed – a childhood memory, the beginning of a love story – find surprising physical correspondences that invite us to take a look at ourselves. Another layer is added to this narrative structure, introduced by an art student who poses nude herself and is searching for the artistic expression of an old question: how does human closeness work? Intelligently deployed in the dramaturgy, this subject merges the individual narratives into a social experience that is artist Mario Schneider’s real motif. Multilayered, masterfully edited and timed and sustained by its excellent cinematography, “Naked Beauty” is a declaration of love to the human body that bears its scars with dignity.
Matthias Heeder
Alle 28 Tage
Ina Borrmann
In Central Europe ten percent of all couples need longer than two years to make their wish of having a child come true. As with so many other things, I put my wish for a child off until the last possible biological moment.
In Central Europe ten percent of all couples need longer than two years to make their wish of having a child come true. As with so many other things, I put my wish for a child off until the last possible biological moment. The idea of having a baby frightened me. I was preoccupied with myself and didn't want a commitment. On the one hand there was the desire for a relationship and a home but on the other there was the longing for total freedom and independence. It also seemed important to me to resist society's pressure to give birth. I considered my not having a child a statement as it were. But then it happened, suddenly and unexpectedly. Wanting to have a child emerged from the darkest depths of my psyche. After all, two's company but not a Family ..
Als wir die Zukunft waren
Lars Barthel, Gabriele Denecke, Andreas Voigt, Peter Kahane, Thomas Knauf, Hannes Schönemann. Ralf Marschalleck
People who were born in the 1950s in the GDR: the childhood memories of a generation. Six miniatures, rich in wit, nostalgia, and poetry. The echo of a utopia.
Als wir die Zukunft waren
Credits
Barbara Etz
Lars Barthel, Gabriele Denecke, Andreas Voigt, Peter Kahane, Thomas Knauf, Hannes Schönemann. Ralf Marschalleck
Marcel Noll
Lars Barthel, Andreas Köfer, Thomas Plenert, Marcus Lenz, Sebastian Hattop
Grete Jentzen, Gudrun Steinbrück-Plenert, Pamela Homann, Mathieu Honoré
motionworks Halle, Jörg Herrmann
Uwe Busch, Maurice Wilkering, Thomas Funk, Nic Nagel
Generations define themselves by the future – sometimes there’s too little, sometimes too much. The generation born in the GDR in the 1950s were taught from an early age that they were the future of socialism. Quite a responsibility. And it didn’t quite work out, either.
The six male and one female directors of this omnibus film have their socialisation in common, and the fact that they all worked for DEFA. Nonetheless, their memories of childhood in a country that was still marked by the war, but also by a spirit of departure, are stylistically very different: from strict visual concepts to the exuberant use of animation or re-enacted scenes. They are strongest when they are visually condensed, opening associative spaces, or when they manage to tell their story from a child’s perspective, but with the knowledge of the adult. Most of them are children who lose first their father and then their faith in socialism. An interesting aspect is that the West didn’t only mean fragrant parcels, Westerns, toy guns or Uncle Alfred but also departed fathers. And even the fathers who stayed were mostly absent. The East, that was the mothers, beautiful and strong. Sometimes it broke them.
Ultimately, the problem was that socialism didn’t have faith in its children. Their narratives are like the echo of a utopia.
Grit Lemke
The six male and one female directors of this omnibus film have their socialisation in common, and the fact that they all worked for DEFA. Nonetheless, their memories of childhood in a country that was still marked by the war, but also by a spirit of departure, are stylistically very different: from strict visual concepts to the exuberant use of animation or re-enacted scenes. They are strongest when they are visually condensed, opening associative spaces, or when they manage to tell their story from a child’s perspective, but with the knowledge of the adult. Most of them are children who lose first their father and then their faith in socialism. An interesting aspect is that the West didn’t only mean fragrant parcels, Westerns, toy guns or Uncle Alfred but also departed fathers. And even the fathers who stayed were mostly absent. The East, that was the mothers, beautiful and strong. Sometimes it broke them.
Ultimately, the problem was that socialism didn’t have faith in its children. Their narratives are like the echo of a utopia.
Grit Lemke
ARTE360 – Plattform für 360°/VR-Video
(none)
Canada,
France,
Germany
2015
480 minutes
subtitles:
(none)
ARTE is currently working on new 360° and virtual reality projects in the fields of culture, documentary and fiction which can be experienced via the ARTE360 platform and through virtual reality glasses.
The exhibition offers visitors access to the first documentaries through virtual reality headsets and cardboard glasses.
The exhibition offers visitors access to the first documentaries through virtual reality headsets and cardboard glasses.
Atl Tlachinolli
Alexander Hick
Mexico City, a juggernaut of millions of inhabitants, fighting for survival. Its counterpoint is the mythical Axolotl, which does not undergo any metamorphosis but is losing its biotope. A bold portrait of a city.
Atl Tlachinolli
Documentary Film
Germany,
Mexico
2015
76 minutes
subtitles:
German
You don’t have to be a zoologist to understand Alexander Hick’s fascination with an animal singularly adapted to the formation of myths. The axolotl, a caudate, refuses to metamorphose. It will not go ashore but prefers to remain in the water as a larva and still manages to breed and regrow limbs. Even its heart and brain regenerate! The only problem is that its habitat has vanished. An 8-million metropolis is now rising where there used to be water: Mexico City. Alexander Hick asks how humans treat the conquered paradise through insistent images full of cultural historical, religious and mythological references. In fragmented parallel episodes he sketches the inhabitants of this megacity and their struggle for survival. Violence and corruption have hollowed out everything: the family, the institutions, the state. The film does not give us any faith in their self-“regeneration”. On the contrary.
So the axolotl, worshipped by the Aztecs, is the last witness of an oppressed and abused landscape and an age when humans were still capable of building advanced civilisations. An intelligent – in the noblest sense of the word – essay film, and the bold portrait of a city.
Cornelia Klauß
So the axolotl, worshipped by the Aztecs, is the last witness of an oppressed and abused landscape and an age when humans were still capable of building advanced civilisations. An intelligent – in the noblest sense of the word – essay film, and the bold portrait of a city.
Cornelia Klauß
Automatic Fitness
Alejandra Tomei, Alberto Couceiro
Life on an exacting conveyor belt. This detailed puppet animation that sparkles with ideas is a scathing satire on our brave new working world that thinks the term “human resources” through to the end and invents a new running technique in the process.
Automatic Fitness
Animated Film
Germany
2015
21 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
Imagine waking up in the morning in your bed, which stands on an assembly line. An automatic wake-up call and a few pills handed to you by robots make you fit for the working day. And so on and so forth at a predetermined speed. Life on an exacting conveyor belt. This detailed puppet animation that sparkles with ideas is a scathing satire on our brave new working world that thinks the term “human resources” through to the end and invents a new running technique in the process.
Lars Meyer
Healthy Worklplaces Film Award 2015
Lars Meyer
Healthy Worklplaces Film Award 2015
Baba Jaga
Kyne Uhlig, Nikolaus Hillebrand, Katja Engelhardt
When the girl visits the evil fairytale witch in her house on chicken legs she’s to be eaten. She escapes and must defend herself with magic against the witch in her flying cauldron.
Credits
Torben Milz
Kyne Uhlig, Nikolaus Hillebrand, Katja Engelhardt
Hardy Hoffmann, Tobias Baader
Kyne Uhlig, Nikolaus Hillebrand, Daria Naumez
Carolin Kebekus
When the girl visits the evil fairytale witch in her house on chicken legs she’s to be eaten. She escapes and must defend herself with magic against the witch in her flying cauldron. Narrated by famous comedian Carolin Kebekus.
Bowlingtreff
Thomas Beyer, Adrian Dorschner
Postmodern style, sensation, the venue of boozy brigade nights, a ruin today: the Leipzig Bowlingtreff. Many-voiced memories of a part of the city.
Bowlingtreff
There’s a submarine in the middle of Leipzig. It’s not only the architecture of the former Bowlingtreff in the heart of the city that evokes such a vessel. In terms of relevance, the building also gradually sank from view over the years. It was built as an example of postmodern architecture in the late 1980s, behind the authorities’ back, as it were, and then tolerated. A piece of aesthetic resistance in the city of the “peaceful revolution”, it became a meeting point for athletic activity with a Western flair. Builders and volunteers speak and take us back to the palace of the people built by Leipzigers for Leipzigers. Let’s hope that this submarine will be allowed to resurface one day.
Kim Busch
Kim Busch
Boy
Ginan Seidl, Yalda Afsah
How does a girl escape the restrictions inscribed in the role of females in a traditional society? By becoming a “Boy”. In Afghanistan, “bachaposh” are girls who are raised as boys.
Boy
Documentary Film
Germany
2015
30 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
Ray Peter Maletzki, Stephan Helmut Beier
Ginan Seidl, Yalda Afsah
Ginan Seidl
Ginan Seidl, Yalda Afsah
Steffen Martin, Manuela Schininá
How does a girl escape the restrictions inscribed in the role of females in a traditional society? By becoming a “Boy”. In Afghanistan, “bachaposh” are girls who are raised as boys. The artist duo Afsah/Seidl follows two girls and their choice of the role they want to take in life, creating a touching study of gender and freedom in dreamlike images and long tracking shots that capture the people in their social environment.
Grit Lemke
Grit Lemke
Café Waldluft
Matthias Koßmehl
Now that the Italian tourists no longer come refugees live in this hotel in the idyllic Bavarian Alps. Their lives intersect, sometimes as comedy, sometimes as tragedy. A different kind of “Heimatfilm”.
Café Waldluft
Documentary Film
Germany
2015
79 minutes
subtitles:
German
Tourists used to come by the busload for their place in the sun at the beautiful Café Waldluft, at least during their well-earned holidays. For the past two years, though, the long-established hotel in Berchtesgaden with its view of the “fateful mountain” of the Germans, the Watzmann and its foothills, has accommodated guests from other regions of the world: they came from Syria, Afghanistan or Sierra Leone and have certainly not chosen this alpine idyll freely. Their stay as asylum seekers consists of endless waiting, tiring visits to administrative offices, being homesick and worrying about relatives.
The dynamics in the small town have also changed. But if Matthias Koßmehl opens his film with a traditional Bavarian costume parade in slow motion his only motive is to eliminate the expectations raised by this stereotype. Instead he takes a sober but open-hearted look at the encounters that actually happen in this strange place. There is Mama Flora, the owner, who trusts in God and takes care of each of her protégés, and there is the East German cook who has found her elective home here. Chance encounters with regulars or hikers and the everyday coexistence at the house match a whole range of intersecting lives. The Watzmann, covered in clouds or clearly visible, is always on the horizon. A documentary “Heimatfilm” in which the term home has many facets.
Lars Meyer
Award winner of the DEFA Sponsoring Prize 2015
The dynamics in the small town have also changed. But if Matthias Koßmehl opens his film with a traditional Bavarian costume parade in slow motion his only motive is to eliminate the expectations raised by this stereotype. Instead he takes a sober but open-hearted look at the encounters that actually happen in this strange place. There is Mama Flora, the owner, who trusts in God and takes care of each of her protégés, and there is the East German cook who has found her elective home here. Chance encounters with regulars or hikers and the everyday coexistence at the house match a whole range of intersecting lives. The Watzmann, covered in clouds or clearly visible, is always on the horizon. A documentary “Heimatfilm” in which the term home has many facets.
Lars Meyer
Award winner of the DEFA Sponsoring Prize 2015
Crowley – Jeder Cowboy braucht sein Pferd
André Hörmann
Which boy doesn’t dream of being a cowboy? For 11-year-old Crowley it’s just a part of life, he lives on a ranch in America with his father. But one must learn a lot and sometimes show courage to become a “real” cowboy.
Crowley – Jeder Cowboy braucht sein Pferd
Which boy doesn’t dream of being a cowboy? For 11-year-old Crowley it’s just a part of life, he lives on a ranch in America with his father. But one must learn a lot and sometimes show courage to become a “real” cowboy. For Crowley this starts with a wild horse he is told to tame.
Cure
Sarah Noa Bozenhardt
An extremely tender portrait of Aster, a blind young mother who lives with her little daughter in a shared home for single mothers in Ethiopia. Her low singing about love and little mice pervades the film like a seeing person’s dream.
Cure
Documentary Film
Canada,
Ethiopia,
Germany
2015
20 minutes
subtitles:
English
An extremely tender portrait of Aster, a blind young mother who lives with her little daughter in a shared home for single mothers in Ethiopia. Her low singing about love and little mice pervades the film like a seeing person’s dream. The little girl is still called Bethi, but Aster wants to change her name to Medanit: the Amharic word for cure. The child leads her from darkness to light. She is her mother’s eye.
Matthias Heeder
Matthias Heeder
Der Auftritt
Francesca Bertin
A short film for all those who have always been interested in the secret of cultivated conversation. And if you’re not interested: come anyway! Maybe you’ll learn something about your karma.
Der Auftritt
Credits
Francesca Bertin, Leonhard Kaufmann
Francesca Bertin
Leonhard Kaufmann
Leonhard Kaufmann
Francesca Bertin
A short film for all those who have always been interested in the secret of cultivated conversation. And if you’re not interested: come anyway! Maybe you’ll learn something about your karma.
Matthias Heeder
Matthias Heeder
Der Kuaför aus der Keupstraße
Andreas Maus
The NSU nail bomb attack that injured 22 people in Cologne in 2004, where only the victims were suspected later. Complex reconstruction of a scandal.
Der Kuaför aus der Keupstraße
Wednesday afternoon was deliberately chosen. There were a lot of customers in front of and in the brothers Özcan and Hasan Yildirim’s barbershop on 9 June 2004, when 700 three-inch carpenters’ nails turned into projectiles with a 250 metre range. 22 people were injured. The attack was infamous; the course of the investigations was equally scandalous: the victims were suspected. CCTV material was not analysed and Federal Minister of the Interior Otto Schily decisively ruled out a right wing background. It was only in 2001 that this crime was solved in the course of the revelations concerning the right wing extremist terrorist “National Socialist Underground” group. The trial continues until the present day.
Ten years after the Cologne nail bomb attack, director Andreas Maus focuses on giving a voice to those whom nobody wanted to hear for a long time. He deploys narrative strategies to establish a distance in order to expose how systematically matters were hushed up, suppressed and denied. Documentary and re-enacted material are interwoven, actors perform next to affected persons, spaces are reconstructed. Maus overwrites the hackneyed televised images with his own visual inventions. The camera stops, the look at the audience freezes. One is tempted to ask what exactly is supposed to come after the “culture of welcome”?
Cornelia Klauß
Ten years after the Cologne nail bomb attack, director Andreas Maus focuses on giving a voice to those whom nobody wanted to hear for a long time. He deploys narrative strategies to establish a distance in order to expose how systematically matters were hushed up, suppressed and denied. Documentary and re-enacted material are interwoven, actors perform next to affected persons, spaces are reconstructed. Maus overwrites the hackneyed televised images with his own visual inventions. The camera stops, the look at the audience freezes. One is tempted to ask what exactly is supposed to come after the “culture of welcome”?
Cornelia Klauß
Der lustige König
Jörg Weidner, Anke Späth
The King wakes up after a long and deep sleep, but doesn´t know what to do with all the time he has. Hoping to find an answer he assembles an automaton, but in vain, because the wheel of time follows its own rules.
Der lustige König
Animated Film
Germany
2015
12 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
The King wakes up after a long and deep sleep, but doesn´t know what to do with all the time he has. Hoping to find an answer he assembles an automaton, but in vain, because the wheel of time follows its own rules. In this bizarre fairy tale, the decomposition of organic matter, oxidized metal and cracked surfaces visually underline a cryptic puppet animation that circles like a helicoid around the main theme.
Victor Orozco
Victor Orozco