#resistayol
Rüzgâr Buşki
In the summer of 2013, Rüzgâr Buşki was on his way to Istanbul to make a documentary about his close friend Şevval, a trans-LGBTI activist.
D
Film Archive
#resistayol
Documentary Film
Germany,
Turkey
2016
56 minutes
subtitles:
English
In the summer of 2013, Rüzgâr Buşki was on his way to Istanbul to make a documentary about his close friend Şevval, a trans-LGBTI activist. What he didn’t realise was that his visit coincided with the Gezi Park protests, one of the biggest demonstrations in Turkish history. Inevitably, the focus of the documentary shifted in light of these events and we, just like Şevval, participate in this turning point. High spirited and whimsical, “#resistayol” shows us a magical moment in the lives of thousands of people and gives us a better sense of the contribution of the LGBTI community to the human rights movement in Turkey.
Özge Calafato
Özge Calafato
#uploading_holocaust
Sagi Bornstein, Udi Nir
Young Israelis performing a rite of initiation, the “Journey to Poland”: seven days, three mass graves, four concentration camps, and cameras running all the time. An exercise in identity made up of YouTube videos – horror 2.0.
#uploading_holocaust
Documentary Film
Austria,
Germany,
Israel
2016
75 minutes
subtitles:
English
It’s like an initiation ritual. Every year 25,000 Israeli pupils and students go on a trip to Poland, visiting four concentration camps, three mass graves and two ghettos in seven days. It’s a journey to the dead, their roots, and themselves: as Jews and citizens of Israel. They document everything on their smartphones: hotel rooms, barracks, shooting ranges, themselves, their friends. The material shared on YouTube is the basis of this film – and it’s revealing. The two Israeli directors Sagi Bornstein and Udi Nir set contemporary recordings against videotapes from the 1980s. How will the memory change when there are no more contemporary witnesses? What can the crumbling sites still reveal? When will the rituals become hollow?
The Holocaust is the narrative of Israel, the constituent element of the state, even more than Zionism. That’s what the young people are taught to believe. The concept is historical imagination and immersion. They are supposed to feel the squeeze of the cattle wagons, the hardness of the narrow pallets and the oppression of the gas chambers. Horror 2.0. The video material also shows, however, how much smarter the young people are. There are no stupid questions, documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophüls once said, only stupid answers.
Cornelia Klauß
Nominated for Young Eyes Film Award
The Holocaust is the narrative of Israel, the constituent element of the state, even more than Zionism. That’s what the young people are taught to believe. The concept is historical imagination and immersion. They are supposed to feel the squeeze of the cattle wagons, the hardness of the narrow pallets and the oppression of the gas chambers. Horror 2.0. The video material also shows, however, how much smarter the young people are. There are no stupid questions, documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophüls once said, only stupid answers.
Cornelia Klauß
Nominated for Young Eyes Film Award
Austerlitz
Sergei Loznitsa
Posing with selfie sticks, either in front of or behind the gate bearing the sign “Arbeit macht frei” (work sets you free). Concentration camp visitors, observed in sober black and white tableaux.
Austerlitz
Documentary Film
Germany
2016
94 minutes
subtitles:
English
Is this still memorial or already event culture? All those slogans on T-shirts we see every day, from “Cool Story, Bro” to “This Is Your Lucky Day” – what do they stand for when the context is a visit to a concentration camp? Are these misguided messages, errant people? And is “Work Makes You Free” just another slogan that calls for a pose with the selfie stick, either before or behind the gate?
Sergei Loznitsa’s camera is firmly set up at the place where ever new hosts of tourists stream through the site like through a theme park, neither stopping nor trying to connect to their environment. In carefully framed black and white tableaux he gives us, in proven fashion, the time necessary to become aware of every detail within the frame. The camera records several memorial sites (including Sachsenhausen and Dachau) like a single place that reveals nothing, a de-historicised and ultimately nameless sightseeing destination. Even the title of the film refers to the exchangeability of the content. At its centre are the visitors and with them the big issue of our identity and localisation in history. Nonetheless, individual speakers detach themselves from the murmur of the soundtrack; individual faces stand out of the crowd and invite us to take a closer look at the dynamics between the masses and the individual.
Lars Meyer
Golden Dove International Competition 2016
Sergei Loznitsa’s camera is firmly set up at the place where ever new hosts of tourists stream through the site like through a theme park, neither stopping nor trying to connect to their environment. In carefully framed black and white tableaux he gives us, in proven fashion, the time necessary to become aware of every detail within the frame. The camera records several memorial sites (including Sachsenhausen and Dachau) like a single place that reveals nothing, a de-historicised and ultimately nameless sightseeing destination. Even the title of the film refers to the exchangeability of the content. At its centre are the visitors and with them the big issue of our identity and localisation in history. Nonetheless, individual speakers detach themselves from the murmur of the soundtrack; individual faces stand out of the crowd and invite us to take a closer look at the dynamics between the masses and the individual.
Lars Meyer
Golden Dove International Competition 2016
Bruder Jakob
Elí Roland Sachs
The path of a young German who converts to Islam and gets more and more radical as an earnest search for spiritual support and a very personal dialogue between brothers.
Bruder Jakob
Jakob had his epiphany in the Moroccan mountains where he came across an English language edition of the Quran and converted to Islam. That day changed his relationship with his family, relatives and friends fundamentally. Especially the one with his brother, the director of this very personal film about an alienation. For two years he followed Jakob’s development as the latter quickly radicalised himself and considers himself a Salafist. His attitude became doctrinaire. Believing meant not doubting.
This transformation is hard to bear for the family. His wife in a full black veil causes an argument at a family meeting – one of the most exciting moments which condenses the lack of understanding for Jakob’s way in one cipher: the veil. The camera captures Jakob’s reaction, a mixture of disturbance and the helplessness of a little boy. But then a surprising turn of events opens a door and the brothers start a new dialogue. This very special relationship between the director and his protagonists allows rare insights into the inner world of a young man who is earnestly searching for spiritual support in this world.
Matthias Heeder
Nominated for Goethe-Institute Documentary Film Prize
This transformation is hard to bear for the family. His wife in a full black veil causes an argument at a family meeting – one of the most exciting moments which condenses the lack of understanding for Jakob’s way in one cipher: the veil. The camera captures Jakob’s reaction, a mixture of disturbance and the helplessness of a little boy. But then a surprising turn of events opens a door and the brothers start a new dialogue. This very special relationship between the director and his protagonists allows rare insights into the inner world of a young man who is earnestly searching for spiritual support in this world.
Matthias Heeder
Nominated for Goethe-Institute Documentary Film Prize
Cabbage, Potatoes and Other Demons
Șerban Georgescu
A ton of cabbage for 20 Euros: the peasants in the Romanian community of Lunguleţu underbid each other with the prices for their products. Is there a way out of this dead end?
Cabbage, Potatoes and Other Demons
Documentary Film
Germany,
Romania
2016
62 minutes
subtitles:
English
In the small town of Lunguleţu in Southern Romania there are around 1,000 farmers who own the same number of tractors and produce 100,000 tons of cabbage and potatoes per year. Every one of these thousand farmers will then stand on the local market square in summer after the potato harvest and in late autumn after the cabbage harvest, sacks of cabbage and potatoes piled up in huge pyramids as far as the eye can see. Any attempt to make a profit by selling the produce is, of course, in vain in view of this absurd overproduction. The diligent farmers underbid each other until they end up either losing money or ploughing the harvest under right away.
When director Şerban Georgescu buys a ton of white cabbage for his mother for 20 Euros here, he begins to wonder and decides to spend a year in Lunguleţu and cultivate cabbage and potatoes himself. He investigates why the farmers voluntarily enter this economic dead end. Even though the mayor and a few villagers have some good ideas for finding a way out of this misery, a common solution is not in sight. The suspicion among them sits deep and the fear of any kind of cooperative is great – the memories of expropriation under Ceauşescu are still too fresh, potential success by competition seems too tempting, even if they are threatened by bankruptcy every day.
Lina Dinkla
When director Şerban Georgescu buys a ton of white cabbage for his mother for 20 Euros here, he begins to wonder and decides to spend a year in Lunguleţu and cultivate cabbage and potatoes himself. He investigates why the farmers voluntarily enter this economic dead end. Even though the mayor and a few villagers have some good ideas for finding a way out of this misery, a common solution is not in sight. The suspicion among them sits deep and the fear of any kind of cooperative is great – the memories of expropriation under Ceauşescu are still too fresh, potential success by competition seems too tempting, even if they are threatened by bankruptcy every day.
Lina Dinkla
Cahier Africain
Heidi Specogna
An exercise book filled with the testimonies of women who were raped by Congolese rebels becomes the starting point of an odyssey through the war between Muslims and Christians. Fraught with sad beauty.
Cahier Africain
Documentary Film
Germany,
Switzerland
2016
119 minutes
subtitles:
English
A film carried by the sad beauty of its images and the deep personal empathy the director feels with her protagonists’ fates. During a research trip to the Central African Republic Heidi Specogna comes across an exercise book. Its contents: photos and statements of 300 women who were raped by Congolese rebels in 2002 – a homemade piece of evidence that forms the starting point of this seven year observation.
In a spectacular operation the book, now the centre of the film, finds its way to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The women’s paths are different. Specogna follows Amzine, a young Muslim, and her 12-year-old daughter Fane, and Arlette, a Christian girl whose knee was shot to pieces by the rebels. The originally planned project to follow the woman on their difficult path back to a kind of normal life is changed when Islamic and Christian militias reappear out of thin air across the country, looting and killing. Once more Amzine, Fane and Arlette, who had just worked their way towards a bit of stability and safety, are forced to flee. As a viewer one must be prepared for this film which offers no comfort, only the women’s incredible will to survive in the face of the fragility of their existence.
Matthias Heeder
Silver Dove International Competition 2016, Prize of the Interreligious Jury 2016;
Nominated for Goethe-Institute Documentary Film Prize 2016
In a spectacular operation the book, now the centre of the film, finds its way to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The women’s paths are different. Specogna follows Amzine, a young Muslim, and her 12-year-old daughter Fane, and Arlette, a Christian girl whose knee was shot to pieces by the rebels. The originally planned project to follow the woman on their difficult path back to a kind of normal life is changed when Islamic and Christian militias reappear out of thin air across the country, looting and killing. Once more Amzine, Fane and Arlette, who had just worked their way towards a bit of stability and safety, are forced to flee. As a viewer one must be prepared for this film which offers no comfort, only the women’s incredible will to survive in the face of the fragility of their existence.
Matthias Heeder
Silver Dove International Competition 2016, Prize of the Interreligious Jury 2016;
Nominated for Goethe-Institute Documentary Film Prize 2016
Child
Iring Freytag, Viktor Stickel, Linus Stetter
The progress from child to old man symbolised by ONE task: collecting wood for the vital fire. A philosophical study in wood cut design.
Child
Animated Film
Germany
2016
9 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
Credits
Iring Freytag, Viktor Stickel, Paul Maresch
Iring Freytag, Viktor Stickel, Linus Stetter
Friederike Bernhardt
Adrian Langenbach
Robert Stuprich
Iring Freytag, Viktor Stickel
Iring Freytag, Viktor Stickel, Linus Stetter
Marc Fragstein, Marvin Keil
The progress from child to old man symbolised by ONE task: collecting wood for the vital fire. A philosophical study in wood cut design.
André Eckardt
André Eckardt
Cieras Song
André Hörmann
13-year-old Ciera from Oklahoma lives every day for her great dream: to stand on the stage in legendary Nashville one day and wow the audience with her own songs.
13-year-old Ciera from Oklahoma lives every day for her great dream: to stand on the stage in legendary Nashville one day and wow the audience with her own songs. Her family, too, are doing everything to help. Will Ciera make it through the casting?
Cosmic Cats
Laura Camila Sabogal Espinel
The wind. The forest. Reality’s coordinates have slipped. Ghost-like photos are evidence of a fairytale transformation.
Cosmic Cats
The wind. The forest. Reality’s coordinates have slipped. Ghost-like photos are evidence of a fairytale transformation.
André Eckardt
André Eckardt
Dann muss es ja ein was weiß ich was Gutes geben
Florian Dedek
False witness reports lead to an error of justice paid for by Florian Dedek’s parents with an eight year prison sentence.
Dann muss es ja ein was weiß ich was Gutes geben
False witness reports lead to an error of justice paid for by Florian Dedek’s parents with an eight year prison sentence. They are said to have organised an attack on a transmitter tower – an act which they could have committed since they did indeed sympathise with the ideas of the RAF, but which they never did. The reconstruction of the case reveals who profited: the state, the RAF and the Stasi. But nobody can restore Florian Dedek’s lost childhood. A haunting, rough reckoning.
Cornelia Klauß
Cornelia Klauß
Der Mann ist groß
Samo
When the man grows too big he doesn’t fit in the sea any more. The whale with childhood dreams in his belly must sleep in heaven. It’s blue, but it’s not the sea.
Der Mann ist groß
When the man grows too big he doesn’t fit in the sea any more. The whale with childhood dreams in his belly must sleep in heaven. It’s blue, but it’s not the sea.
André Eckardt
André Eckardt
Der Schatten der Apparate
Katharina Wittmann, Ursula Breuer
The catholic priory of St. Trinitatis, Leipzig 2016. A chance meeting in the newly opened church is followed by a conversation.
Der Schatten der Apparate
The catholic priory of St. Trinitatis, Leipzig 2016. A chance meeting in the newly opened church is followed by a conversation. The documentary filmmaker and the passionate amateur photographer get to know each other better. Nonetheless, both stay mostly behind their devices – a meeting in restful long shots and extreme close-ups. Over a selection of Silesian cakes in the oldest prefabricated building in Leipzig the conversation throws flashlights on more than half a century of a post-war biography.
Nadja Rademacher
Nadja Rademacher
Die Geschichte vom Fuchs, der den Verstand verlor
Christian Asmussen, Matthias Bruhn
The clever fox knows how to hunt down rabbits and chickens. But when he gets old he gets mixed up and forgets how to hunt – which opens new possibilities.
Die Geschichte vom Fuchs, der den Verstand verlor
The clever fox knows how to hunt down rabbits and chickens. But when he gets old he gets mixed up and forgets how to hunt – which opens new possibilities.
Die Sehnsucht nach dem Meer
Ute Puder
Surrounded by nothing but dry land and yet by the sea: the incredible story of a city with a waterless port, great plans, no money, and limitless vision. Leipzig, of course.
Die Sehnsucht nach dem Meer
Megalomania is a character trait shared by geniuses, madmen and Leipzig. If evidence should be required: a place surrounded by nothing but dry land and run through only by a small river boasts a considerable port with warehouses, canals and locks. Basically, it’s Leipzig by the sea, if it wasn’t for reality which has invariably crossed the city’s plans so far. If you look at it from that perspective you see wind-swept ruins and useless concrete blocks cluttering the landscape.
Ute Puder pulls of the feat of uniting both points of view: there’s the dream of a link to the sea, born out of the colonial pursuit of profit of an entrepreneur who in the age of industrialisation wanted to transport cotton straight from his plantation in Africa to the biggest cotton mill in Europe in Leipzig. Today some people dream of developing new forms of housing and living instead of hip galleries and lofts in these places, others dream of huge steamers in the shadow of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal (monument to the Battle of the Nations). One side is hampered by insufficient depth of water, the other by financial and municipal politics (the pursuit of profit again). Talking with experts and residents, using archive material, with poetic images, precise sound effects and a jazzy soundtrack, Puder explores both, desire and delusion.
Grit Lemke
Ute Puder pulls of the feat of uniting both points of view: there’s the dream of a link to the sea, born out of the colonial pursuit of profit of an entrepreneur who in the age of industrialisation wanted to transport cotton straight from his plantation in Africa to the biggest cotton mill in Europe in Leipzig. Today some people dream of developing new forms of housing and living instead of hip galleries and lofts in these places, others dream of huge steamers in the shadow of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal (monument to the Battle of the Nations). One side is hampered by insufficient depth of water, the other by financial and municipal politics (the pursuit of profit again). Talking with experts and residents, using archive material, with poetic images, precise sound effects and a jazzy soundtrack, Puder explores both, desire and delusion.
Grit Lemke
EGOnomics
Animadoc
Germany
2016
52 minutes
subtitles:
VO_German
In the age of global economic and banking crises, management culture gives rise to countless questions. The seemingly aloof parallel world of countless bosses and the behaviour of many managers – illustrated by animated sequences in this film – make us think. On this visual level of reflection there is one dominant element in addition to monitors and retractable arms: the triangle as the so-called dark triad of Machiavellism, narcissism and psychopathy. An analytical look at individuals in high positions and the system highlights the difference between managers and leaders as well as the character traits required to be successful as a natural leader in our current system. But what is to be or can be regarded as success?
The collected answers of the seven psychology, management, sociology and consulting experts interviewed here suggest that we are not only facing a crisis of economic growth but also a crisis of values, ethics and morals.
Nadja Rademacher
The collected answers of the seven psychology, management, sociology and consulting experts interviewed here suggest that we are not only facing a crisis of economic growth but also a crisis of values, ethics and morals.
Nadja Rademacher
Credits
Caroline Kox
Simon Steinhorst, Hannah Stragholz
Antonio De Luca
Antonio De Luca
Simon Steinhorst, Hannah Stragholz, Katharina Huber, Jakob Weiss, Heribert Stragholz, Martin Steinhorst, Antonio De Luca
Max Pross, Antonio De Luca
Antonio De Luca, Max Pross
Alex K., imprisoned for theft and drug offenses, talks about the euphoria of life, tough stretches and the ordinary life in-between.
André Eckardt
André Eckardt