(M)Other
Antonia Hungerland
How does the image of motherhood change when egg donation, surrogate motherhood or adoption add various alternatives to the male-female-intercourse-biology model?
D
Film Archive
(M)Other
Documentary Film
Germany
2018
88 minutes
Subtitles:
English
German
Credits
Producer
Christopher Zitterbart, Saskia Veigel, Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF
Director
Antonia Hungerland
Music
Markus Zierhofer
Cinematographer
Antonia Hungerland
Editor
Antonella Sarubbi
Script
Antonia Hungerland
Sound
Tim Altrichter, Benedikt Ludwig, Christoph Walter, Luise Hofmann
It’s quite realistic today for a child to have three mothers: an egg donor gives her genes to a baby who is born by a surrogate mother and raised by another woman or a person who may be male and gay. The classic concept of “natural” motherhood reaches its limits here (and elsewhere).
The definition of motherhood is being contested. The general controversy about changing social norms is reflected in the debate about (good) mothers. This discussion, as “(M)Other” very clearly demonstrates, concerns everybody. Both those who have to contend with stereotypes and prejudice as “classic” mothers and those who claim the term even though they do not correspond to the established “model” that stubbornly resists all obvious changes. Antonia Hungerland shows that the seemingly personal is still (or: today more than ever) highly political.
Luc-Carolin Ziemann
Nominated for the Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize
The definition of motherhood is being contested. The general controversy about changing social norms is reflected in the debate about (good) mothers. This discussion, as “(M)Other” very clearly demonstrates, concerns everybody. Both those who have to contend with stereotypes and prejudice as “classic” mothers and those who claim the term even though they do not correspond to the established “model” that stubbornly resists all obvious changes. Antonia Hungerland shows that the seemingly personal is still (or: today more than ever) highly political.
Luc-Carolin Ziemann
Nominated for the Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize
199 kleine Helden: Jésùs aus Mexiko
Lina Luzyte, Sigrid Klausmann
Eleven-year-old Jésùs lives in Mexico City and has a very special way to school: Every morning he and his little sister row a boat through a network of canals.
199 kleine Helden: Jésùs aus Mexiko
Credits
Producer
Gerhard Schmidt, Walter Sittler
Director
Lina Luzyte, Sigrid Klausmann
Music
Roland Klausmann
Cinematographer
Justyna Feicht
Editor
Lina Luzyte
Script
Lina Luzyte
Eleven-year-old Jésùs lives in Mexico City and has a very special way to school: Every morning he and his little sister row a boat through a network of canals. Every day he sees how much the pollution of the water affects nature and people. Jésùs fears that his beautiful home will not exist for much longer.
Marie-Thérèse Antony
Marie-Thérèse Antony
199 kleine Helden: Koolee aus Australien
Kaye Harrison
Koolee’s path to school takes her over the dust-dry roads of Australia. Koolee is an Aborigine, but their language is not on the timetable at school.
199 kleine Helden: Koolee aus Australien
Credits
Producer
Greer Simkin
Director
Kaye Harrison
Music
Archer Darcy
Cinematographer
Kaye Harrison
Script
Kaye Harrison
On the other side of the world, Koolee’s path to school takes her over the dust-dry roads of Australia. Koolee is an Aborigine, but their language is not on the timetable at school. That’s why she tries especially hard to learn more about her identity so that her culture won’t get lost. Luckily, there’s still plenty of time to play football!
Marie-Thérèse Antony
Marie-Thérèse Antony
199 kleine Helden: Rania aus Jordanien
Gessie George
In this documentary we are introduced to Rania. She looks forward to school every day, because not all the children in her home are allowed to study.
199 kleine Helden: Rania aus Jordanien
Credits
Producer
Gerhard Schmidt, Walter Sittler
Director
Gessie George
Cinematographer
Tobias Müller
Editor
Cem Springer
Script
Gessie George
Sound
Rami Alquaisi
In this documentary we are introduced to Rania. She looks forward to school every day, because not all the children in her home are allowed to study. She has lived in a huge tent city in Jordan ever since she and her family had to flee Syria before the war. The difficult conditions only reinforce her wish to become an engineer to turn the world into a better place one day.
Marie-Thérèse Antony
Marie-Thérèse Antony
All Creatures Welcome
Sandra Trostel
A creative dive into the CCC hackers’ philosophy, which is not to bemoan the growing digitisation of life but to seize the technology to improve our life.
All Creatures Welcome
Documentary Film
Germany
2018
87 minutes
Subtitles:
German
English
Credits
Producer
Sandra Trostel
Director
Sandra Trostel
Music
Thies Mynther
Cinematographer
Sandra Trostel, Lilli Thalgott
Editor
Sandra Trostel
Animation
Jon Frickey
Script
Sandra Trostel, Thies Mynther
Sound
Jonas Hummel
A playful and highly informative attempt to describe the anarchic variety of creatures who regularly meet at camps and international conventions under the umbrella of Europe’s biggest hacker association, the Chaos Computer Club. Sandra Trostel looks over the shoulders of nerds, political activists, makers and “other galactic life forms” and shows, complemented by short animated sequences, what it means to regard society not as a given fact but as malleable material there to be “hacked”. Renouncing glorification but revealing a well-developed sense for inner contradictions, the film portrays a (sub)culture whose concerns have long become mainstream.
Luc-Carolin Ziemann
Nominated for the Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize
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
Producer
Barbara Etz
Director
Lars Barthel, Gabriele Denecke, Andreas Voigt, Peter Kahane, Thomas Knauf, Hannes Schönemann. Ralf Marschalleck
Music
Marcel Noll
Cinematographer
Lars Barthel, Andreas Köfer, Thomas Plenert, Marcus Lenz, Sebastian Hattop
Editor
Grete Jentzen, Gudrun Steinbrück-Plenert, Pamela Homann, Mathieu Honoré
Animation
motionworks Halle, Jörg Herrmann
Sound
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
Anatomie des Weggehens
Oliver Tataru
A family who left Romania a long time ago and never quite arrived in Germany. There is a rift between the generations and their memories. An attempt of reconciliation and rapprochement.
Anatomie des Weggehens
Credits
Director
Oliver Tataru
Cinematographer
Oliver Tataru
Editor
Simon Weber
Script
Oliver Tataru
Sound
Oliver Tataru
Wasn’t there anything worth mentioning? No, not for Oliver Tatarus’ father. What should he talk about with his son in front of the camera? But the director doesn’t give up. As a child he didn’t live in Germany but in Bucharest, Romania. As a child he saw no reason to leave. But his parents saw no future in Ceauşescu’s Romania. And one day the decision had been taken. A leave-taking began that was to last two years. An agonising break-up that never quite turned into a departure and gradually isolated the members of the family from each other. At some point half the flat was cleared: sold. And he says there wasn’t anything?
The son wants to know why he was denied a future in his home country. He confronts his parents, questions them separately. His reaction when they refuse to contribute to this recycling of feelings is as sullen as a child’s. In the middle of the interview his mother loses her composure because her son apparently still refuses to understand what the reality in Bucharest was like then: “like Hiroshima.”
Tataru returns to his hometown to compare memories. He finds poetic images of desertion, the grey tones of the Bucharest facades that he once thought of as velvety, gaps in the walls as wide as the memory gap running through his family. But the cement is already there in the subjective images. Old wounds and fears come together to form the picture of a family, a puzzle of tensions and emotions.
– Lars Meyer
The son wants to know why he was denied a future in his home country. He confronts his parents, questions them separately. His reaction when they refuse to contribute to this recycling of feelings is as sullen as a child’s. In the middle of the interview his mother loses her composure because her son apparently still refuses to understand what the reality in Bucharest was like then: “like Hiroshima.”
Tataru returns to his hometown to compare memories. He finds poetic images of desertion, the grey tones of the Bucharest facades that he once thought of as velvety, gaps in the walls as wide as the memory gap running through his family. But the cement is already there in the subjective images. Old wounds and fears come together to form the picture of a family, a puzzle of tensions and emotions.
– Lars Meyer
Andes Uprising, a Buffer City Re-Inventing Itself Through Architecture
Bernardo Villagra Meruvia
El Alto, Bolivia, is growing fast – wild, but not shapeless.
Andes Uprising, a Buffer City Re-Inventing Itself Through Architecture
Documentary Film
Germany
2019
14 minutes
Subtitles:
English
German
Credits
Producer
Bernardo Villagra Meruvia
Director
Bernardo Villagra Meruvia
Editor
Bernardo Villagra Meruvia
El Alto, Bolivia, is growing fast – wild, but not shapeless. An investigation into urban aesthetics comes across the Cholets: miniature palaces which serve as residential and business premises for wealthy indigenous Aymara families. The colourful, shining constructions may resemble spaceships lost in the urban wastelands. But a double movement of expert commentary and city symphony lays bare the social foundations of this eclectic architecture.
Lukas Foerster
Lukas Foerster
Anne Clark – I’ll Walk Out Into Tomorrow
Claus Withopf
An eloquent and visually stunning look at the life and work of the New Wave icon whose songs fill the dance floors until today – even if you would probably overlook her if you met her in the street.
Anne Clark – I’ll Walk Out Into Tomorrow
Credits
Producer
Gerd Haag (TAG/TRAUM Filmproduktion), Mike Beilfuss (Kinescope Film), Torsten Frehse (Neue Visionen Filmproduktion), Claus Withopf (Claus Withopf Filmproduktion)
Director
Claus Withopf
Cinematographer
Nina Werth, Daniel Meinl, Claus Withopf
Editor
Christopher Tworuschka, Claus Withopf
Script
Claus Withopf
Sound
Michel Klöfkorn, Johannes Grehl, Hagen Röhrig
Anne Clark eludes all categories and stereotypes. She sees herself as a poet and spoken word artist while she is celebrated around the world as a pioneer of electronic music and New Wave and regarded by many as one of the trailblazers of Techno. Having grown up with the DIY punk ethics of the late 1970s, she became active early on, even though it wasn’t always easy to make her way in the male-dominated music industry. Her very first singles, “Sleeper in Metropolis” and “Our Darkness” became classics that influenced generations of musicians.
Despite her cult following, the film shows Clark as an approachable and likeable person who allows deep insights into her work and comments with great lucidity on social political issues. Mixing interviews, archival footage and concert recordings, the film uses graphics to make language itself the focus of attention. The distinct characteristics of Clark’s works are gradually unfolded: an oeuvre that is absolutely unique in both music and literature without ever getting lost in l’art pour l’art. This portrait, which invites the audience to (re-)discover Anne Clark as an extraordinary artist, is also a powerful plea for remaining true to oneself as a person and as an artist.
Luc-Carolin Ziemann
Nominated for Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize
Despite her cult following, the film shows Clark as an approachable and likeable person who allows deep insights into her work and comments with great lucidity on social political issues. Mixing interviews, archival footage and concert recordings, the film uses graphics to make language itself the focus of attention. The distinct characteristics of Clark’s works are gradually unfolded: an oeuvre that is absolutely unique in both music and literature without ever getting lost in l’art pour l’art. This portrait, which invites the audience to (re-)discover Anne Clark as an extraordinary artist, is also a powerful plea for remaining true to oneself as a person and as an artist.
Luc-Carolin Ziemann
Nominated for Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize
Appalachian Holler
Matthias Lawetzky
The end of coal-mining has left the Appalachians with environmental destruction and unemployment. Making music together gives the people something to hold on to and some dignity.
Appalachian Holler
Documentary Film
Germany,
USA
2018
29 minutes
Subtitles:
English
Credits
Producer
Matthias Lawetzky (Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main)
Director
Matthias Lawetzky
Cinematographer
Matthias Lawetzky
Editor
Matthias Lawetzky
Script
Matthias Lawetzky
Sound
Matthias Lawetzky
You don’t get rich in the Appalachian Mountains. “They’re trying to get thataway, but they usually die before they do,” they say here. The end of coal mining left the inhabitants with its consequential problems, environmental destruction and unemployment. Making music together – if only with spoons – gives the people in one of the remotest spots of the US something to hold on to and some dignity.
Fabian Tietke
Fabian Tietke
Arbeit Heimat Opel
Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken
Apprentices in the Bochum Opel works accompanied over the period of their apprenticeship: drilling, swotting, giving everything, being “Opelaners” – in times of job cuts and plant closures.
Arbeit Heimat Opel
Credits
Producer
Ulrike Franke, Filmproduktion Loeken Franke
Director
Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken
Cinematographer
Jörg Adams, Michael Loeken, Reinhard Köcher, Dieter Stürmer
Editor
Bert Schmidt
Script
Ulrike Franke, Michael Loeken
Sound
Filipp Forberg, Axel Schmidt
The world trusts German cars; “Made in Germany” is regarded as a guarantee of solid craftsmanship. This has a lot to do with Germany’s unique system of apprentice training, which is based on centuries of tradition. But what’s it like to be an apprentice today, especially at one of the flagships of the German car industry?
Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken portray six 16- to 19-year-olds who started their apprenticeship as industrial mechanics at the Bochum Opel works in 2009, and their instructor. They are there when the boys pull on their Opel shirts for the first time, sweat at the drill and lathe, measure a piece for the hundredth time and despair when they fail once more to satisfy Mr. Kranz’s standards; when they boredly play with their mobile phones during boring union meetings and suddenly loose all coolness before a test. It’s still true that everyone has to start at the bottom of the ladder, but something is different: Loeken/Franke confront the images of the boys’ working life – filmed exclusively at the workplace – with news reports of imminent job cuts at Opel. Iron principles and pre-shaped identities – I am an “Opelaner” and Opel is part of Ruhr destrict like the Schalke football club – are destabilised by the ups and downs of the stock market. In this phase of transition from school and home to working life, each apprentice develops his own strategy to deal with that insecurity. Because everything could be over before it even started. Opel recently announced that intend to give up Bochum as a location in 2016 was announced.
– Grit Lemke
Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken portray six 16- to 19-year-olds who started their apprenticeship as industrial mechanics at the Bochum Opel works in 2009, and their instructor. They are there when the boys pull on their Opel shirts for the first time, sweat at the drill and lathe, measure a piece for the hundredth time and despair when they fail once more to satisfy Mr. Kranz’s standards; when they boredly play with their mobile phones during boring union meetings and suddenly loose all coolness before a test. It’s still true that everyone has to start at the bottom of the ladder, but something is different: Loeken/Franke confront the images of the boys’ working life – filmed exclusively at the workplace – with news reports of imminent job cuts at Opel. Iron principles and pre-shaped identities – I am an “Opelaner” and Opel is part of Ruhr destrict like the Schalke football club – are destabilised by the ups and downs of the stock market. In this phase of transition from school and home to working life, each apprentice develops his own strategy to deal with that insecurity. Because everything could be over before it even started. Opel recently announced that intend to give up Bochum as a location in 2016 was announced.
– Grit Lemke
Aura
Timm Völkner
Migraine is a lifelong unchosen companion. “Aura” tells a visually impressive and intense tale about life with it and the attempt to become reconciled to it.
Credits
Producer
Fabienne Priess
Director
Timm Völkner
Music
Andreas Skandy
Editor
Timm Völkner
Animation
Timm Völkner, Ryoji Yamada
Script
Timm Völkner
Sound
Jan Brett
A voice speaks in very intimate terms to a lifelong, not self-chosen companion. Remarkably creative and precise, Timm Voelkner guides us through a flow from one image to the next, building bridges between the emotional states of a person suffering from classical migraine and the perception disorders in the aura phase. In only two minutes, the film tells a visual and intense tale of life with an often underestimated disorder and of the attempt to get reconciled to it.
André Eckardt
André Eckardt
Autobahn
Daniel Abma
Traffic on the B 61 through the spa town of Bad Oeynhausen is permanently gridlocked. The promised cure is a bypass whose construction is documented here: with residents and passers-by.
Autobahn
Credits
Producer
Niklas Burghardt, Johannes Wöpkemeier
Director
Daniel Abma
Music
Henning Fuchs
Cinematographer
David Schittek
Editor
Momas Schütze
Script
Daniel Abma
Sound
Malte Eiben
The spa town of Bad Oeynhausen: Every day, thousands of trucks roll through the city centre and over the B 61 federal road which connects the A 2 and A 30 motorways, respectively Warsaw and Rotterdam. When the threat of losing its status as a health resort looms on the horizon, which means losing the inviting title of “Bad”, something has to change: A bypass is to be built.
Over a period of eight years, the film documents the gridlocked traffic at this bottleneck, the efforts of the mayor, police, fire brigade and construction companies, the delays in the construction of the northern bypass and above all the reactions of the affected residents. The latter look forward to some quiet and relief – or will soon have the motorway right in front of their door. The long-term documentation focuses less on the large-scale infrastructural measures than on their consequences for the people living by the roadside. Other stories are “picked up” there with a fine instinct for unusual characters and leaving lots of space for their personalities and quirks. These include the local tradition of counting trucks on the federal road or the construction site as well as taking a walk or jogging on the long unfinished section of the road.
Frederik Lang
Over a period of eight years, the film documents the gridlocked traffic at this bottleneck, the efforts of the mayor, police, fire brigade and construction companies, the delays in the construction of the northern bypass and above all the reactions of the affected residents. The latter look forward to some quiet and relief – or will soon have the motorway right in front of their door. The long-term documentation focuses less on the large-scale infrastructural measures than on their consequences for the people living by the roadside. Other stories are “picked up” there with a fine instinct for unusual characters and leaving lots of space for their personalities and quirks. These include the local tradition of counting trucks on the federal road or the construction site as well as taking a walk or jogging on the long unfinished section of the road.
Frederik Lang
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
Credits
Producer
Alejandra Tomei
Director
Alejandra Tomei, Alberto Couceiro
Music
Boris Joens, Ole Wulfers
Cinematographer
Alejandra Tomei
Editor
Dietmar Kraus
Animation
Alberto Couceiro
Script
Alejandra Tomei, Alberto Couceiro
Sound
Dietrich Körner
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
Bekar Evi – Das Junggesellenhaus
Dirk Schäfer
Life is no picnic, especially not for Kurdish bachelors in Istanbul. Seven seasonal workers live in an unusual flat share in a dilapidated house.
Bekar Evi – Das Junggesellenhaus
Documentary Film
Germany
2019
76 minutes
Subtitles:
English
German
Credits
Producer
Dirk Schäfer
Director
Dirk Schäfer
Music
Deborah Wargon
Cinematographer
Nikola Krivokuca
Editor
Dirk Schäfer
Sound
Metin Bozkurt
Life is no picnic, especially not for a Kurdish bachelor in Istanbul. Seven single seasonal workers from Eastern Anatolia live in a dilapidated house in the metropolis. The men from two generations form an unusual flat sharing community. They live and sleep at extremely close quarters, sharing a single shower, which occasionally leads to heated arguments: typical flat share disputes about doing the dishes or tidying up. The older among them settle them with fatherly authority.
The protagonists talk about their origins and dreams. The German filmmaker Dirk Schäfer, who has lived in Istanbul for a long time, interweaves their poetic descriptions with sensitive observations of their partnership of convenience. Experiences of social discrimination and chicanery leave their traces, but humour and friendship make their life easier – or, as one of the “bachelors” puts it with a touch of humour: Now he is a street seller of Ottoman sugar paste to lend some sweetness to his life.
Annina Wettstein
The protagonists talk about their origins and dreams. The German filmmaker Dirk Schäfer, who has lived in Istanbul for a long time, interweaves their poetic descriptions with sensitive observations of their partnership of convenience. Experiences of social discrimination and chicanery leave their traces, but humour and friendship make their life easier – or, as one of the “bachelors” puts it with a touch of humour: Now he is a street seller of Ottoman sugar paste to lend some sweetness to his life.
Annina Wettstein
Beyond the Wave
Kyoko Miyake
Aunt Kuniko from Fukushima must reclaim the meaning of her life: a very personal exploration of the path from humbleness to quiet rebellion.
Beyond the Wave
Documentary Film
Germany,
Japan
2013
83 minutes
Subtitles:
English
Credits
Producer
Gregor Streiber
Director
Kyoko Miyake
Music
Shigeru Umebayashi
Cinematographer
Kozo Natsuumi, Shai Levy
Editor
Joby Gee
Script
Kyoko Miyake
Sound
Dominik Raetz, Tsukada Dai
Collapsed roofs, broken windowpanes, withered plants, dead animals – a deserted place. A grocery store looks almost exactly as it did on that day in March 2011. The few people one sees wear white paper suits and surgical masks. They are the ones who lost the world they lived in on that March day. One of them is aunt Kuniko. “It’s only natural to look for new sources of energy.” These words once advertised the construction of a nuclear plant in this now dead region. “Beyond the Wave” is a unique demonstration that after the disaster of Fukushima this sentence should become the leitmotif of our future. Caught between the grief of having lost their past and hopes of a personal perspective, the protagonists are forced to redefine themselves in their ruined home, this no-man’s country that many left long ago. Kyoko Miyake shows, not least through her personal voice-over, how a fairly atypical, albeit non-angry rebellion starts to germinate in the remaining Japanese citizens, and how her businesslike aunt and many others are ceaseless attempting to reclaim the meaning of their lives, against all prejudice and in the spirit of “I cannot let this disaster ruin all my efforts.”
Claudia Lehmann
Claudia Lehmann
