Film Archive

Animation Night 2023
Filmstill Ginevra
Ginevra
Tess Martin
A young woman is strangled. The mother’s moving dirge – based on a poem by Percy Shelley – accompanies us as her daughter Ginevra is laid out and resurrects.
Filmstill Ginevra

Ginevra

Ginevra
Tess Martin
Animation Night 2023
Animated Film
USA,
Netherlands
2017
4 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
English

The rising sun reveals a gruesome crime. In the orange-red dawn, between the dunes and the rippling sea, a young woman is strangled to death. The victim’s neck is marked by the deep imprints of her murderer’s hands. The mother’s moving dirge – based on a poem by Percy Shelley – accompanies us as her daughter Ginevra is laid out and resurrects.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Tess Martin
Producer
Max Rothman
Sound Design
Jeremy Lloyd-Styles
Score
Jeremy Lloyd-Styles
Animation
Tess Martin
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Green Turns Brown

Green Turns Brown
Joie Estrella Horwitz
International Competition Short Film 2021
Documentary Film
USA
2021
6 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
Spanish, English

A visual artist all her life, Luchita Hurtado only reluctantly experienced her breakthrough at the age of 97. “Green Turns Brown” is a minimalist eulogy to the publicity-shy painter. Shot on Super 8 film stock during the last months of her life, this film, which revels in autumn colours, paints the portrait of a woman in tune with nature who sees death not as the end but as the crossing of a border. “Life goes on.”

Christoph Terhechte

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Joie Estrella Horwitz
Cinematographer
Joie Estrella Horwitz
Editor
Joie Estrella Horwitz
Producer
Joie Estrella Horwitz
Sound
Sarah Ibrahim
Score
Sarah Ibrahim
Performer
Luchita Hurtado
Camera Lucida 2023
Filmstill Man in Black
Man in Black
Bing Wang
A theatre in Paris becomes the stage of an impressive encounter: The aged composer Wang Xilin is naked – and exposes the cruelties of the communist regime in China.
Filmstill Man in Black

Man in Black

Man in Black
Bing Wang
Camera Lucida 2023
Documentary Film
France,
USA,
UK
2023
60 minutes
Chinese
Subtitles: 
English

Wang Xilin does not enter the stage in a suite, as the title might suggest, but completely naked. He stretches and bends, appears to familiarise himself with his surroundings, does some vocal exercises, sits down at the piano. Wang Xilin is one of China’s most important composers of contemporary music, having written his first symphonies in his youth. Wang Bing gives the 86-year-old more than a little space. For his portrait, he presents him with the entire Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris.

This is where Wang Xilin reviews his life of torture and oppression, recapitulates the tribulations in communist China, reports knocked-out teeth and nightmares, suicides among intellectuals. His testimony is frequently underlaid, sometimes even drowned out by grandiose musical arrangements. When an orchestra thunders from offscreen, Wang Xilin’s body rears up – “Man in Black” is also an exorcistic oral history. The composer turns himself into his own instrument, into the medium of a violent epoch, sharing his emotions literally unveiled.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Bing Wang
Cinematographer
Caroline Champetier
Editor
Claire Atherton
Producer
Lihong Kong, Sonia Buchman, Nicolas R. De La Mothe
Co-Producer
Karin Chien, Liza Essers
Sound
Erwan Kerzanet, Emmanuel Soland
Score
Xilin Wang
World Sales
Lya Li
-
Ying Wang, Xilin Wang, Xiaoxia Zhou
Animation Night 2023
Filmstill Mario
Mario
Tess Martin
A macabre, hypnotic children’s song about Mario the soldier and his disappointed love announces a brutal murder. Images of memories flow into each other and make us shiver.
Filmstill Mario

Mario

Mario
Tess Martin
Animation Night 2023
Animated Film
Netherlands,
USA
2014
3 minutes
Italian
Subtitles: 
English

A macabre Italian children’s song tells the story of Mario, a soldier who returns from war and must learn that his girlfriend has left him for another man. Mario decides to kill her. The film picks up on the ambivalent mood of the song and reinforces its vibration in the space between blithe children’s game and brutal murder.

Franka Sachse

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Tess Martin
Producer
Tess Martin
Score
Jason Staczek
Animation
Tess Martin
Animation and Musique concrète 2021
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Matmos: Ultimate Care II Excerpt Five
Vicki Bennett
A washing machine less ordinary: In a lively music video with animation and advertising film quotes, the sounds of a fully automatic machine enchant us and make us forget all our laundry worries.
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Matmos: Ultimate Care II Excerpt Five

Matmos: Ultimate Care II Excerpt Five
Vicki Bennett
Animation and Musique concrète 2021
Experimental Film
USA
2014
7 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

A washing machine less ordinary: The electronic music duo Matmos probes the music making capabilities of the “Ultimate Care II” by Whirlpool and weaves the sounds of its housing, laundry cycle and switches into a beat. Using animation, optical effects and advertising film quotes from the time when fully automatic machines had their breakthrough, a lively piece of music video is created that makes us forget all our laundry worries.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Vicki Bennett
Editor
Vicki Bennett, Peter Knight
Animation
Vicki Bennett, Peter Knight
Filmstill Men of Salt

Men of Salt

Hombres de sal
Luis Armando Sosa Gil
International Competition Short Film 2022
Documentary Film
Mexico,
USA
2022
14 minutes
Spanish
Subtitles: 
English

Cristobal, a young fisherman at work outside the Mexican port of Lázaro Cárdenas, shares his insights: Fishing is harder than working out. Also, he and the sea are connected by a progressing disease. At night he perceives what can only be grasped from the boat: the chemicals flowing into the water, the smell, the red lights of the steel mill. “Men of Salt” tells of a dilemma: What if you identify with an ecosystem that’s ceaselessly being abused?

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Luis Armando Sosa Gil
Script
Luis Armando Sosa Gil
Cinematographer
Luis Armando Sosa Gil
Editor
Luis Armando Sosa Gil
Producer
Luis Armando Sosa Gil, Beuukubi Arenas
Sound
Luis Armando Sosa Gil, Carlos Cortés Navarrete, Oscar Victoria, Odin Acosta
Sound Design
Carlos Cortés Navarrete, Oscar Victoria, Odin Acosta
Score
Jorge Alba
Narrator
Cristobal Ortega
Filmstill My Love Affair with Marriage

My Love Affair with Marriage

My Love Affair with Marriage
Signe Baumane
Panorama Middle and Eastern Europe 2022
Animated Film
Latvia,
USA,
Luxembourg
2022
108 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
English

“Beware of everything, especially men”, Zelma was told as a rule of thumb for a successful life as a woman. But when you meet the greatest love of all, and it happens to Zelma several times, biochemistry takes over and all advice is forgotten. In an animated musical, Signe Baumane’s protagonist dances her way through promising romantic beginnings, disappointed hopes and failing marriages – only to find out that she had better make the rules herself.

How much does this Zelma have in common with her inventor? Did Signe Baumane, too, meet a Sergey once and was so overwhelmed by noradrenaline, serotonin and dopamine that she simply failed to hear his condescending tone? In any case, the native Latvian and New Yorker by choice is known for using taboos and questionable notions of desirable and permitted, therefore “proper” femininity as a source of friction for her stories. For a long time, she remained faithful to the short form, until she presented her first feature-length animation in 2014 with “Rocks in My Pockets” – also at DOK Leipzig. She follows it up with “My Love Affair with Marriage” – not just in terms of length, but also in terms of the ironic, entertaining and yet serious exploration of the roles that biology and unexamined retold myths assign to women.
Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Signe Baumane
Cinematographer
Signe Baumane
Editor
Signe Baumane, Sturgis Warner
Producer
Roberts Vinovski, Sturgis Warner, Signe Baumane, Raoul Nadalet
Sound
Pierre Vedovato
Score
Kristian Sensini
World Sales
Natalia Dabrowska
Filmstill Now I’m in the Kitchen

Now I’m in the Kitchen

Now I’m in the Kitchen
Yana Pan
International Competition Short Film 2022
Animated Film
USA
2022
5 minutes
English,
Chinese
Subtitles: 
English

Cooking is a wonderful occasion to think, reminisce and talk. And if you have never learned to cook, if you’ve spent your life seeing the place at the stove as a feminist step backwards, then you can only have braised pork ribs while reflecting on your distant first home, your mother. How fortunate then that one can also reminisce in animated form and do it so impressively that the fragrant images make our mouth water.

Marie Kloos

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Yana Pan
Script
Yana Pan
Editor
Yana Pan
Producer
Yana Pan
Sound
Ana Roman
Sound Design
Ana Roman
Score
Ana Roman
Animation
Yana Pan, Eva Minh-chau Liebovitz
Narrator
Yana Pan
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
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Odoriko

Odoriko
Yoichiro Okutani
Editing Makes the Film 2021
Documentary Film
Japan,
USA,
France
2020
114 minutes
Japanese
Subtitles: 
English

A background study of a dying amusement culture, filmed in slovenly dressing rooms in front of badly polished make-up mirrors. – Director Yoichiro Okutani follows the Odoriko, the Japanese strippers, through their daily routine between dressing and undressing, between pragmatic approaches to life and eroticism made fit for the stage. Okutani’s cut begins naked: A nude woman descends a staircase, filmed not to advantage but with the brutal ordinariness of routine. One production year and five minutes lie between this – Okutani’s – director’s cut and Mary Stephen’s editor’s cut “Nude at Heart”. But how much more?

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Yoichiro Okutani
Script
Yoichiro Okutani
Cinematographer
Yoichiro Okutani
Editor
Yoichiro Okutani, Keiko Okawa
Producer
Asako Fujioka, Eric Nyari, Yoichiro Okutani, Annie Ohayon-Dekel
Sound
Young-chang Hwang
Extended Reality 2022
Filmstill On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World)
On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World)
Mike Brett, Steve Jamison, Pierre Zandrowicz, Arnaud Colinart
The nuclear threat became real for 1.4 million people on Hawaii. On 13 January 2018, a text message warned them of a missile. The message was false, its consequences momentous.
2022
Filmstill On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World)

On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World)

On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World)
Mike Brett, Steve Jamison, Pierre Zandrowicz, Arnaud Colinart
Extended Reality 2022
XR
France,
UK,
USA
2022
42 minutes
English,
French,
German,
Korean,
Japanese,
Norwegian
Subtitles: 
English

The peace of the superpowers is based on “mutual assured destruction”. States can annihilate each other completely with their arsenals. On 13 January 2018, 1.4 million people on Hawaii got a taste of this: A false missile alert text message brought their lives to a standstill that lasted 38 minutes, panic broke out and the nuclear threat suddenly became real.

Lars Rummel

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Arnaud Colinart, Jo-Jo Ellison, Mike Brett, Steve Jamison
Executive Producer
Paul Mezier, Susanna Pollack
Production Company
Atlas V, Archer’s Mark
Animation
Alan Sorio
3D Artist
Renaud de Bellefon, Anthony Rubier
VFX Artist
Yasuyuki Otsuki
Script
Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio
Score
Bobby Krlic
Key Collaborator
Games for Change, Princeton University, British Film Institute, VR for Good, ARTE France, CNC
Director
Mike Brett, Steve Jamison, Pierre Zandrowicz, Arnaud Colinart
Competition for the Audience Award 2022
Filmstill One Road to Quartzsite
One Road to Quartzsite
Ryan Maxey
Quartzsite, Arizona. A small town in the middle of the desert becomes a huge camping ground in winter, where a motley community live the other side of the “American Dream”.
Filmstill One Road to Quartzsite

One Road to Quartzsite

One Road to Quartzsite
Ryan Maxey
Competition for the Audience Award 2022
Documentary Film
USA
2022
89 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
None

Quartzsite, Arizona. A town in the middle of the desert which regularly turns into a huge camping ground where up to a million people from the northern US states escape winter. It’s less chilly here, and people of every kind are welcome to rent a plot of dry land for 180 dollars. Ryan Maxey joins them for three seasons in a row, approaching the motley community with an intimate and at the same time soberly observant eye.

Meth junkies, gun lovers, constitution keepers, a trans woman dressed in pink and breeding cuddly pets and white men wearing “Black Guns Matter” t-shirts. People trade everything and help each other. Sometimes it can get rough. But the US-American flag, the ever-present guns and collective prayer are part of life, just like the democratic choice between pancakes and hamburgers. Maxey’s documentary foray takes him through all these lives and lifestyles which he seems to register sometimes with affectionate tenderness, sometimes shaking his head. Despite his critical semi-distance, he is clearly a part of the community he portrays. His film, a collaborative work in some ways, combines shots of this place from different perspectives and different times. Ambivalences persist, which is why all judgement must be preliminary.
Borjana Gaković

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ryan Maxey
Cinematographer
Ryan Maxey
Editor
Ryan Maxey
Producer
Josh Polon, Ryan Maxey
Sound
William Tabaneau
Score
Ilan Rubin
World Sales
Noah Lang
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Only the Earth and the Mountains

Only the Earth and the Mountains
Elleni Sclavenitis
International Competition Short Film 2021
Documentary Film
USA
2020
29 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
None

The Sand Creek Massacre on 29 November 1864: More than 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho were murdered by the U.S. Cavalry. Ignorant hand-downs from the past and the omnipresence of statues glorifying murderers are juxtaposed with an empty museum of indigenous history for which there is no funding. This film against forgetting by a white female director also examines its own position: she talks frankly with descendants of the survivors – many of whom are choosing a scientific approach to history.

Borjana Gaković

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Elleni Sclavenitis
Script
Elleni Sclavenitis
Cinematographer
Elleni Sclavenitis
Editor
Elleni Sclavenitis
Producer
Elleni Sclavenitis
Slowenian Animation 2022
Filmstill Orange Is the New Black – Unraveled
Orange Is the New Black – Unraveled
Špela Čadež
A commissioned work: Špela Čadež’s summary of the legendary comedy drama show set in a women’s prison, “unravelled” in soft and scratchy wool, yellow as urine and red as blood.
Filmstill Orange Is the New Black – Unraveled

Orange Is the New Black – Unraveled

Orange Is the New Black – Unraveled
Špela Čadež
Slowenian Animation 2022
Animated Film
USA
2017
4 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

To promote the start of season five, Špela Čadež summarises the first four seasons of the legendary US comedy drama show for Netflix. From the streaming provider’s logo to the canteen food through to vomit – Čadež “unravels” her condensed version of the stories from the women’s prison in soft and scratchy wool, yellow as urine and red as blood.

Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Špela Čadež
Cinematographer
Mitja Ličen
Editor
Matic Drakulić
Producer
Tina Smrekar
Sound
Julij Zornik
Score
Drago Ivanuša
Animation
Zarja Menart, Leon Vidmar, Lea Vučko
Soul-Things 2022
Filmstill Pauline Oliveros: Bye Bye Butterfly
Pauline Oliveros: Bye Bye Butterfly
A collage whose sounds seem indefinable and yet organic. Pauline Oliveros’s piece needs no images; they intuitively appear by themselves before our inner eye.
Filmstill Pauline Oliveros: Bye Bye Butterfly

Pauline Oliveros: Bye Bye Butterfly

Pauline Oliveros: Bye Bye Butterfly
Soul-Things 2022
Acoustical Film
USA
1967
8 minutes
without dialogue
Subtitles: 
None

A purely acoustic collage whose sounds seem by nature indefinable and yet somehow organic. They mesmerise us, occasionally make us shiver at some unknown thing. Gravity seems to be suspended. This piece needs no images, because they will intuitively materialise before our inner eye like thousands of hallucinations.

Malte Stein

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Score
Pauline Oliveros
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Reeducated

Reeducated
Sam Wolson
Extended Reality 2021
-
Kazakhstan,
USA
2021
21 minutes
English,
Kazakh

In spring 2017, authorities in China’s Xinjiang region, without any legal basis, began detaining thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in so-called re-education camps. This animated 360° film reconstructs the memories of three men who had to endure political indoctrination, torture and solitary confinement.

Lars Rummel

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Ben Mauk, Sam Wolson, Nicholas Rubin, Matt Huynh
Executive Producer
Soo-Jeong Kang, Monica Racic
Artistic Design
Matt Huynh
Creative Technologist
Nicholas Rubin
VFX Artist
Nicholas Rubin
Sound
Jon Bernson
Script
Sam Wolson, Ben Mauk
Score
Jon Bernson
Narrator
Amanzhan Seituly, Erbaqyt Otarbai, Orynbek Koksebek
Key Collaborator
Nicholas Rubin, Ben Mauk, Matt Huynh
Director
Sam Wolson
Filmstill Rosemary A.D. (After Dad)

Rosemary A.D. (After Dad)

Rosemary A.D. (After Dad)
Ethan Barrett
International Competition Short Film 2022
Animated Film
USA
2021
10 minutes
English
Subtitles: 
None

Having a child is a heavy new responsibility. When Ethan Barrett becomes a stay-at-home dad and suddenly finds himself in charge of the welfare of his little daughter, he realises abruptly that his every action will influence her life – whether he wants it or not. Charming, ironical and witty, he explores how to be least in the way of her perfect development. The next little masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek humour after “Burp” (DOK Leipzig 2020).

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ethan Barrett
Cinematographer
Ethan Barrett
Editor
Ethan Barrett
Producer
Tiffany Barrett
Sound
Ethan Barrett
Score
Ethan Barrett
Animation
Ethan Barrett
Nominated for: mephisto 97.6 Audience Award