Film Archive

Jahr

Retrospective 2021
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Respite
Harun Farocki
Material from the Nazi Jewish transit camp Westerbork. Every road from here lead to death, including for the cameraman. Farocki analyzes the silent sequences: surgery on the narrative.
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Respite

Aufschub
Harun Farocki
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
Germany,
South Korea
2007
40 minutes
German captions
Subtitles: 
None

Anyone interned in the Nazi Jewish transit and collection camp Westerbork in the occupied Netherlands faced death: The trains left to Auschwitz from here, to Sobibór. In 1944, the camp commander ordered the prisoner and cameraman Rudolf Breslauer, who was murdered shortly afterwards, to film the camp, presumably as visual evidence of his own “work performance”. Harun Farocki, West German doyen of essayistic image criticism, used the surviving silent material to compose an equally silent sequence analysis commented only in title cards. It is surgery on the hidden narrative, not open heart surgery.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Harun Farocki
Script
Harun Farocki
Cinematographer
Rudolf Breslauer
Editor
Lars Pienkoß, Harun Farocki
Producer
Harun Farocki
Retrospective 2021
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The Empty House
Miriam Pfeiffer
After reunification the Israelite Religious Community Leipzig grows – and needs room. But their new residence remains empty for the time being: neighbouring land owners sue.
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The Empty House

Das leere Haus
Miriam Pfeiffer
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
Germany
2004
30 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

After reunification, immigration made the Israelite Religious Community of Leipzig grow to considerable size, too big for its old rooms. The Ariowitsch House, built in the 1920s as an Israelite old people’s home, is to become the home of a generously dimensioned cultural and community centre – and at the same time commemorate the residents of the home who were deported to Theresienstadt in 1942. But the start of the development is delayed: neighbouring land owners file a lawsuit. Miriam Pfeiffer intervenes in the ongoing public debate, asking citizens of the city about their suspicions concerning reasons of the refusal that the competent court may not be aware of.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Miriam Pfeiffer
Cinematographer
Miriam Pfeiffer, Alexandra Czok
Editor
Maurice Hünsni
Producer
Schulmuseum Leipzig
Sound
Anja Hempel, Gert Blumhagen
Score
Chor der Israelitischen Religionsgemeinschaft zu Leipzig
Retrospective 2021
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The Road We Don’t Walk Together
Dominik Graf
Dominik Graf contributed a reflection on West German post-1945 urban architecture to the anthology film “Germany 09”: improvisations decoratively arranged after 1990.
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The Road We Don’t Walk Together

Der Weg, den wir nicht zusammen gehen
Dominik Graf
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
Germany
2009
13 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

The project “Germany 09” brought the upper league of German auteur filmmakers together to take stock of the Berlin Republic in individual film contributions. Dominik Graf contributed to this collage of the German image a reflection about post-1945 urban architecture shot on old Super8 stock: provisional, slipshod ensembles of pretty-ugly public buildings, fenced-in urban wasteland, draughty storefronts and uninhabited housing blocks in Munich, Duisburg, Frankfurt am Main, West Berlin, all of them testimonies to an unplanned through traffic for social and migrant milieus. A thorn in the side of the reunited mania for cleaning up, renovating and decorating.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Dominik Graf
Script
Dominik Graf
Cinematographer
Martin Gressmann
Editor
Katja Dringenberg
Producer
Dirk Wilutzky, Tom Tykwer
Sound
Andreas Mücke-Niesytka
Retrospective 2021
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Theresienstadt: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area
Kurt Gerron, Karel Pečený
Nazi propaganda surviving in fragments, staging the camp as a retirement home for Jewish “resettlers”. The prisoner and conscripted co-director Kurt Gerron died in the gas chamber.
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Theresienstadt: A Documentary Film from the Jewish Settlement Area

Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet
Kurt Gerron, Karel Pečený
Retrospective 2021
Documentary Film
Germany
1944
17 minutes
German
Subtitles: 
None

A Nazi propaganda film that survived only in fragments and never got to “test” its effect. It took intensive research to identify the scattered remains, correct the title in circulation, “Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt” (The Führer Gives a City to the Jews), and clarify who was able to see the roughly 90-minute attempted defraud at all before it disappeared. The intended international audience was no longer within reach in 1944/1945. But would they have been convinced by the retirement home for “resettled” Jews staged here? Kurt Gerron, film and theatre celebrity, interned in the Ghetto and conscripted as co-director, was deported to Auschwitz and gassed as late as 1944.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Kurt Gerron, Karel Pečený
Script
Kurt Gerron
Cinematographer
Ivan Fric, Čeněk Zahradníček, Josef Cepelak, Karel Pečený
Editor
Ivan Fric
Producer
Karel Pečený
Sound
Jaroslav Sechura, Josef Francek