#theircatsaswell
Lisbeth Kovačič
Stations of an animal refugee story in which, thanks to Social Media, the cat gets a German passport sooner than its owners.
A/D
Film Archive
Stations of an animal refugee story in which, thanks to Social Media, the cat gets a German passport sooner than its owners.
Franziska Bruckner
Franziska Bruckner
1 Minute of Nature – Birds of Prey
Stefanie Visjager, Katinka Baehr
Lizzy has some very special pets. Alba the striped owl is her favourite among the four birds of prey and occasionally gets to ride on the handlebars of Lizzy’s bicycle.
1 Minute of Nature – Birds of Prey
Lizzy has some very special pets. Alba the striped owl is her favourite among the four birds of prey and occasionally gets to ride on the handlebars of Lizzy’s bicycle.
Lina Dinkla
Lina Dinkla
1 Minute of Nature – Blackbird
Stefanie Visjager, Katinka Baehr
Kasper has taken in a young blackbird and nursed it until it was able to fly.
1 Minute of Nature – Blackbird
Kasper has taken in a young blackbird and nursed it until it was able to fly. He tells us what it’s like to have to say goodbye.
Lina Dinkla
Lina Dinkla
1 Minute of Nature – Boxing
Stefanie Visjager, Katinka Baehr
Geertje knows how to box and occasionally teaches boys who make trouble a lesson.
1 Minute of Nature – Boxing
Geertje knows how to box and occasionally teaches boys who make trouble a lesson. They should learn that girls can be stronger than they are.
Lina Dinkla
Lina Dinkla
1 Minute of Nature – Squirrel Spot
Stefanie Visjager, Katinka Baehr
Victor has discovered that he can watch a squirrel from his window.
1 Minute of Nature – Squirrel Spot
Victor has discovered that he can watch a squirrel from his window. It’s quite trusting and he’s thinking about giving it a name.
Lina Dinkla
Lina Dinkla
15 Corners of the World
Zuzanna Solakiewicz
A film portrait of Eugeniusz Rudnik. He wrote musical history with magnetic tape cassettes and a pair of scissors, changing our idea of the nature of music fundamentally.
15 Corners of the World
Documentary Film
Germany,
Poland
2014
75 minutes
subtitles:
English
“Digital is better” – nowadays this title of a 90s track by the German band Tocotronic is a popular phrase we use without thinking. It’s a good thing then that our memories of the unique opportunities offered by analogue technology are now impressively revived by this film, which imaginatively demonstrates what spaces are disappearing in the wake of its loss. Its audiovisual journey starts at Polish Radio’s legendary experimental studio, which in the 1960s saw science fiction sounds created in a sound lab that looked like a spaceship’s control room. The head-strong composer Eugeniusz Rudnik, a former pioneer of electroacoustic music, is still working obsessively at his analogue editing station, trying to create unknown sound spheres in order to learn more about human nature. A discarded piece of tape, a voice, a stone, anything can become the basic material of a composition. Even a house – pending proof.
This tongue-in-cheek portrait of the artist as a sound tinkerer invites us on a visual expedition into his sound worlds. The camera, too, takes experimental choices, translates the acoustic dimensions into architecture, dance or landscapes, offers multiple interpretations and creates a synaesthetic experience for the big screen. No need to add that the film is also an ode to the analogue age.
Lars Meyer
This tongue-in-cheek portrait of the artist as a sound tinkerer invites us on a visual expedition into his sound worlds. The camera, too, takes experimental choices, translates the acoustic dimensions into architecture, dance or landscapes, offers multiple interpretations and creates a synaesthetic experience for the big screen. No need to add that the film is also an ode to the analogue age.
Lars Meyer
1989 – Lieder unserer Heimat. Himmlischer Frieden
Schwarwel
Episode from a series of animated films about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution.
1989 – Lieder unserer Heimat. Himmlischer Frieden
Episode from a series of animated films about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution. Here and elsewhere. Questions of personal courage and resistance. Elsewhere and here.
Ralph Eue
Ralph Eue
1989 – Lieder unserer Heimat. Ich liebe – ich liebe doch alle.
Schwarwel
Episode from a series of animated films about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution: Erich Mielke.
1989 – Lieder unserer Heimat. Ich liebe – ich liebe doch alle.
Episode from a series of animated films about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution. Erich Mielke (1907–2000) is completely lost as he wanders through the new era and declares his love for the people. He is surrounded by the rubble of the fallen GDR and his former Ministry for State Security.
Ralph Eue
Ralph Eue
2+2=22 [The Alphabet]
Heinz Emigholz
The German band “Kreidler” recording in Tbilisi. The city seen through strangers’ eyes.
2+2=22 [The Alphabet]
Of course, Heinz Emigholz is not a Georgian filmmaker. But there are good reasons for showing the first “chapter” of his four-part cycle of films “Streetscapes” here. It’s valuable: as a view from outside and a case study of the orientation and desires of such a foreign look. In 2013, Emigholz accompanied the Düsseldorf-based band Kreidler to Tbilisi, where the musicians recorded parts of their “ABC” album. They used an old film studio lot, one of the last places with a “Soviet look and feel” that had managed to escape the craze for modernisation. Urban architecture unfolds around the studio, in skewed perspectives that maybe only travellers from the West can think of.
Zaza Rusadze
Zaza Rusadze
209 rue Saint-Maur, Paris, 10ème – The Neighbours
Ruth Zylberman
The reconstruction of a dissolved house community. An experimental, historiographical look behind the scenes of a Paris building.
209 rue Saint-Maur, Paris, 10ème – The Neighbours
The French director and historian Ruth Zylberman is sitting in a living room in the USA, visiting a 79-year-old man whom his Jewish parents hid with a stranger’s family during the German occupation of Paris. Henry Osman, born Henri Ossmann, hardly remembers his parents – not what they looked like, not what they did for a living. Zylberman has brought a pile of paper copies and is able to reconstruct parts of that childhood.
The house whose address gave the film its title – and where Osman lived as a small boy – is located in the Jewish district of Paris. Zylberman reconstructed the house community during the war in great detail: who lived here? Who knew whom? Re-enactments with dollhouse furniture and drawn floor plans at the former residents’ kitchen tables alternate with contemporary views of the building as she re-creates this typical Paris building in the Saint-Maur No. 209 as an anachronistic space in which history is still alive, right down to the cobbled courtyard. A highly focused and at the same time extremely emotional piece of experimental historiography.
Lukas Stern
The house whose address gave the film its title – and where Osman lived as a small boy – is located in the Jewish district of Paris. Zylberman reconstructed the house community during the war in great detail: who lived here? Who knew whom? Re-enactments with dollhouse furniture and drawn floor plans at the former residents’ kitchen tables alternate with contemporary views of the building as she re-creates this typical Paris building in the Saint-Maur No. 209 as an anachronistic space in which history is still alive, right down to the cobbled courtyard. A highly focused and at the same time extremely emotional piece of experimental historiography.
Lukas Stern
3 Stolen Cameras
RåFILM Filmmakers Collective, Equipe Media
For years, activists of the Equipe Media group have been the only ones who covertly film rallies, police brutality and human rights violations in Western Sahara and smuggle the material abroad.
3 Stolen Cameras
Documentary Film
Spain,
Sweden
2017
17 minutes
subtitles:
English
We don’t see or hear much coming out of Western Sahara. The region was annexed by Morocco in 1979 and the Moroccan occupiers were able to impose an almost complete media blockade since then. For years, activists of the Equipe Media group have been the only ones who covertly film rallies, police brutality and human rights violations and smuggle the material abroad, while they themselves frequently get in the line of fire of the occupation forces.
Ralph Eue
Ralph Eue
6 Degrees
Bartosz Dombrowski
A demonstration of the small world phenomenon on film: are a Polish musician and a peasant in Mexico really connected by six degrees of separation?
6 Degrees
Documentary Film
Poland
2013
84 minutes
subtitles:
English
The world is full of secrets. Or did you know the theory that says that every human being on earth is connected to every other human being by six degrees of separation? But why theory? Bartosz Dombrowski puts it to the test and invites the audience on a very special kind of road movie: getting from a randomly chosen female punk musician in Warsaw to a randomly chosen Mexican peasant via a maximum of six contacts. How this works? The musician sends the crew to a punk veteran in London, who sends them to a family therapist in Miami, who knows the campaign manager of a Mexican presidential candidate in Mexico City etc. Every contact reduces the distance to Marco, the Mexican peasant and goal of all efforts. But this story would be no more than an entertaining global treasure hunt if the director did not use the superficial search as an entry point into the various lives and stories of his random protagonists. This level has a surprising effect: we discover ourselves. These people could be living in my town. Their experiences and stories are familiar, since they are based on a universal cultural code that connects us all as brothers and sisters.
Matthias Heeder
Matthias Heeder
8, Lenin Avenue
Valérie Mitteaux, Anna Pitoun
Long-term observation of a successful integration: From an illegal caravan camp the Romanian Romani Salcuta made her way into French society.
8, Lenin Avenue
Documentary Film
France
2017
101 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
Igor Ochronowicz
Valérie Mitteaux, Anna Pitoun
Valérie Mitteaux, Anna Pitoun, Raquel Freire, Sébastien Balanger
Fabrice Rouaud
Hugo Leitão
Long-term observations have their own rules. They often evolve out of earlier film projects and a continued contact with the protagonists. Anna Pitoun and Valérie Mitteaux have followed their protagonist Salcuta Filan’s fate with the camera for almost 15 years, which allows them to draw a wide narrative arc and reveal developments. The first images, showing the citizens of Achères, a community to the north-east of Paris, trying to protect a Roma camp from evacuation were shot in 2003. That was when the first film about Salcuta and her two children, Denisa and Gabi, was produced, “Caravan 55”.
The directors want to show that integration is possible, even for Roma, who are up against stronger prejudices than other immigrants. Right-wing populists use them as scapegoats to be made political examples of. Despite the warm-hearted helpers whose friendship with Salcuta’s family is real, everyday racism and antiziganism are clearly apparent, just like the shift to the right of the past few years which has changed the social climate in France. Nonetheless Salcuta grows from a shy, single widow to a confident matriarch who fights for her rights. In France she finds a voice she never had as a Romani in her home country of Romania.
Sirkka Möller
Nominated for Filmprize "Leipziger Ring"
The directors want to show that integration is possible, even for Roma, who are up against stronger prejudices than other immigrants. Right-wing populists use them as scapegoats to be made political examples of. Despite the warm-hearted helpers whose friendship with Salcuta’s family is real, everyday racism and antiziganism are clearly apparent, just like the shift to the right of the past few years which has changed the social climate in France. Nonetheless Salcuta grows from a shy, single widow to a confident matriarch who fights for her rights. In France she finds a voice she never had as a Romani in her home country of Romania.
Sirkka Möller
Nominated for Filmprize "Leipziger Ring"
95 and 6 to Go
Kimi Takesue
Looking for the title of a script and finding a grandpa. A home movie style, warmhearted and humorous look: at the grandfather, the family history and the ancestors’ landscapes.
95 and 6 to Go
The filmmaker Kimi Takesue and her widowed grandfather Tom have big plans: first of all, Tom’s house must be cleared out. A lot of things have accumulated here since grandmother died, who didn’t really share Tom’s passion for film and television. Then there’s Kimi’s unfinished script which has been waiting for completion for years and really needs a new title. The spry pensioner comes up with many – sometimes corny – ideas which, unfortunately, do not always meet with much sympathy. And on top of it all his inquisitive granddaughter is trying to unravel her family history with the help of Tom’s memories. This yields insights into the living conditions of their ancestors, who tried to build a life as Japanese immigrants in Hawaii. The grandparents’ love story, too, is very interesting, especially the question how the two actually met and whether it was really love at first sight.
Shot like a home movie and intercut with archive material and shots of the Hawaiian landscape, Takesue takes a loving and humorous look at her grandfather and her roots. She may not get a new title for her script out of this, but it’s an enchanting way to get closer to her grandfather.
Kim Busch
Shot like a home movie and intercut with archive material and shots of the Hawaiian landscape, Takesue takes a loving and humorous look at her grandfather and her roots. She may not get a new title for her script out of this, but it’s an enchanting way to get closer to her grandfather.
Kim Busch
A Day at the Grave of Karl Marx
Peter von Bagh
A century after his death, people from 20 different countries visit the grave of the philosopher Karl Marx.
A Day at the Grave of Karl Marx
A century after his death, people from 20 different countries visit the grave of the philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883) in Highgate Cemetery. Thoughts and discussions about him as well as dialogues with him.
Ralph Eue
Ralph Eue
A Diary of a Journey
Piotr Stasik
Tadeusz Rolke, the maestro of Polish photography, travelling with his 15-year-old student: a reflection on art, friendship, and the magic of the analogue.
A Diary of a Journey
Documentary Film
Poland
2013
52 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
Anna Gawlita
Piotr Stasik
Motion Trio
Piotr Stasik, Tomasz Wolski
Piotr Stasik, Tomasz Wolski
Tadeusz has devoted his life to photography, especially photo reportages. Now he has grown old and passes on his art to Michal, a highly motivated 15-year-old. They go on a trip together, travelling through Polish villages in their van with the built-in dark chamber, portraying the people they meet. Their black-and-white photos add up to a visual travel diary. Piotr Stasik has found his own poetic way of capturing the work of Tadeusz Rolke, who used to work for “Spiegel” and “Stern”: as a documentary road movie that also seems to be a trip through time. From the start this enterprise radiates an old-fashioned quality. And this is not just about the good old analogue image. When the developed photos are strung across the empty market square on a clothesline, they enable simple encounters that could never happen on Facebook. But it’s the encounter between old and young that’s at the centre here. The master and his pupil form an unconventional team whose roles are occasionally reversed. What Tadeusz missed in life, Michal still has a chance to catch up on. And so this film ultimately tells the story of a journey through life. No lack of big issues here, but the light touch with which they are compiled really makes the difference. While the magic of a summer is superimposed over everything.
Lars Meyer
Lars Meyer