A queer auto-narrative about longing in three acts that addresses seemingly chaotic but systemically functioning cycles of attraction and revulsion, fear and desire, consumption and withdrawal, ecstasy and regret. While the film creates a timeless immediacy, the first-person narrator's commentary, in contrast, sounds like overthinking rather than an unquestioned moment of just-being-there. Whether at the club, by the lake or in the student cafeteria – one’s own judgement is always quicker than the question of how one is actually doing at that moment. But gradually something begins to change: An initially barely perceptible frequency shift sets in. The fragmented staccato of the first comments gradually gives way to a tale that gently settles in the interstices between dune, dream and reality.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Raúl Ruiz was part of the militant cinema movement that put itself in the service of the Chilean Popular Front, but remained an outsider. He employed experiment and irony to dissect social contradictions. In “Abastecimiento”, Ruiz addresses the supply problems under the Unidad Popular government, confronting the views of a woman from a bourgeois background with those of the socialist Minister for Economic Affairs. He follows this with a depiction of the activities of the Juntas de Abastecimiento y Precios (JAP), locally organised committees for the control and just distribution of food and everyday goods. The provocative juxtaposition paints a picture of an impossible dialogue. The film was banned at the time and was believed lost for ages. It was only recently rediscovered. Leipzig was not the place for the feature film director who emigrated to Paris after the military coup, but Ruiz was a frequent guest at the Berlinale Forum.

Florian Wüst

Ugo Ulive left his native Uruguay in 1967 to move to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, where two years later he realised three short films at the newly founded Centro de Cine Documental de la Universidad de los Andes: “Caracas: dos o tres cosas”, “Diamantes” and “Basta!”. The latter was part of the Leipzig retrospective “Film in the People’s Struggle for Liberation: Latin America” in 1972. Inspired by Antonin Artaud’s concept of the “Theatre of Cruelty”, it stands out for disturbing images of an autopsy that reveal the degree of dehumanisation under the influence of imperialism. In “Caracas: dos o tres cosas”, also in the form of an experimental collage, Ulive, roaming the streets of Caracas with his camera, contrasts the public face of a divided society with audio fragments from radio, advertising and pop music.

Florian Wüst

Anne (36) lives in Halle (Saale) and her life is in chaos. An apartment full of moving boxes, a yapping dog. She tells her mother on the phone that the electricity is about to be cut off again. Sometimes her daughter Leonie (14) drops by. Like her mother, she is at risk of slipping into drug addiction. Anne has already lost custody of her two younger children, too. The camera stays purely observational, captures loose scenes from the life of a woman who wants to take responsibility again. The film does not look for psychological explanations but shows Anne as she is. On her drives through the prefabricated housing estate, she seems isolated from her surroundings. Mother and daughter grow closer over an ice cream in a public square. Anne’s visit to her mother provides support but creates pressure, too. We grow ever closer to Anne, sharing her wish that she can become a role model for her daughter.

Anke Leweke

The Europe-wide protests against Chile’s military dictatorship were expressed not only by political activism, but by a host of artistic actions. The colourful aesthetics of the Unidad Popular’s street art, popularised by the Ramona Parra Brigades, became a visual trademark. Based on this model, the Brigada Pablo Neruda, for example, whose members included well-known Chilean artists exiled in Paris like José Balmes, Gracia Barrios and Guillermo Núñez, realised a 60-metre-long mural on the fringes of documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977. Its creation was documented in Franz Lehmkuhl’s film “Chilenische Wandmalerei” (1977–80), screened in Leipzig in 1980. In his agitation film “Chile lebt”, co-produced with Michael Börner, the Chilean journalist and filmmaker Juan Forch uses pictures of the Brigada Pablo Neruda to express what keeps hope in his homeland alive: international solidarity. In 1979, Forch returned to Chile from exile in the GDR.

Florian Wüst

Haiguang dreams. Of his dead grandmother, his birthplace Lěng Shuǐ Jiāng in China, his performances and art projects and his job at a wholesale warehouse in Leipzig. But Haiguang not only dreams, he also films. Himself and his surroundings. Persistent, stoical, sometimes with a handheld camera, sometimes using a tripod – knowing that there is another layer under one’s everyday life that can only be perceived if one dares to search for meaning beyond the visible. If you dare to lie down on a crossing in the park and wait for what happens. If you dare to address the pressure to perform in Chinese society through a performance dragging a car tyre through Beijing. If you dare acknowledge your own fears and doubts and reveal them. Stylistically confident and constantly shifting between places and levels of meaning, Haiguang interlaces his life and dream in eight vignettes in which emotions condense and take on a form that goes beyond the personal. He interweaves the elements of his everyday life between the art academy and his parents’ coal shop in Changsha with equally precise and poetic descriptions. Thus, a puddle by the roadside can become the very place that connects him with his granny across space and time.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

In 1977, Valentin Milanow, a Bulgarian student at the GDR Academy of Film and Television, sat in at the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films. Director Rainer Ackermann was assigned as his mentor. Milanow came up with the idea of portraying the reality of life of exiled Chileans in the GDR. He was friends with a young couple, Alejandra Holzapfel and José Fuica, who lived in the same prefabricated housing estate in Potsdam-Babelsberg. She studied veterinary medicine, he was training to be a teacher of Marxism-Leninism. Milanow was allowed to film their wedding. On the fringes of the seemingly happy celebration, conversations turn to memories of interrogations and torture by the military junta and worries about relatives who were left behind. What the bride herself did not reveal at the time: As a leftist underground fighter she had been exposed to the worst abuse in the “Venda Sexy” prisoners’ camp and others. Today, this place is the memorial site Asociación de Memoria y Derechos Humanos Irán 3030. It is run by Alejandra Holzapfel.

Florian Wüst

This documentary, whose title is a line from one of Pablo Neruda’s poems, is a snapshot of Chile after two years of military dictatorship. In the agitational Cold War rhetoric typical of Studio H & S, it portrays both representatives of the regime and the victims of the terror, who are beginning to organise themselves as they search for the arrested and disappeared. Walter Heynowski, Gerhard Scheumann and Peter Hellmich had spent several months in Chile in early 1973 to record Allende’s reform efforts as well as the machinations of the far-right forces. Hellmich stayed longer: On 11 September 1973, he managed to film the legendary footage of the bombing of the Presidential Palace, conducted the first interview with General Augusto Pinochet after the coup and filmed political prisoners in the Chacabuco concentration camp in the Atacama Desert. For the extremely risky interviews and filming of “Eine Minute Dunkel macht uns nicht blind”, Studio H & S had to send a West German team – Gerhard Biroth, George Boultwood and Frederico Füllgraf – to Chile. Their true intention behind the transparent pretext of “filming the landscape for the promotion of tourism” and documenting “the economic success of the Pinochet government” remained undetected, as Füllgraf remembers, despite constant surveillance and thanks to all kinds of tricks. This screening is the premiere of the restored and digitized version of the film which was supported by the Förderprogramm Filmerbe (Digitisation of German film heritage funding programme).

Florian Wüst

“El primer año” documents the first year of the Unidad Popular: the rude awakening of the ruling classes of Chile as they are faced with the democratically elected socialist government. From the immediate economic sabotage of the right wing through celebrating workers, the situation of the Mapuche, the agrarian reform, the nationalisation of coal and copper mining and Fidel Castro’s visit, up to the “March of the Pots” by bourgeois women crying for bread, of which they have plenty, the cycle of achievements and difficulties is complete. Besides their journalistic interest, Patricio Guzmán and his collaborators sought to capture the atmospheric aspect of the departure towards a fairer society under Salvador Allende, which is what makes “El primer año” such a moving document of its time. Chris Marker offered to produce a French version with the help of the SLON film collective, which is preceded by photographs by Raymond Depardon, accompanied by a foreword on the history of Chile. Guzmán continued his work on the chronicle of events until he was forced to leave the country after the military coup of 11 September 1973. It was only in Cuban exile that he was able to successively finish his masterpiece “La Batalla de Chile” (1975-79) together with Pedro Chaskel. Each of its three parts was acclaimed at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week and the Berlinale Forum.

Florian Wüst

Five days after the coup, Chile’s most famous singer-songwriter, Víctor Jara, was brutally murdered. In recognition of his oeuvre, his political stance and also of the “victims of the fascist sadism perpetrated by the military and the CIA in Chile after 11 September 1973”, Santiago Álvarez immediately created a cinematic “report in four songs”. The musical and rhythmic structure and the simultaneous reportage style arising from found news footage and recordings of Jara reflect the agitprop language that is so typical of Álvarez. The title of the film is taken from the poem “Nuestra América” (1891) by Cuban poet José Martí. The end, too, alludes to the continuity of the anti-colonial struggle: A collage of international examples of state repression against insurgents from Puerto Rico to Vietnam and Indonesia is followed by depictions of legendary battles of liberation in 19th century South America.

Florian Wüst

Abtin, a young anarchist from Iran, now lives in Greece after fleeing his own country. Back home he managed an underground library of banned books and was reportedly arrested, detained and tortured because he took part in protests. He continues his political struggle in Athen’s Exarchia district – a place of left-wing utopias and a fiercely contested site of gentrification: He joins the movement for refugees, squats in houses, protests against illegal pushbacks and fights for alternative ways of living, though his own situation is highly precarious, because every contact with the state can jeopardise his residence status. Director Jasmine Alakari follows Abtin over the course of a year, experiences his rage, hope and powerlessness, but also euphoria and solidarity. Time and again, the film returns to the question of how much political activism should be allowed to shape one’s life and what role violence plays in this. Meanwhile, the conflict with the police comes to a head in the street and Abtin finds himself in the crosshairs of the state. Alakari keeps filming but realises that she must also examine her own role. What does it mean to be an observer? How far can a film visualise the fears and hopes of a person who does not have the freedom to escape this situation? “Free Zone” has no easy answer to this question but passes it on. To us – the audience.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

“How long have you known each other?” – “Six funerals.” Having grown old as a gay man is a privilege in the wake of the Aids crisis. At “Lebensort Vielfalt”, a Berlin housing project for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersexual persons, lived experiences are exchanged among three generations. They used to be pigeonholed, today children might just be allowed to learn to speak before they define themselves. A wild kind of growing up and ageing. All residents share the desire to be safe, even from having-to-explain-themselves. The camera roams the house, crosses the corridor, moves from one balcony to another, looks out of the window onto the street, develops new perspectives. Social backsliding is registered; sometimes new happiness is found. On deceased persons’ birthdays, the raspberry cake is cut. Falling asleep, the sound of riot rises again.

Jan Künemund