Found Futures 4: Kino und Kampf: Sneak preview of this year’s DOK Leipzig retrospective / Have a Seat with Me

Kino und Kampf: Sneak preview of this year’s DOK Leipzig retrospective
Presentation by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Ola Staszel, Florian Wüst

The liberation struggles of people in Latin America during the 1960s/’70s was a recurring theme of politically engaged film festivals on both sides of the Berlin Wall. One testament to the connection between Leipzig, East Berlin, and West Berlin that grew out of this can be found in the analog film materials of militant cinema from countries like Argentina, Chile, or Cuba, held today in the Arsenal Archive and in the Bundesarchiv (Federal Archives). This special history – of presentation, distribution, and also safeguarding of films that garnered a great deal of attention in the world of the Cold War, in part also due to their aesthetic radicalism – is the focus of this year’s retrospective by DOK Leipzig, Cinema and Struggle: Latin America between East and West. The project is based on a first-time cooperation in this form between Arsenal Filminstitut, the Bundesarchiv, the DEFA-Stiftung, and DOK Leipzig. Florian Wüst provides a glimpse into the concept of the retrospective, discussing the significance of both the historical and the current relationships between the participating institutions and screening a selection of short films that can be seen in Leipzig.

Ola Stasziel has been the festival director of the DOK Leipzig since 2026, before which she worked for more than ten years as one of the directors of the Neisse Film Festival. From 2014 to 2025 was a member of the jury at the Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung (FBW) in Wiesbaden and is a member of the consulting committee for film at the Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen and co-founder and speaker for the Sorbian-German Film network Łužycafilm. Born in Poland, she studied literature, film, and political science.

Stefanie Schulte Strathaus is the Artistic Director of Arsenal Filminstitut in Berlin. From 2001 to 2019 she was a member of the selection committee of the Berlinale Forum and from 2006–2020 founding director of Forum Expanded. She curated exhibition and research projects such as Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice (2010–2013) and Archive außer sich (2017–2022). In 2021 she launched the biennial festival Archival Assembly. Schulte Strathaus serves on the boards of FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives), the master’s program Film Culture at the University of Jos/Nigeria, and the Harun Farocki Institut. She is co-editor (with Vinzenz Hediger) of Accidental Archivism: Shaping Cinema’s Futures with Remnants of the Past (2024).

Florian Wüst is a Berlin based film curator, publisher, and lecturer. He curates film programs and exhibitions for international art institutions, cinemas, and festivals. Wüst has been collaborating with the Arsenal Filminstitut on various occasions, among them Who says concrete doesn't burn, have you tried? West Berlin Film in the '80s (2006) and Living Archive – Archive Work as a Contemporary Artistic and Curatorial Practice (2013). He is the curator of this year’s DOK Leipzig retrospective.

Have a Seat with Me
Presentation by Wua-Ling Wu

This session will be an experimental short-film co-programming session, initiated by Wua-Ling from Arkebara collective in collaboration with William Plotnick from Cinelimite, Brazil. Arkebara is an archivist-led collective whose focus is audiovisual archiving in the “Global South.” It emerged from conversations between Taiwanese archivist Wu Wua-Ling, Brazilian archivists Luiza Rosado and Laura Batitucci, and Indian filmmaker Janhavi Asthana. Recognizing shared structural challenges in our respective archival contexts – including unequal resource distribution, environmental pressures, and political instability – we question how we can collectively reimagine our normative archival practice and experimental methods in the face of these challenges.

William Cardoso Plotnick is an audiovisual archivist from New Jersey, United States, and the creator and co-founder of Cinelimite, an organization dedicated to the preservation and distribution of rare and little-seen works of Brazilian cinema. He currently works at the Public Archive of the Federal District (Arquivo Público do Distrito Federal) in Brasília. He has also worked at institutions including the Cinemateca Brasileira in São Paulo, IndieCollect, and The Filmmakers Co-op in New York. He holds a master’s degree in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation from New York University and a master’s degree in Film Studies from Columbia University.

Wua-Ling Wu is an independent researcher with an MA degree in Film+Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University. Her involvement in the universe of the audiovisual profession started with filmmaking production, subsequently evolving into the realm of preserving audiovisual heritage through her professional engagements at the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute, the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, and the Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema.