Forum & Friends VIII: Body Snatchers 
and the Female Body – Valie Export & Silke Botsch

Feminist and experimental, “Forum & Friends VIII” actively pays tribute to one of the most active (Austrian) media and film artists—Valie Export—and introduces one of the most active (German) editors—Silke Botsch—with her directorial debut. The two protagonists of the boldly curated “Body Snatchers and the Female Body” program must without a doubt be considered as trailblazers of the medial and technological status quo of their time, which they stretch and expand to the extreme, squeezing and distorting it — so as to get to the bottom of an entirely different status quo (and subvert it at the same time). The films explore what it means to be a woman, a body, to want (or not to want) to be and to be able (or not to be able) to be, as well what it means to live and survive (and vice versa), and invisible adversaries and intruders, self-questioning and self-reflection. Self-assured and, at the same time, self-destructive.

This is particularly true of the three-part tribute to Valie Export (17.5.1940–14.5.2026), whose cult performance and video short works, we frame with two of her three rarely screened feature-length films: Unsichtbare Gegner (Invisible Enemies, Forum 1977) and Die Praxis der Liebe (The Practice of Love 1985). But it applies no less to Silke Botsch (b. 1967), who for three decades has been cutting, assembling and editing the works of other filmmakers (most notably by Irene von Alberti, but also Didi Danquart, Ilya Khrzhanovsky, Dani Levy, as well as Alice Agneskirchner’s Komm mit mir in das Cinema. Die Gregors), and is now celebrating the world premiere of her feature film debut, Grace – Hiding in Plain Sight, as part of the eighth installment of “Forum and Friends.” (Christiane Büchner, Barbara Wurm)