TERRITOIRE PERDU by Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd is starting in selected cinemas across France next week. The film, which premiered in this year's Forum program, just received the Grand prix at the International Documentary Film Festival in Montréal (RIDM). Earlier this year it had already won the Special Jury Prize at Doclisboa as well as the Grand prix at Jihlava International Documentary Festival. In piercing black and white images shot on 8mm, TERRITOIRE PERDU depicts the plight of the Saharauis in the divided West Sahara, throwing light on a crisis largely neglected by the international community.
Guest: DAAD Fellow Sandra Kogut
Brazilian filmmaker Sandra Kogut (*1965) is currently a guest of the DAAD's Artists-in-Berlin program. Her work can be located somewhere between video art, documentary essays and fiction. In ADIU MONDE OU L'HISTOIRE DE PIERRE ET CLAIRE (France 1997, November 3), Kogut takes great pleasure in spinning the legendary love story of a shepherd – with the media savvy inhabitants of an idyllic village in the Pyrenees as her accomplices. Her attempts to receive a Hungarian passport as the granddaughter of Hungarian Jews and the painful story of her family are documented in A HUNGARIAN PASSPORT (2001, November 3). Her multi-award winning feature debut MUTUM (Brazil/France 2007, November 4) was shot using non-professional actors. Ten-year-old Thiago lives with his family in the remote Brazilian hinterland and is disconcerted by the adults around him and the world of deceit, violence and deceptive quiet they inhabit.
Guest: Jochen Kuhn
To describe Jochen Kuhn as an animated filmmaker would be too easy. His films are paintings which continually change and mutate into surprising sequences of different scenes. They come across as if they were hand made, going as far as to allow the artist’s hand or he himself to enter the image from time to time in order to create a change of perspective. They tell of small everyday events with a dreamy sense of melancholy, some more darkly laconic moments, gentle wit and black humor. In FISIMATENTEN (1999, November 9), his only feature film to date, his visual world is combined with real actors in order to create a comedy about the art business. The Academy of Arts and the Deutsche Kinemathek will be presenting a cross-section of Jochen Kuhn's work, which forms part of the Kinemathek's archive's holdings and will soon be distributed by them too. (Martin Koerber) (November 7 & 9)
"The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye"
THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE is a film about Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, well-known for his work with Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, and his life and work partner Lady Jaye (née Jacqueline Breyer). One would expect the film to be about the history of industrial music, about Genesis as a link between the pre- and post-punk era, about the underground scene since the 1970s. And it is, but it tells the story from the perspective of a great romantic love that began in the 1990s. Genesis and Lady Jaye start to undergo surgical procedures to merge into a third being, a pandrogynous being.
THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE is also a film by Marie Losier, a filmmaker whose trademark is to playfully build up a very personal relationship with her underground role models. Kitchen and garden shots alternate with home-movie performances, magic tricks and archival footage. The film maintains its dynamic rhythm – with the help of Genesis’s cut-up narratives – even when Lady Jaye’s unexpected death turns it into a film about mourning. From that point it revolves around the question of how to die when two have merged into one – and how to go on living.
Filmmakers' Choice
The amateurs: grand gestures, murder and music. As the start of new film series, filmmakers whose works we distribute will be presenting films both old and new by their filmmaking colleagues. Eva Heldmann and Sabine Schöbel are setting the ball rolling on Novemver 21: "The grand feelings and gestures of Hollywood and the world of (musical) theatre and how these are assimilated in anarchistic fashion in the realm of experimental cinema are our theme. In DER BRÄUTIGAM, DIE KOMÖDIANTIN UND DER ZUHÄLTER (West Germany 1968) Straub/Huillet document a performance by the Munich antiteater. They present a eulogy to love in opposition to Fassbinder's libertarian disenchantment. HEINRICH (Sabine Schöbel, Germany 2011) dissects the idea of the singing hero. In 1933 (Joyce Wieland, USA 1967), a street in New York rehearses the same performance ten times over. When Frieda Grafe wrote about NEURASIA (Werner Schroeter, West Germany 1968), it was all about "idols, devotion, mythology, and ecstasy. It's only about a final significance, about the highest degree of meaning." BACK TO NATURE (George Kuchar, USA 1967) is an unabashed homage to Hollywood.
The DEFA Foundation Presents
In November, the DEFA Foundation continues their monthly film program with two films by Werner Klingler from the "Breaks and Continuities" series. This series was put together in collaboration with the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation and is dedicated to nine directors who worked at UFA before 1945 and at DEFA after 1945.
"The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye": Cinema Tour
Marie Losier's THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE which had its world premiere at this year's Berlinale Forum where it received the Caligari as well as a Teddy award will be touring through several German cities from Novemvber 24-29. It is a film about Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, well-known for his work with Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, and his life and work partner Lady Jaye. One would expect the film to be about the history of industrial music, about Genesis as a link between the pre- and post-punk era, about the underground scene since the 1970s. And it is, but it tells the story from the perspective of a great romantic love. Genesis and Lady Jaye start to undergo surgical procedures to merge into a third being, a pandrogynous being. Release 24.11. – playing daily in Berlin at Kino Arsenal and fsk. The preview on 23.11. in the presence of the director at Kino Arsenal is supported by the Caligari Award. (English with German subtitles). Distribution in cooperation with Neue Pegasos.
New Works at ARTE Creative
Since this February, a selection of films from the arsenal distribution range has been available at ARTE Creative, an interactive platform that also encompasses experimental film and video work. Every month, a new arsenal distribution film is added to the channel, which is then available for streaming over a one-year period. Isabell Spengler's SYNCPOINT is the latest addition to our ARTE Creative channel. Stephen Dwoskin's ASCOLTA! (Italy/Great Britain 2008, 6’), Shelly Silver's 5 QUESTIONS AND 9 LESSONS ABOUT CHINATOWN, Meggie Schneider's OUR PRIDE AND GLORY (Germany 2009, 12’), Florian Zeyfang's INTRODUCTION TO A SHORT HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY (Germany 2008, 12’), DER FATER (Germany 1986, 26') by Christine Noll Brinckmann, Marie Losier’s TONY CONRAD DREAMINIMALIST (USA 2008, 26', English original version), Ayse Erkmen’s COFFEE (Turkey 2007, 25') - which was first shown in the Forum Expanded section of the 2008 Berlinale – Phil Collin’s SOY MI MADRE and Keren Cytter’s film DER SPIEGEL (Germany 2007, 4’) are all still available for streaming. Further films and videos from the arsenal distribution range will be added over the next few months.
UdK Seminar: SO IS THIS. NOW.
The November program of the UdK class on Time Based Media and Performance revolves around transgressions: the domestic eeriness of the melodrama on November 9 in HOME STORIES (Matthias Müller, 1990), a repeated 360 degree tracking shot in LA CHAMBRE (Chantal Akerman, 1972) and the life of performers: dance and emotion in Yvonne Rainer's LIVES OF PERFORMERS (1972). In 1970, actress Barbara Loden shot her only film WANDA with cameraman Nicholas T. Proferes from the Direct Cinema school, creating an "opaque, ambiguous territory of unspoken repression.”"(November 16) And on November 23, a semi-documentary film about the dream states of a 16-year-old: ICH DENKE OFT AN HAWAII (1978) by Elfi Mikesch together with WEISSE REISE (1979) by Werner Schroeter – "Adventure film, home movie and Brechtian drama" (Gérard Courant). (Madeleine Bernstorff)
The goEast Film Festival Presents
This year's winner of the "Remembrance and Future" Documentary Award is KONIEC LATA (The Last Day of Summer, Piotr Stasik, Poland 2010), a portrait of several pupils at a cadet school in the Russian provincial metropolis of Penza, where 400 young people are taught discipline and how to love their fatherland by means of military drills. While they come across like little adults when in uniform, outside the classroom they return to being normal children and young people, with all their wishes, hobbies and longings. The film challenges the dominant themes and questions – identity, patriotism, past and future – of a post-Communist generation. Following the screening, Piotr Stasik, Margarete Wach, Grit Lemke, and Ulrich Gregor will hold a discussion. The film URZAD (The Office, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Poland 1966) will be shown to begin the evening.
Funded by:
Arsenal on Location is funded by the Capital Cultural Fund
The international programs of Arsenal on Location are a cooperation with the Goethe-Institut
