Böse zu sein ist auch ein Beweis von Gefühl / Fury is a Feeling Too

11.06.2021 21:30 Eng. subtitles Open Air Kino HKW (Tickets)
In Short Film Program #1, with:
SONGS OF THE SHIRT (1), LOST ON ARRIVAL, NIGHT FOR DAY

“A sort of cranky, witty, intellectually astute rendition of a Frommer’s Guide replete with architectural treats and warnings about the unwieldy temperaments of the natives.” (Barbara Kruger, Art Forum)
Cynthia Beatt raises questions and provokes reflection on a range of issues to do with language and culture, politics and history. Her film is a personal and cathartic confrontation with being a foreigner in Berlin, burdened by the weight of its history, during the 1970s and ‘80s. Filmed in the area around Potsdamer Platz, the torn-up area right next to the Wall where post-war buildings grew out of the bomb craters, the film paints the picture of the loss of an architectural text whose destruction also meant the disappearance of a cultural context. Shrapnel-pitted facades alternate with rooms where social altercations about Germans scarred by their history are staged. The somber elegiac music of Maurice Weddington underscores the discordant character of this unsentimental, accusing film.

Production Cynthia Beatt. Production company Heartbeatt Pictures GmbH (Berlin, Germany). Written and directed by Cynthia Beatt. Cinematography Elfi Mikesch, Ebba Jahn, Cynthia Beatt. Editing Dörte Völz. Music Maurice Weddington. Sound Margit Eschenbach. Production design Cynthia Beatt. Casting Cynthia Beatt. Production manager Hildegard Westbeld, Marianne Gassner. Commissioned by SFB, Redaktion: Jürgen Tomm. Digital restoration Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst. With Heinz Emigholz, Cynthia Beatt, Margaret DeWys, Fritz Mikesch, Astrid Heibach, Ed Cantu, Ellen El Malki, Daniel Lengyel, Rita Lengyel, Gustav Hámos, Milena Gregor. World sales Heartbeatt Pictures GmbH.

Cynthia Beatt grew up in Jamaica and the Fiji Islands. She studied at Bath Academy of Art and then moved into film. After working with 24 Frames in London, she travelled for a year through the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and then moved to Berlin. In the 1970s and 80s she worked with the Arsenal and the InternationalForum of New Cinema, programmed major retrospectives of Roberto Rossellini, Fritz Lang, Jean Rouch, Powell and Pressburger, Max Opühls. She began directing films in 1979. FURY IS A FEELING TOO had its world premiere at the Forum in 1984.

Films: 1980: Beschreibung einer Insel / Study of an Island (200 min.). 1983: Böse zu sein ist auch ein Beweis von Gefühl / Fury is a Feeling Too. 1986: Dakui Gau Trio, Namosi. 1988: Cycling the Frame (27 min.). 1991: The Party – Nature Morte (89 min., Forum 1992). 2009: The Invisible Frame (60 min.). 2014: A House in Berlin (96 min.).