Language as the dominant reference system in our communication, creates expression,
connection and structures identities. What we see, is what we read, is what we hear? Not at all.
Meanings often arise in the difference. Reading-hearing negotiates the deconstruction and
rearrangement of text-based systems of meaning, coded modes of communication and cinematic
languages of the in-between.
A still frame of an elderly woman – serious and pensive. She tries with difficulty to recall a few words of a language which is familiar to her ears, her native language: Assyrian. The subject of the film, which initially concentrates on the loss of memory related to old age, gradually shifts to focus on memories: moments of a shared childhood, moments of joy and pride linked to a language which is passed on intuitively from mother to daughter.… >>>
Premiere:
World Premiere
Nominated:
A38-Production Grant Kassel-Halle
- Director: Meggy Rustamova
MУЛЬTITASK exploits language as a predestined linear system that influences and limits us within the way we think, communicate and interact with our surroundings. MУЛЬTITASK is an attempt to reveal the immense impact our learned cultural background and identity has on us as a social being, especially for our future ability to develop new strategies of designing a stable open minded society. MУЛЬTITASK invites to witness the magic of breaking rules, dismantling tradition and creating disorder in language, typography and identity with the aim to overcome stereotypes, geographical borders and cultural boundaries within ourselves.… >>>
Premiere:
Europe Premiere
TRUST STUDY #1 reproduces an interview with a worker in the informal banking system known as "hawala." The film presents its own making, where the construct of the interview plays with the role of record-keeping, phone calls, kinship networks, and memory within the hawala banking system. The text of the film sits between a document of the conversation and an unvoiced script for a film. Nostalgic travel images of Pakistan in the 60s serve as background to the text and over the course of the film their provenance is slowly revealed, only making their significance more opaque. "Trust Study #1" is a negotiation between the filmmaker and the anonymous hawala banker.… >>>
Premiere:
Europe Premiere
/George Perec’s radio play Die Maschine (1968) is about a computer that analyzes Goethe’s poem “Wanderers Nachtlied”. The poem only covers 8 lines and no more than 24 words (in German). In the play the poem is not studied artistically but is systematically analysed by a computer in an attempt to reveal the inner mechanism of poetry. The film visually plays with the irony of the analysis and with the soul of the poem and is a modern ode to Perec's play. Digitisation does not unravel truth, it makes the magic of reality greater. And no matter how rational and analytical you want to act, beauty and death remain deep and raw emotions.… >>>
Premiere:
German Premiere
- Director: Marieke van der Lippe
TERRITORIAL FIGHT follows a student and her mentor through various vocal and speech exercises. A documentary self-experiment on language and power. What does it mean to be taught in relation to body, language and space? This question unfolds countless aspects: hierarchies, credibility, submission, self-esteem, self-disolving, the wish to dominate, to grow beyond yourself.… >>>
- Director: Sarah Hablützel, Marko Mijatovic
Two young women are talking in a car on the highway. Or are they characters from a TV show? Are they really talking to each other? You don't have to be alone to feel isolated.… >>>
Premiere:
German Premiere
- Director: Anastasia Melia Eleftheriou
On March 30, 1999, the filmmaker's late father, who worked far from home as a factory security guard in Dongguan, had sent his very last letter to his family. He dies of an accident a few days later being only 36 years old. His son remembers him learning Cantonese, hoping to stand a chance of landing a job in Guangdong. In 2020, he will turn 36 himself. Carrying his father’s last letter, he returned to where he lived before his death (Duangguan). He divides his message into 36 segments and invites 36 security guards who work in the city to teach him how to read them in Cantonese.… >>>
Premiere:
Europe Premiere
Nominated:
Goldener Key
