Film is not solely a representation of reality, it simultaneously has the capability to transform it. Documentary filmmaking is no exception to this, it harbors not only the potential to re-envision the world but itself, too. Five works between trauma compensation and utopia focus on the relation we foster with ourselves and others. A precise and flickering, intimate and impetuous imagery capable to not only represent these relations, but to offset them in many respects. (Sebastian Markt)
CN: This program contains explicit depiction or mention of physical, psychological or sexual violence.
„Frauen zu zweit – das geht zu weit” is the recurring refrain in the track of the feminist Cloudrap Duo Klitclique. In the music video by Anna Spanlang the two MCs G-Udit and $chwanger function as literal projection surface for famous male duos, who's faces have mostly been distorted, though. In between: objects modeled from ceramics on rotating turntables. Whereas the song satirizes gestures of dominance, the video mocks the iconography of male fraternity. "You have run out of time, it is over now."… >>>
TRACING UTOPIA is an odyssey into the dreams of a group of queer teens in New York City as they envision a better world. Directed by Catarina de Sousa and Nick Tyson, this short documentary imagines a form of a queer community transcending time through glimpses of a utopia made manifest in the streets, in community spaces, and online. A collaborative manifesto weaves these pasts and futures together,calling for the change that queer youth strive for today: “As queer teens in Queens, we demand this in order to build a better world.”… >>>
"Which face would you want to wear in a new world?" asks a young woman while we see her preparing her make-up in the mirror. The "masking" of make-up is opposed with the rural carnivalesque ritual of "Krampusumzug": The public virile march of young men under - occasionally monstrous - masks. While the woman attends the parade and allows herself to get lost in the spectacle, the images change their register: a sober documentation makes way for an enigmatic flickering, which not only disrupts the gender coding, but reveals in the masking a transgressive moment: "This very night I became for the first time, what I always sought to be: Something other than myself."… >>>
Grainy Super-8 close-ups in saturated colors show three women of color during their morning routine: Showering, and rubbing, makeup and dressing, little rituals preparing them to face the world. From off-screen, their voices are heard: They talk about the relation to their skins, to their hair. About their gaze and those of others, their self-consciousness as women of color. Towards the end, they're shown in portrait-like angles: Just the way they want to be encountered by others. In between the intimacy of concern for one’s body and the thoughts revolving around how its publicly perceived emerges a space for the perception of a body politics which includes what's ostensibly intimate and private.… >>>