A retrospection back into the depths of the earth: While we explore space, back on our home planet many unbelievable and dark places remain uncharted. The ocean is so deep that no light can penetrate it. Metal scraps though, remains from destroyed machines fetched back from space to earth almost make up the earth stone there. The same thing happened with the everyday objects of the Dutch settlers under the floors of Manhattan in New York. While these relics tell stories about the trading system of the time, the intangible trading of today’s banking system remains opaque. The four films in this program use cinematic strategies to penetrate invisible places, thereby illuminating the multi-layered ecology and economic mechanisms of our time. (Azin Feizabadi)
Nothing really survives here. The bottom is so deep that no light ever reaches it. Very few boats go through. It is unknown when the cases will come.
This experimental documentary portrays a space object and its fall into the darkness of a space cemetery. A woman scientist reveals her attachment to this object and the absence of images documenting this mysterious place. As a reverse sci-fi journey, this essay mixes real and fictional archives to guide us, like a stalker, to the outskirts of an invisible place.… >>>
- Director: Stéphanie Roland
A survey of objects, vistas, and museum displays forming the material remains of the Dutch settler town that was once a trade hub for the Atlantic world, now buried beneath Manhattan’s financial district. Today’s harbor lies still, physical trade is largely absent. Instead, the skyscrapers of the current city, and their immaterial transactions that cross vast distances. An entanglement of things past and present.… >>>
- Director: Cassandra Celestin
Bauteilbörse Bremen is an association which collects and re-sells construction components from demolished or abandoned buildings. In the short film TOPPLED FROM THE HORIZONTAL AXIS’ Karin Strohmeier, a member of Bauteilbörse Bremen and the artist visit the former Bremen State Central Bank building with a camera. A series of conversations emerge inside the building, tackling the binary systems of ‘glorification’ and ‘denial’. While the real estate industry aims to profit from the symbolic wreckage of the former Bremen State Central Bank, the goal of the Bauteilbörse Bremen is not to preserve an ‘identity’, but the circulation of material.… >>>
Premiere:
World Premiere
- Director: Aria Farajnezhad
The starting point for the essayistic experimental documentary film is the small mining town of Chiatura, in west Georgia. The film closely follows the raw material of Manganese, extracted on site through all the stages of processing and distribution, drawing connections with other spaces and temporalities. The film figures manganese as the foundation for different modes of production binding cultural, extractive and arms industries together and powering technological advancements. These shared foundations link this peripheral site to a vast network of things, places and processes across the globe, feeding into current forms of conflicts. … >>>
Premiere:
World Premiere
Nominated:
Goldener Key
- Director: Tekla Aslanishvili, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze
