Film Programme

___________________QUEER GHOSTS
29.08.2006, 8:30 pm
AIDS has always been something people want to relegate to a spatial and temporal elsewhere (other people, other places, other times). It is there and not there, present and absent.

Beate Rathke/Christine Woditschka
Passing Suburbia (2005/4:31)
"Such is life in suburbia: you constantly expect something to happen, and when it does, it has already passed." Enchanting drag-king cowboys haunt a suburban planned community north of Berlin in this witty short video.

Matthias Müller
Pensão Globo (1997/15 min)
"Sometimes it's like I'm already gone. I have become a ghost of myself."
The ghostliness of AIDS is personified by an HIV-infected man who wanders through the city of Lisbon and reflects on the effects of the disease on his body.

Gregg Bordowitz
Fast Trip, Long Drop (1994/54 min)
Bordowitz's seminal autobiographical documentary reflectis on risk, death, activism, and his family's Jewish heritage are alternately funny, cynical, and disturbing. His film has been rightfully considered one of the most significant works on AIDS in the United States.

Introduction & Discussion: Marc Siegel, Berlin
Assistant Professor in the Program for Film Studies at the Free University, independent film programmer, member of the Berlin-based artist group CHEAP. He has published and lectured widely on queer studies and experimental film.

____________THE LIVING DEAD - HORROR FILMS
01.09.2006, 8:30pm
The horror film genre has also always been an outsider, a misfit of cinematic genres: a genre on the forgotten side, the dark side, strange and dubious. And all of these living dead, from Dracula to the postmodern zombies, tell of overcoming death in ghastly beautiful images.

Jörg Buttgereit
Nekromantik (1987/75 min)
After several years of sensorship and court trials, this film was at long last declared as an art film.
A film about the love of humanity and what there is left of it: Robert Schmadtke works at a company called Joe's Cleaning Mission that specializes in removing dead bodies from the scenes of accidents and crimes. One day, when he is given the task of removing the corpse of a man who has been shot, he decides to steal the body and bring him home to his girlfriend Betty........

George A. Romero
Night of the Living Dead (1986/ 96 min.)
An apocalypse in black and white: the dead return to life, spreading their condition throughout the United States and attacking the living in order to feed upon their flesh. No one has a chance, neither the friendly American middle-class family nor the beautiful lovers, nor the gallant hero. The film is considered a horror classic and made it on the American Film Institute's "100 Years, 100 Thrills" list.

Introduction & Discussion: Jörg Buttgereit, Berlin
Director of art-house horror films, ,film critic, works as a special effects advisor and occasionally directs music videos. In 2005, he staged the German version of the punk musical Gaba Gaba Hey! with the music of the Ramones.

___________VOODOO, TRANCE, and DAYDREAMS
05.09.2006, 8:30pm
Each society has its own means of dealing with this fear of the ghostly be it displacement, conjuration or facilitation. Explored here are the "outer-Europe" fear-rituals as seen in two experimental films from the old-time stars of ethnographic documentation, Maja Deren and Jean Rouch, and an award-winning feature film.

Maja Deren
Divine Horseman: The Living Gods of Haiti (1947 - 51, 1977/52 min)
Experimental filmmaker Maya Deren shot some 20,000 feet of footage of voodoo ceremonies with the attendant sound recordings. A fascinating look at the ceremonies and signs of Haitian voodoo (in which the gods, or "loas," are called "divine horsemen"), the film explores the cosmology of this poorly understood religion.

Jean Rouch
Les maitres fous (/1954/35 min)
This legendary film traces the effects of colonialism on indigenous Africans via specific rituals developed in reaction to the colonial system. While we are amazed and confused by the violent and involved trance that the Africans can fall into, at the same time, we are forced to recognize the power that the camera may have over those in front of it. That is, the very "reality" of a documentary is dissolved or, at least, questioned.

Charles Najman
Royal Bonbon (2002/85 min.)
Tale of a modern-day man who believes himself to be the fabled Henri Christophe, liberator of Haitian slaves during the early 1800s. King Chacha declares himself a ruler and his lady friend a queen. He is kicked out of Cap-Haitien, ends up in the abandoned palace of Sans Souci, which Christophe had built himself and lives out his dream as a ruler. He becomes a tyrant and is overthrown in a revolt. This dramatic comedy won the Prix Jean Vigo.

___________________REFUGEES
08.09.2006, 8:30pm
Figures of migration such as immigrant workers, refugees, and people sans papiers are often depicted in films as being relegated to the margins of society. Between cultures, their stories are often filmed in the manner of social realism, pedagogic and patriarchic. We will show two short artist films that take up the position of irritating our perception of migration rather than dealing with the position of clarifying stereotypes.

Jeanne Faust & Jörn Zehe
sonst wer wie du (2003/8 min)

Clemens von Wedemeyer
Otjesd (2005/15 min)

Ngozi Onwurah
Welcome to the Terrordrome (1995, 100 min.)
A raw, black-rap thriller with its soul in the music of Public Enemy and its heart in contemporary Britain. Caught between the racist attacks of a white youth gang and the brutality of the police, a young black mother strikes back when she goes on a police-killing rampage. This film is framed in the emblematic promise of a revolution yet-to-come.

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The Film Programme will be realized in cooperation with Kino Luna.