Videoteca

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Maia – Portrait with Hands 2024 star_border 6.4
The Aromanians (Rrãmãnji) are an ethnic group found mainly in today’s Albania, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. For filmmaker Alexandra Gulea, this question of heritage is connected to the name she shares with her grandmother, who was born into a traditional Aromanian life, and is fluent only in an Aromanian language. The older Alexandra's father suffered a violent death in an uprising for his people's rights, which forced the family out of Greece and into a politically treacherous Balkan landscape deep in the throes of nationalist upheavals, until finally, they found a home in Romania.

Herbaria 2022
In his second feature film, Leandro Listorti establishes a parallel between two worlds he seems to know well: that of plants and that of cinema. This delicate cinematographic work, full of beautiful images—both archival and current—gives an account of the immense work of classification and preservation, and generously invites us to think about forms of representation and memory.

Aribada 2022 star_border 5.1
In the middle of the Colombian coffee region, Aribada, the resurrected monster, meets Las Traviesas, a group of indigenous transwomen from the Emberá tribes. The magical, the dreamlike and the performative coexist in their unique world - an aesthetic and spiritual universe in which documentary and fiction merge into a transcultural narrative. Enchanted by the beauty and power of their jais (spirits), Aribada decides to join Las Traviesas in creating their own trans*futurist community.

Flying Sheep 2022
The author's grandparents were Aromanians, a Balkan minority of nomadic shepherds, without territory and written language, wandering between mountains and seas. Their story is told from the subjective point of view of the artist, who passionately reproduces in staged scenes this perpetual tragic wandering, also full of hope and courage to live.

Crossing Voices 2022 star_border 7
The exemplary adventure of Somankidi Coura, an agricultural cooperative founded in Mali in 1977 by West African immigrant workers living in workers' accommodation in France, sheds light on the violence of colonial agriculture and the ecological challenges in Africa today.

The Pageant 2020 star_border 4.5
Every year since 2011, a unique beauty contest has been taking place in Haifa. The contestants are female survivors of the Holocaust. In the midst of this flashy spectacle, their personal traumas remain as deep as ever. There are many things about this contest that are controversial: it is organized by the right Zionist organization, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and the dubious contest itself rises the public indignation of various speakers, including other survivors.

Does all this make any sense? And if so - why does it take so long? 2019
For a quarter of a century, Frank Castorf has created a microcosm in the Volksbühne that many considered to be an identity-forming fortress and a renegade island in the increasingly chic and monotonous centre of the capital. The marathon productions for which he was responsible were true orgies of association that demanded everything from the audience. The film accompanies Castorf's final season and is there when the theatre people get together once more to start a last fireworks display in the face of an uncertain future. (weltfilm GmbH)

Labour Power Plant 2019
A new production center, maybe set in an undetermined future. What is being produced here? We shall find out by following the given traces. Two pairs of hands trying to untangle themselves. A human sheep virtually cut into pieces. A warm welcome to the authors and actors of their lives. Stories being told, their narrators dissected. When the gates open, those leaving Labour Power Plant have been made fit for the demands of the labour market. The next production cycle begins… People with their own wills, interests, and desires are being equipped with the different physiological, cognitive, psychological, and social core competencies to transform them into human resources. Meanwhile, the management is introducing new methods to enrich the products with the innovative features of ‘self-evaluation’, ‘self-optimisation’, and, most importantly, ‘self-fulfilment’. A series of interventions are performed, leading to an assembly that may appear strange at first sight.

One or Two Questions 2018 star_border 6.4
In 1986, the Uruguayan Parliament passed a law granting amnesty for all crimes and human rights violations committed by the military and police during the dictatorship (1973-85). This law of impunity prevented the clarification demanded by the relatives of those who had disappeared and been murdered by the former regime. A public initiative arose calling for a referendum in which the law be subject to the vote of the people. Unas preguntas uses U-matic footage, mostly of interviews recorded on the streets of Uruguay between 1987 and 1989, to present a time capsule of the period.

Dispassionate Love 2018 star_border 4.7
Recalling memories of a friend who committed suicide, three lovers slowly slide into an anguish labyrinth of desire, loss and longing. They entangle in a colliding maze of forsaken loves, failed expectations and imperfect anticipations. A disintegrating web arises in which love exists, but as dispassionate yearning. Here affection is an indifferent desire that burns the soul to death.

The Kali of Emergency 2017
During social and political turmoil, what is the manifestation of divine intervention? How do the gods and goddesses act in the volatility of the contemporary world? If they walk on earth as men and women, how do they endure the chaos of modernity? Centering on the terrible and majestic incarnations of Goddess Kali and her celestial avatars, this film is a metaphysical contemplation in times of perpetual emergencies. Avikunthak’s remarkable sense of forms finds expression in the extraordinary combination of performance and essayistic cinematic practices.

Shot in the Dark 2017 star_border 7
Shot in the Dark is a documentary on three blind photographers: Pete Eckert, Sonia Soberats and Bruce Hall. A documentary on three blind people who devote their lives to creating images. What do they see in their mind's eyes? Do they sense that which we sighted miss, overlook, or don't take into consideration? Their images, as we sighted can see, are extraordinary. "Even with no input the brain keeps creating images," says Pete Eckert. Sonia Soberats states, "I only understood how powerful light is after I went blind." Shot in the Dark is a journey into an unfamiliar yet fascinating realm. "My camera is like a bridge," claims Bruce Hall. All these photographers embrace fantasy, chance, and contingency at a fundamental level. Shot in the Dark enriches our understanding of perception and creation. We all close our eyes in sleep, the sighted and blind alike, and in our dreams - we see.

Man of Smoke 2017
“The Prostitute”, “The Addict”, “Gay Man”, “The Bitch” are the titles of 75-year-old recreational poet Slobodan Stevanović’s most popular poems. And popularity – in the Serbian provinces just like everywhere else – is measured by click figures. Slobodan and his son Bojan send his works into the world via YouTube. Poetry conquers new spaces, while the tube TV set in the old space next door is flickering and the “cevapcici “are frying.

Die Stadt als Beute 2016 star_border 6
Berlin is changing. The film maker interviewed and accompanied real estate agents and investors and filmed tenants struggling to cope with the situation.

Clash of Cultures 2013 star_border 5
Since independence, more and more young South Soudanese from all over the world, have returned to their country. Conflict among them may be inevitable.

Angelo 2013
At the "Friendship Association for Child Protection" Angelo devotes himself to street children in Juba. He supports them medically, teaches them and tries to enable them to take their lives in their own hands. A path, he knows quite well himself.

Dowry of Life 2013
Mary loves John, but she was forced to marry a wealthy man instead. A meeting with her lover has fatal consequences.

Far Away From Here 2008
Daniela would like to live far away from here in the future. Here, is a poor part of town in Montevideo, where Daniela lives in a small house with her son, husband, mother, sister and brother-in-law. They are better off than most of the people living in that neighborhood. They all work and the father provides them with whatever they need. He is one of the millions of emigrants from Latin America whose salaries are essential to the survival of their families. The movie carefully approaches Daniela’s world, tells her story, a girl immersed in daydreaming, who is also a down-to-earth mother, beloved daughter and young wife – and about the pain of emigration.

Hunger in Waldenburg 1929 star_border 7.5
Powerful semi-documentarian depiction of the miserable working and living conditions in the Silesian city of Waldenburg.

In the Shadow of the Machine 1928 star_border 6.2
The film was produced as a compilation film. Blum reported in “Film-Kurier“ (5.11.1928): "It will be assembled from excerpts of partly unpublished Ukrainian films. […] Some American footage has also been used. To get material as impressive as possible, a number of films, 0-60, have been viewed." Based on ideas by Dziga Vertov, and largely assembled from the last reel of his film 'The Eleventh Year', this compilation presents an explicit critique of the very technology that Vertov sought to praise, stressing the dark side of industrialization—hands mangled in workplace accidents, train wrecks, coffins—and connects to a particularly German concern with the negative effects of technology stretching from the Romantics to Heidegger, Horkheimer, and Adorno in the twentieth century.