FILM SCREENINGS
25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FALL OF THE WALL
MARKUS DIETRICH. MISSION SPUTNIK / SPUTNIK
SAT 15 NOVEMBER 2014 2PM
October 1989. Devastated because her beloved uncle Mike has had to leave the GDR in a rush, 10-year-old Frederike and her friends construct a tele-transporter to beam Mike back. But instead something quite different happens on the 9th of November. Drawing on his own memories, director Markus Dietrich lets us see the events around the fall of the Wall through the eyes of a child.
Germany 2012 / 2013, colour, 83 mins. With English subtitles.
Directed by Markus Dietrich. With Devid Striesow, Yvonne Catterfeld, Jacob Matschenz, Maxim Mehmet, Andreas Schmidt
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en13492405v.htm
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THOMAS HEISE: MATERIAL
SAT 15 NOVEMBER 2014 4PM
Discussions during a production of a play by Heiner Müller, demonstrations in Alexanderplatz in November 1989, the demolition of the Palast der Republik, insights into a Brandenburg prison – all this is shot and collected by director Thomas Heise in the GDR and the reunited Germany between the late 1980s and 2008; small and large events that make up the unordered ‘pile’ of history.
“The one and only “Wende-”film. At some parts Material is Wiseman’s State Legislature augmented by crystal clear aesthetics and a hundred percent harmonisation of pace and contemplation.(Barbara Wurm, Viennale Report 2010)
Germany 2009, b/w & colour, 166 mins. With English subtitles. Directed by Thomas Heise
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en13492880v.htm
About "Material"
"The very outstanding German contribution, however, is Thomas Heise’s Material, a film consisting of found “auto”-footage shot between 1988 and 2008 for other films. A film arising out of carefully chosen, skillfully assembled, and scarcely (yet consistently) commented fragments of the fragile, incomprehensible, contradictory and fierce last years and days of a state which no longer exists. A film that ultimately reveals Heise’s poignant perfection and stance. A magnum opus, hopefully to enter the history of cinema as one of the greatest monuments in documentary filmmaking. What sounds so humble in the beginning (“There is always something that remains, a rest, the contingent”) develops into a master-plot of personal and filmic historiography, collecting its atmospheric rumbling from all parts of the private archive – scenes from the theatre rehearsal of Heiner Müller’s Germania Tod in Berlin, rightwing teens at the premiere of his Stau – Jetzt geht’s los, demonstrations on the Alexanderplatz, outbursts of democracy, TV transmissions of Volkskammer sessions, interviews with detainees and prison officials, backyard observations, images of the hollow ruins of the Palast der Republik. In a very dialectic way, the traces retrieved and detected – be they visual or verbal – are ultimately subjective and objective at the same time. What counts is not the outcome of history, but the permanent questioning of its “events” and the negotiability of their interpretation. All the images and words have gone through a recording process both personally- and historically-motivated. Taking place long before the reviewing process of editing, they contain a secret quality: as if they had been waiting for Heise to release them in 2009 only. What a fantastic merging of kairos and chronos! The one and only “Wende-”film. At some parts Material is Wiseman’s State Legislature augmented by crystal clear aesthetics and a hundred percent harmonisation of pace and contemplation. (Barbara Wurm, Viennale Report 2010)
VENUE AND BOOKING:
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