Cinema is characterized by an immediate sense of the present; we can only experience it within the timeframe it dictates. And cinema can travel through time, bringing the past into our now and envisioning futures. The five films in this program take their starting point in the moment in which we live: presents that are never comfortable, marked by crises, scarred by violence, but never without hope. And they find different ways to explore this present and to establish connections with what was and what could be. (Sebastian Markt)
A village in Sudan, in the present. Director Ibrahim returns after years of absence and wants to screen films. Bureaucracy and censorship make the endeavor difficult. In the meantime, war breaks out. The question of obtaining a permit becomes a more existential question of survival. The films that Ibrahim cannot show become the inspiration for an attempt to celebrate life in the face of danger. Cinema as a space where cinema itself becomes a resource for coming to terms with the present.
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Nominated:
Goldener Key
A laboratory in New York, in the present. Art student Ting Su earns money by digitizing issues of the historic communist labor newspaper Daily Worker. The historical images of people and their struggles become part of the present of Su’s film; she finds connections to her mother’s story and her own. Cinema as a place where the past becomes present, offering a way to better understand one’s own situation.
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Nominated:
Goldener Key
CN: Violence
Germany, in the present. The artist Vika Kirchenbauer injures her hand, encounters hostility at the hospital, watches demonstrations and police violence from the window of her apartment, and takes up a professorship in art. Her own injury, her role as a witness, and her position as a sworn employee of the state form the starting point for an essayistic reflection on the power of the state and the potential of art. Cinema as a space where a question of fundamental conditions is posed: What kind of art can emerge in a society where injustice prevails, and to what end?
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- Director: Vika Kirchenbauer
South Tyrol, mid-19th century. Three young African women are subjected to forced baptism, their names replaced with Christian ones. Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński recalls this act of colonial violence and lets three actresses perform nursery rhymes, giving historical figures back their voices, in scenes reminiscent of “Daughters of the Dust,” a classic of African-American cinema. Cinema as a space that recalls a history of racism, while restoring to those affected by it the agency that violence sought to take away from them.
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- Director: Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński
Gaza, in the past. The painter Mohammed Imrani grew up here; now he lives in Paris. Faced with the destruction of the urban landscape of his youth, he begins to sketch what no longer exists. With the act of drawing comes memory: streets and buildings, places that hold personal significance for him – as personal and intimate as the strokes with which a threatened city comes to life from his hand. Cinema as a place where remembering becomes a living act that resists against destruction.
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Nominated:
A38-Production Grant Kassel-Halle
- Director: Florinda Ciucio
