DokfestGeneration introduces a small but fine selection of documentary feature length films, which pick up in different ways the dialog between the generations. "Film has no age", is the motto. Elderly film fans – but not only they – will be fond of the DokfestGeneration films which are chosen for them and are shown in the most beautiful cinema in Kassel, the fifties movie theater Gloria.
DokfestGeneration, which has been a part of Kassel Dokfest since 2014, commits itself to the initiation of dialogue between generations and aims to appeal to older film fans. DokfestGeneration integrates themes of aging, age-appropriate narration, and generativity into the festival program, hereby acknowledging that existence in a succession of generations is formative for the individual and for society, a fact that is oftentimes essential for documentary film.
Selection committee: Joachim Kurz and Livia Theuer (theuer@kasselerdokfest.de)
How do we overcome times of crisis? How can we support ourselves and others in doing so? These questions also preoccupy filmmakers in their latest documentaries. The eleven selected films show that people of all ages can serve as role models in this regard.
Right from the start, in DON’T KISS ME, I’M BUSY, four women in the early, patriarchal Federal Republic of Germany leave their role in the kitchen to make a difference in politics and society. Two generations earlier, three ICE WOMEN convey a true picture of a region of the world supposedly inaccessible to the ‘weaker sex’ and are today regarded as pioneers of the Arctic.
Another revelation is the story of the women interviewed anonymously for the GDR cult book “Guten Morgen, du Schöne” (Good Morning, My Lovely) and who, 50 years later in GUTEN ABEND, DU SCHÖNE, look back for the first time on the upheavals in their lives and the power of reflection. One star of the GDR was HELENE WEIGEL – INSTRUCTIONS FOR A REVOLUTION, who stood in the shadow of her famous husband, Bertolt Brecht. Her portrait bears witness to the unbridled imagination and resistance of this Jewish anti-fascist, actress, and theater director.
In DAYS YET UNKNOWN, the filmmaker is driven by a deeply personal desire to keep her mother’s memory alive as she battles dementia, and to revisit their shared history of migration. In A SICKNESS LIKE A POEM, a young filmmaker documents another personal and traumatic experience, artistically helping her psychotic, formerly violent father find his way back to life.
DYING FOR BEGINNERS also deals with illness as an existential crisis. Here, the filmmaker himself is affected: as a cancer patient in the ‘terminal stage,’ he shares with us, the audience, his exploration of the taboo subject of dying.
That NOTHING REMAINS NOTHING DISAPPEARS is an experience as painful as it is reassuring for each and every one of us. The film of the same name recounts with empathy and precision how the familiar supermarket makes way for a new building, how a new generation takes over the space, and how communal life reorganises itself. Artists are, by their very nature, specialists in change, particularly one well known to the Kassel audience: REBECCA HORN – THE SECRET LIFE OF THINGS will also open the festival. Towards the end, two films explore strategies for resilience. The communal singing in MELODIE and the contemplative observation of birds in WATCHING PEOPLE WATCHING BIRDS connect us with one another and with the world in a deeply uplifting way.
DokfestGeneration
