Cinema Can Do Literature: Losing Ground

Dirk von Lowtzow, singer and songwriter for Tocotronic, one of the most influential German rock bands of the last 25 years, wrote a book in the first year of the pandemic entitled “Ich tauche auf”. In this cheerful and melancholy novel written in the form of a diary running from March 2020 to March 2021, the Arsenal cinema is mentioned several times in connection to thoughts about Potsdamer Platz. In the short gaps between the months during which Arsenal was closed, Dirk von Lowtzow attended the Black Light retrospective of international Black filmmaking at Arsenal. Following a reading of the corresponding excerpt from the book, we’ll be showing LOSING GROUND (USA 1982) by Kathleen Collins once again, a comedy reminiscent of Éric Rohmer in its lightness of touch and subtle depths of meaning. It revolves around a Black middle class couple – she a philosopher, he a painter – who spend a summer in the country. While she actually needs a library to work on her research paper, he is struck by the local woman. She gets her revenge by taking a role in a student film. (bik)