re-selected – Counter Encounters: Fleeting Topographies

Manila-based artist Merv Espina has been researching the history and outcomes of the film workshops which the Goethe-Institut has regularly hosted and organized, predominantly in the Global South, from the 1980’s onwards. While some of these workshops are famed to have initiated sustainable local film scenes in the host countries, many of the films produced have become rare or inaccessible, or have disappeared entirely and turned into local myths. To retrieve these films has been a driving motivation for Espina´s ongoing research; another is to counter the assumption of a one-way influence of these workshops with an investigation into how the encounters also affected the German filmmakers who conducted these workshops as instructors and facilitators.

Merv Espina has put together a selection of films made or inspired by Goethe-Institut film workshops in Bangkok, Dhaka, Hong Kong, and Manila between 1984 and 1992. While these seven films vividly display the varieties of topics and aesthetics of the workshop films, they can all be seen as filmic encounters with cityscapes. A guest of this programme is Ingo Petzke, who conducted several workshops and collaborations over many years.

“When the Goethe-Institut flew in German artists and filmmakers to co-produce new works or facilitate film and video workshops in `Third World` cities, they usually just had a few weeks to explore these new places by themselves. Sometimes posed as dialogues, the works produced in these contexts often became a process to address and document these spaces with their students and collaborators: the city, explored as a character seen from many perspectives. In several of the workshop films there is a tendency to have an impressionistic approach to the cityscape, its histories and creative life, while incorporating micro-portraits of particular aspects within these topographies. At the same time, they are quite self-reflexive of existing biases by documenting the tensions of the urban and the rural, the foreign and the local, the insider and the outsider.

This screening continues from a previous programme recently presented in the re-selected section of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. It is an iteration of Counter Encounters, an ongoing research on the history of the Goethe-Institut's film and video workshops and its co-productions in the Global South during the late Cold War and early post-Soviet era.” (Merv Espina)

The programme is part of the re-selected project of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and has additional support from the Goethe-Institut. re-selected is a joint project of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art within the framework of ‘Archive außer sich’.. (Tobias Hering)

Film program:
…, Farang, etc. Watthanaphan Garudasen, Tippawan Onsri, Kittipong Mongkol, Parinda Onrit (from a 16mm workshop conducted by Christoph Janetzko) Thailand 1992 Digital file without Dialogue 12 min.
Hong Kong Topography Ingo Petzke, Jim Shum Hong Kong 1984 Digital file without Dialogue 22 min.
Dhaka Tokai Enayet Karim Babul, Junaid Ahmed Halim, Masbaul Islam Talukder, Ahsan Shahriar, Ashfaq Munir, Dildar Hossain, Mosharraf Hossain, Nurannabi, Rashid-Un-Nabi, Santu Sarker, Shyamal Dutta (from a documentary workshop conducted by Christoph Hübner) Bangladesh 1986 Print: Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen 35 mm OV with Engl. ST 17 min.
Sa Maynila Mike Alcazaren, Jo Atienza, Vic Bacani, Ricky Orellana, Allan Hilario (from a 16mm workshop conducted by Christoph Janetzko) Philippines 1988 16 mm without Dialogue 8 min.
City Dog Kosol Trongtorsak, Sathien Preedasa, Chawalit Phothisri, Amnuay Mangmeesri (from a 16mm workshop conducted by Christoph Janetzko) Thailand 1992 Digital file without Dialogue 9 min.
*Magkakahoy Teddy Co, Noel Lim (from a 16 mm workshop conducted by Christoph Janetzko)
Philippines 1988 16 mm without Dialogue 10 min.