FilmDokument: Film Documents on the November Pogrom 1938
The November pogrom marks a central turning-point in the anti-Semitic policy of National Socialist Germany. On the night of November 9 to 10, 1938, thousands of Jewish synagogues, businesses and homes were destroyed and at least 91 people murdered in an action initiated by the SA. Despite the ban issued on filming and photographing, several film documents from private sources do exist. Official recordings show the "leveling" of the ruins. All of these documents can also be found in subsequent documentations of the events and have visually shaped the images and conceptions of the pogrom.
Strange Culture
Until November 15, the exhibition "Seized" will be on view at Art Laboratory Berlin. Among others, the show focuses on the artist and scientist Steve Kurtz, who in 2004 was suspected of and charged with bio-terrorism by the FBI. Director Lynn Hershman Leeson deals with this case that caused an international stir in her most recent film STRANGE CULTURE (USA 2007, Nov. 2). Based on documentary recordings, interviews, short acting scenes and comics, she examines the accusations made against Kurtz. This film is part of an international campaign in which famous artists such as Tilda Swinton show their solidarity with Kurtz. After the screening, there will be a discussion with Eberhard Schultz (lawyer), Mark C. Donfried (Institute for Cultural Diplomacy), Christian de Lutz, and Regine Rapp (both Art Laboratory Berlin).
UdK Film Series Poetic Cinema
LE JOUR SE LÈVE (Daybreak, Marcel Carné, F 1939; with Jean Gabin, dialogs by Jaques Prévert and production design by Alexandre Trauner, Nov. 3, 10 and 17). The film starts with a crescendo, followed by white writing on a black ground that immediately says it all: "A man has murdered. Locked up in his room, he remembers the circumstances that made him a murderer." An evening, a night, a morning, and three long flashbacks: time is inflected, prolonged and compressed: the last hours of the factory worker Francois until he shoots himself before he is shot by someone else. The protagonists are orphans, and the film is about the freedom into which they were placed, like into a straightjacket. A film against humanism and for poetic form. Three times a month, three different topics: modern acting, modern dialogs, modern buildings. (Heinz Emigholz)
Remembering Ulrich Schamoni
On November 9, 2009, Ulrich Schamoni would have celebrated his 70th birthday. The Deutsche Kinemathek will commemorate the director with a small film series and, together with his family, found the Sammlung Ulrich Schamoni to secure and preserve his films and related material for film research. "Geist und ein wenig Glück [Wit and a Bit of Luck]" – the title of his documentary on New German Cinema shot in 1965 – assisted him in his attempts to combine sophisticated topics with popular cinema in the 1960s and 70s. After being trained to become assistant director and actor, he made his public appearance in 1962 with his novel Dein Sohn lässt grüßen, which was immediately put on the index by the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften. The feature film ES (Nov. 11) from 1966 deals with the marriage crisis of a young couple. The everyday reality and the attitude toward life of the young generation formulates a filmic counter-position to the then still prevailing problem-free entertainment cinema of the established industry.
Magical History Tour: Bodies in Cinema
On Screen Bodies and Spectator Perception
Since the beginnings of cinematography, the fascination with moving images is in part due to the bodily depiction of acting persons on the screen. It is not by chance that the first movie recordings show good-humored workers, men doing gymnastics or fresh kids. Yet in the audience's enthusiasm when viewing these images, the direct communication between the film and one's own (spectator) body was already inscribed. Nothing has changed until this day regarding the potential of film to affect the spectator's body. Moreover, cinematic depiction and staging, the illusion and (de)construction of the body are still elementary aesthetic methods of cinema. The films we have selected this month – from throughout the history of film – are examples of the different forms of depicting the body and corporeality, body constructions and stagings. The supporting films are selected either in a complementary or contrapuntal way. The forms of embodied (spectator) experience resulting from the shown films and the ways in which they are positioned in the overall complex of filmic experience, are what viewers can retrace anew with their own bodies (almost) every evening.
ONE WORLD BERLIN
The ONE WORLD BERLIN Filmfestival für Menschenrechte und Medien will take place for the sixth time in 2009. From Nov. 26 through Dec. 2, 13 programs – documentaries, feature films and animations – will be shown at Kino Arsenal.
AFRIKAMERA 2009: African Soundscapes – African Movies
In its second edition, "AFRIKAMERA 2009: African Soundscapes – African Movies" from November 11 – 14 at Arsenal presents a selection of current films from Africa with a new thematic focus. The festival organized by the non-profit culture association toucouleur e.V. seeks to counteract the lacking presence of current African filmmaking in Berlin. AFRIKAMERA grasps itself as a new, permanent platform for dialog between African filmmakers and the Berlin audience.
Reflecting Realism – Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Retrospective
The Belgian Dardenne brothers certainly rank among the most important contemporary filmmakers. With their five feature films LA PROMESSE, ROSETTA, LE FILS, L’ENFANT, and LE SILENCE DE LORNA they have introduced a unique realistic aesthetic into European narrative cinema, drawing precise social portrayals without performing simple social criticism. The roots of their artistic style are of a documentary nature: As “video pioneers”, the two shot politically committed documentaries in and around their hometown Seraing in the 1970s and 80s. We will present these early works that are hardly known here for the first time in Germany within the frame of the Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne retrospective. We will also screen the two feature films that they produced during their transition phase to fiction, the theater film FALSCH and the socio-critical melodrama JE PENSE À VOUS. The retrospective allows viewers to set the documentary films in relation to the feature films and retrace the gradual development of the Dardenne’s specific realism, from documentary political activism via their interest in experimental theater to the balanced relationship between formal innovation and social concern that characterizes their successful award-winning movies. Dealing with the possibilities and limits of realism has shaped the works of the Dardennes from the start until today, arriving at novel results.
Children's Films
THE WIZARD OF OZ (Victor Fleming, USA 1939, Oct. 4 & 11) In her dreams, little Dorothy (Judy Garland) lands in the colorful country of Oz, and with her companions – the Scarecrow,
the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion – makes her way to the powerful Wizard of Oz, who is not able to satisfy her wishes, but can show her how to
help herself. A musical classic in exploding colors.
THE KOREAN WEDDING CHEST (Ulrike Ottinger, 2009, 21.-27.10.)
In South Korea the wedding chest, a massive wooden box filled with things both mysterious and symbolic, is part of the opening ritual of every marriage ceremony. In Ulrike Ottinger's film, it also serves as the starting point for the journey the director takes into present-day Seoul, where she combs the megacity for what, in the end, are invisible traditions. In the process she discovers the old in the new – and vice versa – in Korea's omnipresent wedding industry.