Summer Programme: For Future Reference
Summer Programme: For Future Reference
SUMMER PROGRAMME in the open air – June 8, 2021; 9.45 pm
Berlin Critics’ Week goes Open Air! On the eve of the Berlinale, a Critics’ Week summer programme will take place at the open-air cinema Hasenheide. The ticket sale starts on May 28.
FOR FUTURE REFERENCE: film screening & debate
Will today’s images only become important tomorrow? And which images from yesterday continue to burn most intensely today? What is the lifespan of social struggles and how can films position themselves aesthetically in relation to them? What does a self-conscious cinema of political images and words look like? We recombined two films from the Berlin Critics’ Week programme in March and encountered new questions: LETTER FROM YOUR FAR-OFF COUNTRY and FREIZEIT OR: THE OPPOSITE OF DOING NOTHING.
Guests: Orwa Nyrabia (Artistic Director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, IDFA) & Angelika Levi (director of MIETE ESSEN SEELE AUF)
For more information on ticket sales, contact tracing, and the status of Covid-related hygiene measures, visit the Freiluftkino Hasenheide website.
LETTER FROM YOUR FAR-OFF COUNTRY
Dir.+DOP: Suneil Sanzgiri, USA/IND 2020, 17 min., Hindi/Urdu OwEs
It all begins in 1989, the year of Suneil Sanzgiri’s birth, during a conversation with his father about his family’s origins. Through archival images, 16mm footage and digital montages, the filmmaker’s personal story is interwoven with ideas of political resistance, exile and history, as well as biographies of poets, politicians and activists. Accompanied by a song by Pakistani resistance icon Iqbal Bano, the film unfurls a sensual space of resonance, linking traumas of the past to the intensity of the moment. The title is inspired by two letters: one is a poem by the Kashmiri-American writer Agha Shahid Ali, addressed to himself during his exile. The other was written by the director himself to a distant relative who is a former Communist Party of India chairman. In his audiovisual essay, Sanzgiri defends cinema as a timeless device for persistently questioning the world.
FREIZEIT OR: THE OPPOSITE OF DOING NOTHING (FREIZEIT ODER: DAS GEGENTEIL VON NICHTSTUN)
Dir.: Caroline Pitzen, C: Jasper Penz, Juno Groth, Lilly Marie Dressel, Maxim Hartig, Mila Wischnewski, DOP: Markus Koob, GER 2021, 71 min., German OwEs
“… there seems to be no will to clear up the case.” Scraps of a speech resound through the streets of Berlin. A young man seems to be taking a stand on the NSU. When Caroline Pitzen fades in the title of her film after a few minutes, Germany is shown as the arena of political struggles. “Alerta, Alerta, Antifascista!” has consequently become the premise of everyday life for some: Young people who do not want to distance themselves from the unrest in the world — who do not look away, but weigh, discuss, perceive, remain attentive. Just like the film’s camera, which quietly follows and observes them wherever they are active: in their circle of friends, at school, on the street, even at home at night. A vérité fiction in the language of non-fiction cinema. Understatement in the face of escalation?