FIRST IN FIRST OUT
Dir.: Zacharias Zitouni, DOP: Zacharias Zitouni, GER/ALG 2020, 26 min., German OwEs
“It’s just gone?” the son asks. “Just all gone,” the father replies. But their family will likely never be able to forget the traumatizing events that are burned into the mother’s memory: her husband’s arrest, imprisonment and deportation to Algeria. It has been years since the father’s eventual return to Germany; now he works as a cook in an airport. In FIRST IN FIRST OUT, his son Zacharias Zitouni films him there, cooking and coping with his memories. Often, the father’s desire to come to terms with the past collides with the director’s post-migrant self-conception and curiosity. The camera doesn’t always function and parts of the image freeze over and over again. The father’s movements emerge through a fog of pixels, only to freeze again in abstraction. He won’t thaw until the end.
We present this film in cooperation with the Duisburger Filmwoche.
INTIMATE DISTANCES
Dir.: Phillip Warnell, DOP: Jarred Alterman, GBR/USA 2020, 61 min., English OV – German Premiere
At an intersection in Queens, New York City, Martha Wollner walks through the streets, looking for something or someone. The camera observes her and her surroundings from different angles, but always from a distance, as she starts disarmingly candid conversations with strangers. Occasionally she disappears from view, but the soundtrack remains with Martha on the street. As intimate dialogues between strangers unfold, the view of a crossing becomes emblematic of society. People are an integral part of their environment, but what does it actually mean to be close to one another?
We present this film in cooperation with the Black Canvas Contemporary Film Festival.
Debate: BEYOND RECOGNITION – March 2, 8 PM
What does a picture show, and what does a voice reveal? What are people willing to show of themselves when they feel unobserved amidst the crowd, and what do they hold back when they sense the glances of others? While in “Intimate Distances” crosses boundaries and makes the camera an accomplice, “first in first out” plays with the intimacy of a home movie. A debate about observing and questioning, about recognition and cognition and the image that is created in the mind.
Guests: Alexander Scholz, Pedro Segura, Sandra Wollner, Pascal Capitolin
Moderation: Janaína Oliveira