21. Feb

CITY LIGHTS

Wed, February 21st 2024 – 8:00 p.m. Hackesche Köfe Kino

Films:

WARNES

HIDDEN CITY

Debate

What makes a film Argentinean? Two films from different eras visualise the past and present of the country’s social inequality – while also obscuring reality through stylisation and the evocation of punk, ghosts and carnival.

Guests include: Francisco Bouzas, Davide Oberto, Susanne Sachsse

[All Guests]

[Tickets]

WARNES

D: Narcisa Hirsch, ARG 1991, without dialogue, 3 min.

In 1951, Eva Perón as the First Lady of Argentina championed the construction of what would be the largest children’s hospital in Latin America. With the military coup against her husband Juan Perón four years later, the project was stopped and the building remained abandoned. Over the years hundreds of families moved into the skeletal ruins of this abandoned hospital and lived there for decades. In 1991, the neoliberal government of Carlos Menem decided to arbitrarily relocate the families and demolish the building with explosives. In WARNES, experimental filmmaker Narcisa Hirsch documents the demolition of this place on film, in slow motion. She not only captures the audience of this horrible historical spectacle, but also the large cloud of dust that hangs over this piece of Argentine history.

HIDDEN CITY

D: Francisco Bouzas, C: Martino Ezequiel Dosantos, César Languidey, Liz Lovera, Nelson Pereira, Belén Ramirez, DOP: Julián Babino, ARG 2024, 95 min., Spanish Original with English Subtitles – WP

They say that right before the World Cup in 1978 the mayor of Buenos Aires, Osvaldo Cacciatore, ordered a wall to be built in front of Villa 15, a shanty town, so that the tourists wouldn’t see it, and that’s how its name was coined. In CIUDAD OCULTA, the Hidden City, there is a city within the city, and another underneath for the dead. Iki returns home to visit his old friends and is soon confronted by death. He visits Franki in his dreams, and soon more friends follow him. The lines between their worlds are blurred, and the gateway to the afterlife is in the most dangerous place in the city: the police station. CIUDAD OCULTA creates a world of friendship amidst violence.