15. Feb
20:00, Hackersche Höfe Kino15. Feb
EDOUARD AND CHARLES (VAS-TU RENONCER ?)
D: Pascale Bodet, C: Benjamin Esdraffo, Pierre Léon, Serge Bozon, Marc Barbé, DOP: David Grinberg, FR 2021, 72 min., french OwEs – German Premiere
Both a historical fantasy and a bitter comedy, EDOUARD AND CHARLES crafts a double portrait of the titular men, 21st-century versions of their artistic namesakes, Manet and Baudelaire. The two men’s friendship is at crisis point: as he prepares his Olympia, the painter fears constant ridicule, while the poet is aggressively seeking grants and funding from people and institutions he despises. Gulcan – a third man, who comes from abroad and speaks no French – will be their last chance for any sort of dialogue. The materials that inspire this film are real treasures of history: Baudelaire’s cruellest and wittiest letters, and a series of equally biting caricatures of Manet’s paintings that were published in then-contemporary reviews. And what does the present contribute? Facing the eternal dilemma of giving up or selling out, Pascale Bodet’s film proposes a furiously funny third path, set against the EU’s most prestigious institutions.
2551.01
D: Norbert Pfaffenbichler, C: David Ionescu, Stefan Erber, DOP: Martin Putz, AT 2021, 65 min., without dialogue.
No light without darkness! Viennese artist Norbert Pfaffenbichler wanders the gutters of film history, ripping apart bodies and deforming faces – always with the aim of unearthing cinematic intensities that have not yet been seen. Inspired by Chaplin’s THE KID, his film digests cinema and then transforms it. What emerges could hardly be more disgusting or grotesque, while bizarrely also being enjoyable and tender: a chamber of horrors filled with intestines and protruding plastic eyes, in which a good soul tries to protect a child. Norbert Pfaffenbichler is a virtuoso of homage, and he succeeds where many fail: not to resurrect the classics return as feeble, shuffling zombies, but to charge them like Frankenstein’s monster with the energy of the present.
CRITICS’ DEBATE – February 15.
This conversation will be held in German.
For the third year in a row, we present a debate format at that focuses on two critics and their perspectives: Inspired by EDOUARD AND CHARLES and 2551.01, our guests explore the gaps and overlaps of their sensibilities and tastes, contemplating cinema while assessing the films closely, and perhaps getting lost in their images. With fearless openness, they will grapple with a programme that recycles art and beams historical characters and works into the present day, transforming and undermining historical certainties and cinema genres.
Guests: Hannah Pilarczyk, Daniel Kothenschulte, in the presence of: Pascale Bodet, Norbert Pfaffenbichler