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12. Feb

20:00, Hackersche Höfe Kino

12. Feb

NOTES FOR A DÉJA VU

R+DOP: Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, MX 2021, 22 min., engl. OV – European Premiere

After half a century, Mexican citizens take to the streets to remember the Tlatelolco massacre of 1968, and a vibrant, yet deeply tragic time. Cut to a different year and place: late at night, filmmaker Jonas Mekas mumbles words of wisdom and melancholy. There’s a friction to these scenes with opposing times and tones, as images of the political struggle in Mexico, filmed by the youngsters of Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, meet Mekas’ voice on the sound track. The result is a cinematic détournement, juxtaposing Mekas with colourful, flickering images of struggle, past with present, intimacy with public spaces, and the delicate music of Jozef Dumoulin with footage of bodies marching. What does it mean to film a political act with a Bolex nowadays? “We have to destroy the horrendous clarity of their million-dollar cameras. We have to syncopate and de-phase”, says the group’s 2012 manifesto. Can nostalgia be a source for political intervention?

THE DREAM AND THE RADIO (LE RÊVE ET LA RADIO)

D: Renaud Després-Larose, Ana Tapia Rousiouk, C: Geneviève Ackerman, Ana Tapia Rousiouk, Renaud Després-Larose, Étienne Pilon, DOP: Renaud Després-Larose, CA 2022, 135 min., french OwEs – German Premiere

The lives of three friends, Constance, Eugene and Beatrice, are shaken up by the arrival of Raoul Debord, a self-proclaimed revolutionary who has his sights set on taking over the city’s radio stations. With the lightest of touches, the film switches attention from voices on- and off-camera, as reality gives way to collage-like dream sequences and loose, jazzy scenes that drift through the nights. In their directorial debut, Ana Tapia Rousiouk and Renaud Després-Larose, the latter a regular cinematographer for Canadian visionary Olivier Godin (Berlin Critics’ Week 2018), set images in motion through sounds, as if this were the first non-silent film ever made. With a vision deeply rooted in almost romantic video images, they appear to be unlearning and reinventing the rules of cinema.

Debate LOSING TRANSMISSION – February 12.

Participating in a revolutionary movement or ruthlessly doing one’s own thing – or somehow achieving both together, somehow? How can cinema connect our political and our private goals, and how does it retain social relevance? Does seemingly outdated media like broadcast radio and analogue film cameras have anything to do with social rebellion today? Is an analogue film practice a form of resistance in the digital age, or does it merely evoke nostalgia and melancholy? A drifting debate on transmissions of rebellion through magically interconnected images and sounds that eventually dissolve.

Amongst the guests: Ana Tapia Rousiouk, Renaud Després-Larose, Nina Menkes