16. Feb
20:00, Hackesche Höfe Kino16. Feb
¿DÓNDE ESTÁ MARIE ANNE?
D: Yaela Gottlieb, AR/PE 2022, 6 min., without dialogue, European premiere
An advertisement is the only remaining footage of actress and activist Marie Anne Erize Tisseau after she was disappeared by Argentina’s dictatorship in 1976. Its images raise questions not even cinema can answer.
How can cinema speak of what is no longer with us? Marie Anne Erize Tisseau was a professional model, actress, and militant who was detained and then disappeared in Argentina on October 15th, 1976. The title ¿DÓNDE ESTÁ MARIE ANNE? (Where is Marie Anne?) takes a question the human rights organization “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” has asked since 1979, in the search for their disappeared children and loved ones – more recently, the question “¿Dónde está Santiago?” was painted on walls in 2017 following the disappearance of Argentine activist Santiago Maldonado – invoked as a provocation for the search of a new cinematographic language. Through the repurposing of an advertisement for Jockey Club cigarettes from 1972 – the only remaining footage of Marie Anne – and the devices of repetition and suspension, the spectator becomes complicit in the painful and necessary search for her.
With the kind support of the Peruvian Embassy in Berlin
DE NOCHE LOS GATOS SON PARDOS
D: Valentin Merz, C: Alain Labrune, Andoni de la Cruz, Bishop Black, Candida Sanchez, Céline Carridroit, DOP: Robin Mognetti, CH 2022, 110 min., French/English/German/Spanish Original with English subtitles – German premiere
When the sun goes down, genders, genres, cultures, and orientations slowly dissolve: Valentin Merz stages a cinematic encounter of (mainly) youngsters shooting a titillating costume film in which nothing is as it seems to be. The director himself takes part, performing as an eccentric artist who soon disappears into the night. After an erotic opening with mating rites in the woods the film transforms into a whodunit with a particularly nosy detective. Before long the murder mystery in turn makes way for a ghost story. Queerness becomes a narrative principle, until eventually cinema itself becomes the fetish.
LUST
D: Valie Export, C: Susanne Widl, Alfred Neugebauer, Silvia Eiblmayr, Elfriede Jelinek, DOP: Valie Export, AT 1986, 12 min., German Original
Valie Export’s body-fetish cinema is always also anti body-fetish cinema. Erotic attraction and disturbing perversion merge into one another. Rarely, however, does the great Austrian avant-garde artist approach muscles, nipples and thighs in such a delightfully comedic way as in this TV commissioned work on unchastity. Accompanied by music reminiscent of commercials, the film engages in a dystopian but strangely harmonious constriction between capitalism and the cult of the body. The bodies of the characters appearing in bars, swimming pools and casinos are mere commodities. Instead of coupons, the croupier is presented with a breast, advertising messages are written on body parts, and everyone incessantly showcases their gorgeousness. A wonderfully malicious exposure of homogenized corporeality.
Debate – Missing in Action
“Missing in Action” is a military term, the title of an action film starring Chuck Norris, and also our starting point for a debate on three films which find political traces in the seemingly apolitical realms of advertising and genre cinema.
Amongst the guests: Jürgen Brüning, Yaela Gottlieb, Elke Lehrenkrauss, Valentin Merz