Thursday, 7th February 2019 – 8pm

NAKORN-SAWAN

D: Puangsoi Rose Aksornsawang, C: Prapamonton Eiamchan, Jarunun Phantachat, Phumipat Thavornsiri, DoP: Boonyanuch Kraithong, TH/DE 2018, 77 Min., Thai OwEs – EP

When billows of mist settle on memories, fiction begins. Just like on this day in this room: two friends from long ago sit together in front of yellow curtains, through which shines the light of the Thai province. Nakorn-Sawan oscillates between childhood and old age, homeland and home, Asia and Europe, and the alternation between a fictional and a documentary gaze represents a defiant attempt at coming to grips with one’s own history. Puangsoi Aksornsawang attended Angela Schanelec’s film class in Hamburg. If so inclined, one can recognise this in the patient, enchantingly shot compositions. Much more important than such references, however, is her own aesthetic, which scrutinises paths of life before they vanish, attempting to challenge the ineluctable finitude of life.

GULYABANI

D: Gürcan Keltek, Cast: Zeynep Kumral, DP: Murat Tuncel, Gürcan Keltek, NL/TR 2018, 35 min., Turkish OV w/ English subs – GP

A psychic looks back on the past. Already as a child she was beaten by her own mother because of her visions. In the future, an extremist group will try to use the young woman’s gifts to further their cause. The images only suggest what happens when. Focused on the experience of the present, they draw emotional landscapes. The Turkish experimental filmmaker Gürcan Keltek interweaves the oppression of the feminine and a magical understanding of history with political violence. Through elegant montage, he explores the memory of a country that has difficulty getting away from its political present. Gürcan Keltek wasn’t allowed to show his previous film, Meteors, in his home country, even though it turned him into one of the most prominent voices in contemporary Turkish cinema.

After the screening

Debate: RESISTING DISAPPEARANCE

When images begin to flow, existence turns into movement and materiality seems to dissolve, only then is cinema’s potential harnessed. What type of resistance can films offer when people and identities threaten to disappear?

Guests: Carla Simón (director, “Summer 1993”) and Philip Ursprung (art historian, Professor of History of Art and Architecture at ETH Zurich) // in the presence of the directors Puangsoi Aksornsawang und Gürcan Keltek

Moderated by Dennis Vetter (Berlin Critics’ Week)

Re-Run: Friday, 15th February 2019 – 10am

Tickets