Back to the Class Issue – Film Culture and Social Inequality
Back to the Class Issue – Film Culture and Social Inequality
All guests and events of the thematic focus of Berlin Critics’ Week 2025 are confirmed
Film evening at Kumpelnest 3000, Monday, February 10, 7.30pm
Conference at the Akademie der Künste Berlin, Pariser Platz Wednesday, February 12, 6pm
Film programme and discussion at Hackesche Höfe Kino, Friday, February 14, 7pm
Presale TICKETS for opening conference in der AdK are available here.
Today, one’s socio-economic background still determines one’s chances of success in society. Cinema tells us these stories, but in the film industry itself, discussions about it are largely absent.
The lack of engagement with the issue of class in politics and the growing demand for a sensitivity to class differences in literature and art: for Critics’ Week 2025, we are addressing these two interrelated developments, shortly before the new Bundestag elections.
As part of our thematic focus Back to the Class Issue – Film Culture and Social Inequality, we want to break the silence on the class issue in the film industry and bring the slowly re-emerging debates on class relations to bear upon the country’s largest film festival. Together with our guests and colleagues, we are looking to shed light on blind spots, class shame, status politics, and spaces of possibility – and always in relation to the cinema as a social space that has the potential to overcome class boundaries through shared and anonymous experiences. The thematic focus of this year’s Critics’ Week has been developed in collaboration Massimo Perinelli of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
This year’s thematic focus is at the centre of three events and a writing workshop.
On February 12, we will be discussing the class question from current perspectives as part of our kick-off conference at the Akademie der Künste Berlin. For the fourth time, we are cooperating with the AdK’s Film and Media Art section.
Following a welcome by Peter Badel (cinematographer, member of the Akademie der Künste), there will be a keynote speech by sociologist Andreas Kemper, who will focus on the political effects of class relations. This will be followed by the first panel entitled How do we talk about class? Perspectives from politics, society and art, in which Nuray Demir (artist/curator), Katalin Gennburg (politician) and Francis Seeck (mediator/professor/author) will analyze the current discourses around class and classism. The panel will be moderated by journalist and editor Amina Aziz.
The author and filmmaker Jovana Reisinger will be providing the impetus for the second panel’s discussions. She will read from her new book Pleasure and pose the question: Who can actually afford to work in culture?
In the second panel, Christopher Andrews (director), Heike-Melba Fendel (author/actress), Marco Müller (festival director/producer) and Biene Pilavci (director) will discuss visibility and barriers to entry in the film industry. The panel is entitled Closed Society? Class relations in film culture and will be moderated by Dennis Vetter (Critics’ Week).
This will be followed on February 14 by a film programme and a subsequent debate about the depiction of class relations using the means of cinema – with the classic film Vampires of Poverty by Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo as well as current works by Vika Kirchenbauer, Friedl vom Gröller and Adriano Valerio.
On February 10, we are inviting the local film scene and the Berlin neighbourhood audience to a film evening in the Kumpelnest 3000 neighbourhood pub before the start of the Berlinale. Inspired by Rosa von Praunheim‘s cult film Die Bettwurst and the short film Mad Girls Don’t Cry by Jovana Reisinger, we want to raise a glass to cinema with the local audience. Following the films, the filmmaker Katharina Lüdin will host a pub talk in which everyone present can join in.
The topic of class also provides the focus for the magazine in this year’s festival. In cooperation with the literary magazine PS: Anmerkungen zum Literaturbetrieb / Politisch Schreiben, editor Olivia Golde has commissioned a diverse array of texts:those by Sabine Scholl, Irina Nekrasov/a, Caca Savić, Lisa Heuschober, Parisa Ghasemi, Bianca J. Rauch and Barbara Wolfram can already be read online, with an addition further text to come shortly. Another podcast has also been produced. This year, Lua Mauff and Kim Sanou from the Berlin collective organising otherwise talk to film and radio play actor Max Mauff and filmmaker, caster and producer Raquel Dukpa about class issues in film culture.
The events at a glance:
MON Feb 10
7.30 pm
Bar Night
In collaboration with Kumpelnest 3000
Location: Kumpelnest 3000, Lützowstraße 23, 10785 Berlin
DIE BETTWURST
D: Rosa von Praunheim, GER 1971, 78 min.
MAD GIRLS DON’T CRY
D: Jovana Reisinger, GER 2018, 22 min.
Wed Feb 12
6pm
Opening conference
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Introduction by Peter Badel (DOP, Akademie der Künste)
Keynote Andreas Kemper (Sociologist)
Panel 1: How do we talk about class? Perspectives from politics, society and art
Guests: Francis Seeck (mediator/professor/author)), Nuray Demir (artist/curator), Katalin Gennburg (politician). Moderator: Amina Aziz (Journalistin/Redakteurin)
Break
Reading by Jovana Reisinger (Author/director)
Panel 2: Closed Society? Class relations in film culture
Guest: Christopher Andrews (director), Heike-Melba Fendel ((author / head of Barbarella Entertainmen), Marco Müller (festival director/producer) und Biene Pilavci (director).
Moderator: Dennis Vetter (Woche der Kritik)
Reception
FRI February 14
7 pm
Back to the Class Issue
The film night devoted to our thematic focus: the debate takes up the topics of the opening conference and applies them to the creative medium of films. What blind spots does cinema have when it comes to class relations? And can social status be made visible at all?
Guests include: Friedl vom Gröller, Vika Kirchenbauer, Adriano Valerio
EMERGENCY EXIT
USCITA DI SICUREZZA
D: Friedl vom Gröller, C: Angela Crupano, AUT 2024, 5 Min., German Original with English Subtitles – German Premiere
COMPASSION AND INCONVENIENCE
D: Vika Kirchenbauer, C: Laurie Young, Mmakgosi Kgabi, Olympia Bukkakis, Leah Marojević, DOP: Rita Macedo, GER 2024, 30 Min., English Original with English Subtitles
THE VAMPIRES OF POVERTY
AGARRANDO PUEBLO
D: Luis Ospina, Carlos Mayolo, C: Carlos Mayolo, Jaime Cevallos, Fabián Ramírez, Javier Villa, DOP: Eduardo Carvajal, Jacques Marchal, COL 1978, 28 Min., Spanish Original with English Subtitles
CASABLANCA
D: Adriano Valerio, C: Fouad Miftah, Daniela Brandi, DOP: Diego Romero Suarez-Ilanos, Jonathan Ricquebourg, FRA/ITA 2023, 63 Min., Arabic, Italian, French Original with English Subtitles
February 12-20, 2025
Critics’ Week writing workshop
As part of the writing workshop that will accompany Critics’ Week, authors will be discussing film criticism and the class question together with the critic Till Kadritzke; they will also discuss films and events from the program of this year’s Berlinale as well as from Critics’ Week. Texts that arise from the workshop will be published in the Critics’ Week online magazine.
Critics’ Week 2025 will take place from February 12 to 20, 2025. The film programme starts on Thursday, February 13 at Hackesche Höfe Kino.
Press contact: Elisabeth Mohr, presse@wochederkritik.de
Copyright for the conference motif: video still from Compassion and Inconvenience, 2024 (c) Vika Kirchenbauer, VG Bild-Kunst