Ein Porträt der Künstlerin Betina Kuntzsch, die seit über 30 Jahren an Kurzfilmen und interdisziplinären Projekten arbeitet anlässlich der DOK-Leipzig-Premiere ihres neuesten Films HIMMEL WIE SEIDE. VOLLER ORANGEN Read More
Berlin based Renate Sami’s categorization-defying filmmaking on a variety of analogue and digital formats for over four decades drew from a similar conviction, often nudged by something that acted as a flash of inspiration – a memory, a piece of music, a dream, a place, or a text. Read More
Jazz, mixed media – and abstract on top? When Irina Rubina’s JAZZ ORGY was chosen as the 2016 FMX trailer at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy, it was met with widespread… Read More
Bis 2024 hätte Guillaume Cailleau noch als Kurzfilm-Regisseur durchgehen können. Im Februar hat er bei der Berlinale jedoch einen Film veröffentlicht, der länger ist, als alle seine restlichen Arbeiten zusammen: In DIRECT ACTION sind tatsächlich selbst die einzelnen Einstellungen zumeist länger, als Cailleaus bisherige Filme. Dauer scheint für ihn also wohl Verhandlungssache zu sein, wie es sich für einen Experimentalfilmer gehört. Read More
Ein Porträt des Animationsproduzenten Fabian Driehorst
FABIAN& FRED – da sind sie schon wieder! Das ist das Erlebnis, das Festivalgänger*innen in den letzten Jahren womöglich oft hatten. Mehr als Grund genug also, sich mit Fabian Driehorst zusammenzusetzen und über das Studio und seine Projekte zu sprechen – und natürlich auch über ihn selbst. Read More
Für viele bildende Künstlerinnen und Künstler, die sich mit dem Medium Film beschäftigt haben, ist die kritische Würdigung ihres filmischen Schaffens im Vergleich zu den stärker beachteten Erfolgen in den anderen Kunstsparten, zumeist der Malerei, zweitrangig oder bestenfalls korrelativ. Wir denken hier natürlich an die unscheinbare Kategorie der Künstlerfilme, die unbehaglich mit gekreuzten Beinen gegenüber ihrem Cousin, dem Experimentalfilm, sitzt und einen spärlichen und ungeschickten sozialen Austausch pflegt. Read More
The experimental setup is gruesome: a minimal space consisting of perhaps four square meters. Tiled on the inside, with a pane of glass to view through, and a basic foam… Read More
Ein Interview mit Ulu Braun, der bereits zum 6. Mal bei Berlinale Shorts vertreten ist und ein Überblick über den Kurzfilm auf der Berlinale. Read More
Berlin-based Milena Gierke’s Super 8 films exist within a small yet formidable tradition of experiential diary and portrait films that combine playfulness with innovative seriousness. She studied experimental film at… Read More
Columbus gazes happily from the wings of the dove that carries him over and through the world. Visualised by a papercut, a profile that seems to consist only of a nose and a single eye, he appears as an anti-version of the explorer – mischievous, down-to-earth, completely without ambitions of wanting to claim ownership. It’s an unusual protagonist Sonja Rohleder has animated here in co-direction with Veronika Samartseva for Keimzeit’s song Kolumbus, and yet, it’s prototypical of Rohleder’s animation style and production process. Read More
“Please Stop Breaking the Windows. Still Occupied,” a text panel that casually appears in Marian Mayland’s first single-channel video work, already pointing in the direction of her later films. Read More
Birgit Hein was among the most important figures of avant-garde film culture in Germany and Europe. Along with her ex-husband and collaborator Wilhelm Hein, she led film into radical and uncharted territories, concerning herself unreservedly with the development, criticism and dissemination of avant-garde film.
She passed away in February 2023 at the age of 80, leaving behind a trail of pioneering accomplishments, singular in their scope and significance. Read More
An image that fits to a T – what is that exactly? And what precedes it – perhaps another image, one before the inner eye, or merely just a vague thematic hunch? These are questions that arise quickly when you explore and engage yourself with Volker Schlecht, who pivots back and forth between the moving and the non-moving image. Read More
The avatar trembles, barely able to stay up on its legs, then it falls over, its arms flailing. “Attempting a backflip is not safe. You can break your neck, or land on your head, or land badly on your wrists. None of that is nice, so my avatar does the trick,” an emotionless voice explains. The voice is that of animation director Nikita Diakur, distorted using voice cloning software. Yet its dry humour does manage to penetrate even through the manipulative software coils. Read More
Ojoboca (Anja Dornieden und Juan David González Monroy) machen zugleich mehr und weniger als „Kurzfilme“. Mehr, weil sie neben Filmen auch Performances und Installationen entwickeln, derzeit an ihrem zweiter Langfilm arbeiten und Texte von einer eigenwilligen Literarizität fast alle ihre Bewegtbildarbeiten begleiten. Read More
“Are you afraid you’re not actually here,” asks a resounding voice in Gudrun Krebitz’s latest work “Echodrome” as the water ripples and splashes. There it is again – the ‘you’. A hallmark of Krebitz, a word that is at times a dialogic reassurance of the self, often addressing some metaphorical counterpart, or mostly directed at the potential audience. Read More
Enraptured, the two-legged creature picks the blissfully smiling axolotl up from the earth and pops it in its mouth. Sheer joy. Doing so, its hands – filigree stick-puppet hands – initially reach out tentatively then greedily for the tasty stop-motion being. In Jonatan Schwenk’s ZOON, over and again we encounter so many nuances and animation techniques, all at the same time. Read More
Little effort is required when gleaning facts from the available databases. We soon discover here that the non-profit Chemnitz Filmworkshop is a media-education institute that “promotes young filmic talent”. Its headquarters and official address is the Clubkino Siegmar cinema, which was entrusted to the association in 1996. But what exactly lies behind these sobering facts and figures, behind these ideas, which is far greater than them and has already been lived out for decades by the out-and-out filmmakers from Chemnitz? Read More
Sophie Linnenbaum, who was born in Nuremberg in 1986, is an observer of small everyday moments and human encounters. Yet her films are not intended to be understood as pure entertainment. Nor do they let themselves be casually consumed and then founder in our memories overflowing with moving images. Read More
Whenever Alex Gerbaulet says the word »I« in her works, she is also always saying »history« and vice versa. Read More
For his short film with the striking German title of PROLL!, the filmmaker Adrian Figueroa received the German Short Film Award in November 2021: Consisting of a golden metal band set on a base and swirling upwards spiral-like, as tall perhaps as a bottle of champagne. Congratulations!
Adrian Figueroa comes from theatre. Having grown up in Frankfurt am Main, he took drama studies and applied theatre in England, gaining an education that was as theoretical as it was practical. Read More
Anne Isensee likes getting right to the point. And that in both her works and conversation. With her at times very short films, the animator artist who lives in Berlin has enjoyed success at numerous festivals for years now. In 2017, she achieved an impressive debut with her mere 101-second-long film “Mega Trick” (2017), which garnered the Golden Dove for the Best German Short Film at the DOK Leipzig International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. Read More
“Everyone can see that your body is high-class. You have to make something out of it. Why are you so sad? You haven’t been sitting in front of the TV of life, you have been active. What a guy!” – an off-screen male voice accompanies Max the model as he rambles around looking for a hotel in a city where a male-model killer is up to mischief. The video piece “pretty boyz don’t die” (2016) forms the beginning to the “pretty pretty mad sad” (2016-18) four-part short film series and is the first filmic work by the writer and filmmaker Jovana Reisinger. Read More
Victor Orozco Ramirez is a filmmaker with all his heart and soul. Living in Germany since 2002, the Mexican by birth has been a long-established name in the German… Read More
Fragmentary memories act like a common thread, taking us through the works of Sylvia Schedelbauer as they oscillate between experimental and essay-film genres, and which could also be called “filmic… Read More
Nicolaas Schmidt used to be a musician, he founded a virtual support group on sunsets, and has held exhibitions of colours, objects and photos. He usually works alone, having started with photography and filmmaking at almost the same time, before soon moving on to installative pieces in real and virtual spaces. In his work, people are confronted by spaces, objects and non-human animals that are almost their equals, for Schmidt is an explorer of balance. Schmidt’s films intervene in an “ordered” – i.e. hierarchical – perception of reality, and it is only the isolation of the cinema auditorium that lets us succumb to their open, flowing and circulating structures. Read More
Bereits fünf Filme entstanden aus der mittlerweile mehrjährigen Zusammenarbeit von Clara Winter und Miguel Ferráez, tatsächlich ist das dynamische Duo in allen selbst vor der Kamera aktiv und versucht, sich an zunehmend ausgestellten Positionierungen, Halbfiktionen und Zeichenspielen. Bei ihrer Begegnung trafen filmische Stile aufeinander, die verschiedener kaum sein konnten – das Resultat waren neue Fragen und Methoden. Die Filme der beiden protokollieren neben ihren expliziten Fragestellungen zu sozialem Status und Nationalität allem voran eine künstlerische Evolution und die Entwicklung eines transkulturellen Stils. Ihre Experimente wirken sowohl im Verhältnis zum deutschen, als auch mexikanischen Kino erfreulich deplatziert. Read More
Marvelling at the everyday, such as chance refractions of light, passing shadows, or a carelessly dropped handkerchief being blown by the wind almost gracefully across the ground – in the face of our fast-moving world, these brief observations of random phenomena seem to have ever-decreasing significance. With hardly any place left in our everyday lives for pausing and perceiving all that plays out quietly in our immediate surroundings. This is not so with Gunter Deller, who has made the marvelling at everyday phenomena his filmic practice. Read More
A fleeting view of a garden through a window. The sky a radiant blue, completely cloudless. A close-up of an insect, intently pursuing its purpose. In James Edmonds’ filmic universe,… Read More
Just a lovely animal. In “Buck Fever”, a video work from the NEOZOON female artist collective, armed people kill non-human animals for pleasure, and then pose beside the carcasses for… Read More