Editorial | GEGENkino 2026

Things are getting seriously pixelated at GEGENkino. We holed up in the libraries between Christmas and New Year, poring over academic volumes. That’s when Hito Steyerl’s 2009 essay “In Defense of the Poor Image” fell into our hands. In just a few pages, she pointedly describes the political, aesthetic, social, global and commercial conditions surrounding “poor images”, being reproduced, edited and exchanged, downloaded and consumed endlessly. And so, in this issue, we turn our attention to the impure and flawed visual worlds that can embody so much: budgetary constraints, zeitgeist, format fetish, an anti-attitude or conscious artistic decision.

In DRY LEAF, we immerse ourselves in the poetic visual fragments of Aleksandre Koberidze, who filmed in Georgia using a Sony Ericsson W595, and follow Kamal Aljafari and his companion into the undamaged Gaza of 2001. Alongside WITH HASAN IN GAZA, which was created from rediscovered MiniDV cassettes, we present the artistic reappropriation of stolen Palestinian archive material in A FIDAI FILM. With THE KARTLI KINGDOM, we return once more to Georgia, where people displaced from the Abkhazia region are fighting for their rights in a dilapidated former hospital. In IF PIGEONS TURNED TO GOLD, director Pepa Lubojacki uses her mobile phone to portray her alcoholic brother and cousin. The popular drug also plays a central role in the German premiere of DRINKING AND DRIVING, in which endearingly disoriented characters celebrate their summer in the Canadian hinterland. All these films share a specific awareness of form, materiality and the implications of “poor” images. Thematically linked to this is our most extraordinary German premiere: the live performance by VJ Emmy, who is travelling to Leipzig specially from the Ugandan capital Kampala to accompany the latest release from the low-budget production house Wakaliwood at UT Connewitz with his voice and his very own energy: look forward to EATEN ALIVE IN UGANDA by Nabwana I.G.G.! To round off this thematic focus, guest curator Norika Sefa has brought together her ideas in an exciting short film reel entitled ORDINARY ERRORS: EVERYTHING ABOUT YOURSELF.

And finally, MILIEU KINO from Vienna is back! After a year’s break, we can once again treat you to forgotten (trash) gems and entertaining children’s programmes inside the truck. You’re probably already wondering: “But don’t they do some kind of live scoring every year?” And you’re absolutely right! This time, the Soviet silent film COSMIC JOURNEY will be flickering across the screen at UT Connewitz, accompanied by the exceptional soundscapes of musician and sound artist FM Einheit (former Einstürzende Neubauten, amongst others). And what else? Also featuring: a film shoot in Brazil that goes completely off the rails; a mythical apocalyptic world full of children; light and shadow in southern Patagonia, Argentina; passionate literary discussions in Berlin; a Canadian-Tibetan kleptomaniac in Toronto; Europe’s largest military training area in Saxony-Anhalt; an endangered language in Vietnam; and utterly sickening acts of violence from Indonesia, all topped off with a generous load of spot-on humour. Voilà – you’re welcome.