08.09.2023 | STATE OF DOGS (BE/MN 1998, Peter Brosens, Dorjkhandyn Turmunkh) / SEASONS OF THE YEAR (SU 1975, Artavazd Peleshian)

Retrospective | ANIMAL REALITIES

NOHOI ORON / STATE OF DOGS 

BE/MN 1998, R: Peter Brosens, Dorjkhandyn Turmunkh, Dok, 91’, OV with English subtitles, 35mm 

Being a desolate stray dog, Basaar is killed by a dog hunter in the dusty streets of Ulaanbaatar. Actually, his destiny would be to be born again as a human, but he denies his fate and leads us in reminiscences to the steppes of Mongolia, in which he was living with the herds being part of a nomadic community until he ended up in the big city. In their dog-documentary-fiction STATE OF DOGS, Belgian filmmaker Peter Brosens and his Mongolian colleague Dorjkhandyn Turmunkh combine post-socialist realities with folklore and mysticism with ethnography in an impressive manner. 

VREMENA GODA / SEASONS OF THE YEAR

SU 1975, D: Artavazd Peleshian, Doc, 29’, without dialog, DCP

Armenian Socialist Soviet Republic, in the middle of the 70ies: a shepherd has jumped after one of his animals into the floods. Giant hay bales are run down steep meadows. A wedding is celebrated. Seasons change. In the snow, the last animals slide down the slope together with the shepherds. Mundane scenes in black and white, sometime solemnly enraptured – bathed in a Vivaldi score – sometime immediate and close, almost rough. Unfolding with a virtuoso montage and visual strength, this impressive portrait SEASONS OF THE YEAR is full of poetry and pathos. 

Fri 8. Sept	ANIMAL REALITIES Luru Kino in der Spinnerei
10 PM	€ 6,5 (5,5 red.)