11.09.22 | Distruktur & LaborBerlin e.V.

Living in Berlin since 2006, Brazilian film duo Melissa Dullius and Gustavo Jahn has been working as DISTRUKTUR on a cinematic corpus that is committed to forms of experimental language of analogue material, most notably 16mm. With a playful symbolism, their enigmatic works explore the underground scene of the German capital likewise to the winding alleys of Cairo and reflect not only the experience of diaspora but also describe film as a terrain of synthesis of diverse artistic influences like music, dance, stage design or performance art. Dullius and Jahn are founding members of independent LABOR BERLIN film collective, which has dedicated itself to ethics of autodidactic and DIY work all around analogue film material. In their working spaces, members can develop, cut and copy films. In addition, LABOR BERLIN offers workshops for interested people that deal with both chemical and physical and philosophical questions and function as a form of horizontal transfer of knowledge beyond academia.

Following six short films of DISTRUKTUR that Melissa Dullius will project herself, we will show a range of works from the Labor collective selected after an open call. At the beginning, GEDENKEN will be shown, a cinematic piece of memory work, for which the artists Katrin Eissig and Melina Pafundi have worked with titles and material remains of Nikolaus Tschechner’s KALMENHOFKINDER – ERMORDET UND VERGESSEN that they found at the Labor. Afterwards, HLBC 16 reflects on a sequence of a car drive through Rome and its suburbs in Danièle Huillet’s and Jean-Marie Straub’s film HISTORY LESSONS from 1972. For this purpose, Luisa Greenfield expresses her thoughts with a simultaneous live reading of an accompanying text. Last but not least, MOONLESS by Sophie Watzlawick opens with a prelude of voices and sounds in a total black, until other-worldly (negative) images lead us into a mysterious, moonless world.