Dada Evening

Poster design is very simple. All you need is some nice colors and shapes and typefonts. So. Here is our poster for our DADA evening. You can even print it at home. Super easy! Do it! Spread it!

[Thanks to Luru-Kino for the poster and to Deutsche Kinemathek for the 35mm copy of Deutschland-DADA.]

Fascism and sexuality in film and pop culture. Lecture by Marcus Stiglegger + Salon Kitty (IT 1976, Tinto Brass)

GEGENkino is drawing near. We can’t even fall asleep anymore out of excitement (and last-minute organizational stuff). If you are also insomniac why not spend your nights with reading knowledgeable, lengthy essays on obscure film makers and genres? You can find them over there on Marcus Stiglegger’s blog. He will come to GEGENkino on the last day of the festival and give a lecture about “Fascism and sexuality in movies and popular culture”, followed by a screening of Tinto Brass’ “Salon Kitty”.

13 April, 8pm, UT Connewitz – Lecture and film: 8/6 (red.)

Fascism and sexuality in film and pop culture. Lecture by Marcus Stiglegger (in German)

Depicting fascist regimes in film, prostitution and perversion, dominance and sexual dependence belong to the core inventory of motives adducted aiming at sensationally sexualizing and maximally gratifying the topic. Starting out from this condensation of sexuality, cruelty and politics, film scholar Marcus Stiglegger will build on mainstream cinema and cinema d’auteur. He will start with the 1970ies and their extremely ambitious productions, politically and philosophically inspired by their day, for instance Pasolini’s “Salò – the 120 Days of Sodom” or Visconti’s “The Damned”. Then he will point out the difference between them and several exploitative followers, who converted the alleged formula of success of the prominent predecessors into a softcore context.

Based on film samples, Stiglegger leads to essential representatives of exploitative and untrivial cinema by asking about function and response of sometimes subtle, sometimes pithy examples quoting fascist symbolism in pop culture. How are iconic traditions and fetish of fascism employed in the rock’n’roll airs of Marilyn Manson and the critical overaffirmation of the band Laibach?

Following the lecture: Salon Kitty (IT 1976, D: Tinto Brass, A: Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thuling, Teresa Ann Savoy, 102’, German Version, 35mm)

SS-officer Wallenberg turns the noble brothel “Salon Kitty” into an establishment of wiretapping. There, willing and party-loyal women draw secrets from foreign diplomats and exalted Nazi-officials. Desertian plans get public, an execution ensues. Margharete, a prostitute, and Kitty, the whoremistress, want to regain justice and begin to sabotage Wallenberg. In addition to the excellent directing of Tinto Brass, the film impresses with the set design by Ken Adams, who already worked on Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon”.

Drawing Restraint 9 (USA 2005, Matthew Barney)

Unfortunately we were not able to get our hands on Matthew Barney’s most recent, very modest work “River of Fundament”, which everybody seems to love. But, as you may know, GEGENkino is screening his 2005 film “Drawing Restraint 9” and we are glad to confirm that Florian Mundhenke (Junior professor at KMW Leipzig) will give an introduction to Matthew Barney’s œuvre and some insights into the relation of his movies to other forms of art and to other art spaces than the cinema before the screening.

Drawing Restraint 9

(USA 2005, D: Matthew Barney, A: Björk, Matthew Barney, 135’, no dialogue, 35mm)

As in the CREMASTER CYCLE, director Matthew Barney also moves in spheres beyond the narratively graspable in his follow-up. Full of exuberant poetry, his pictures drift on surreal terrain and tell of whaling rituals, Japanese natural religions, of constructing a sculpture made of vaseline, and of the will that controls desire. As if that wasn’t already enough, Björk creates a brilliant score accompanying the pictures, fluctuating between Japanese sounds, children’s corals and electrical forging.

06 April 2014, 8pm – Schaubühne Lindenfels – € 6/5 (red.)

scope [out of frame]

Only seven days to go until GEGENkino starts. Time to announce the final item in our programme scope [out of frame] – a video exhibition featuring the following works:

In scope [out of frame], the entire ballroom of Schaubühne Lindenfels turns into the space behind the screen. Cinema has gone to pieces, been scattered around and recomposed with the help of a strange magnet – to a scenery of screens, projectors and sound relocating bodies in the sphere of film.

05 April, 6 pm – 11 pm

06 and 07 April, 7 pm – 11 pm

fee: € 5/4 (red.) (plus “Baufuffziger”)

free entrance at the opening on 05 April

By the way, some of you might have already gotten their hands on one of our programme guides. Those who didn’t, can download it right here.

Moebius (KR 2013, Kim Ki-duk)

Yes yes, we know it’s quite a lot to ask of you to go to the movies ten days in a row. But hey, it might be your only chance to see Kim Ki-Duk’s most recent flick “Moebius” (in Germany for whatever reason also known as “Moebius, die Lust, das Messer”) on the big screen, because almost no cinema wanted to show it. So it’s on us to bring it to you:

Moebius

(KR 2013, D: Kim Ki-duk, A: Cho Jae-hyun, Seo Young-ju, Lee Eun-woo, 90’, no dialogue, BluRay)

Kim Ki-duk’s films have always been controversial. His latest – “Moebius” – was being shown in Venice last year, whereas according to regulations in South Korea, it is allowed to be screened in “special” cinemas only – cinemas that indeed do not exist. Without a doubt, the film is a dark challenge reminiscent of ancient tragedies: a father destroys his family – beset with feelings of guilt because of his son’s castration, he terminates an affair and makes a major sacrifice for him. Masterfully staged as pure showing without dialogue, a montage with rough sound editing, the images unfold to a painful, Freudian grotesque all about passion, guilt and violence.

10 April, 9pm – LuRu-Cinema at the Spinnerei – € 6/5 (red.)