DE 2023, D: Khaled Abdulwahed, 64’, Arabic & German OV with English & German subtitles, DCP
Born in Homs (Syria), the artist, photographer and filmmaker Khaled Abdulwahed has been living Leipzig since 2015. BACKGROUND is the endeavour to reconstruct parts of his father Sadallah’s biography, which is complicated by him having to persevere in Aleppo – despite numerous efforts to bring him to Germany. Parts of Sadallah’s past are closely connected to Leipzig, Merseburg and other cities of the region: In the middle of the 1950s, he came to the GDR as an exchange student. Among other things, language courses, his engineering studies and travels, for instance to the USSR, followed.
What has remained from it? Which experiences have been memorised by Sadallah? Has he left behind traces in photographs and institutional archives? A very personal archive work arises from these questions – covering two generations and ranging across two continents.
| Sun 8. Sept | Schaubühne Lindenfels |
| 7 pm | In the presence of Khaled Abdulwahed € 7 (6 ermäßigt) |
AT 2024, D: Daniel Hoesl, Julia Niemann, A: Laurence Rupp, Ursina Lardi, Olivia Goschler, 86′, OV with English subtitles, DCP
Veni, vidi, vici – I came, I saw and I conquered – Julius Caesar’s laconic statement sums up the hero’s hubris: Amon Maynard is an investor with excellent political connections who is flattening a nature reserve for his new mega-project and dispatching his mentor. Together with his wife and children, Maynard indulges in a luxurious life in his mansion full of polo matches and hunting. Carrying out the latter, he is not after animals… All the clues lead to him, and yet few are willing to resist the bon vivant. Those who do are either ridiculed or swallowed up by the elite circle of money, power and corruption, despite laws and journalistic evidence. A bitterly vicious satire that has truly no shortage of role models in Austria’s political circus, with its short Sebastians and Ibiza videos.
| Sa 7. Sept | Schaubühne Lindenfels |
| 10 pm | € 7 (6 reduced) |
Topic | OUR SCREENS
MY OWN LANDSCAPES
FR 2020, D: Antoine Chapon, 18’, Engl. OV with Engl. subtitles, DCP
Like a virtual re-enactment, in MY OWN LANDSCAPES a former designer for military video games comes to terms with his own traumatic experiences as a soldier after returning from the war. As a coping strategy, he uses the very thing that helped him sign a contract with the army: video games.
SHE FALLS FOR AGES
CA 2017, D: Skawennati, 21’, Engl. OV with Engl. subtitles, File
Kahnawakeronon multimedia artist Skawennati is the creator of the machinima SHE FALLS FOR AGES, which tells the story of the creation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) in the game setting of the Second Life metaverse. There, we meet a young mother with her growing twin children, who possess magical powers. Before our eyes, the story of Sky Woman and her fall into a new world unfolds. Ancient, indigenous knowledge meets science fiction in the game engine. A deep past is linked to a distant future.
PARALLEL I
DE 2012, D: Harun Farocki, 15’, Engl. OV, File
PARALLEL I is the first part of the essay cycle of a short history of computer graphics. We leaf through the virtual history book On the Creation of the First Trees and Clouds and, in Farockian style, are taken on a calm and analytically poetic split-screen journey and introduced to the inherent rules of computer-animated worlds as they have existed since the 1980s.
BACKFLIP
DE 2022, D: Nikita Diakur, 12’, Engl. OV with German subtitles, DCP
Nikita Diakur wants to learn how to do a backflip. After painful failed attempts, he now trains his avatar and its artificial intelligence in the virtual world. In keeping with the legacy of machinimas, BACKFLIP shows live footage of the incessant training attempts, based on machine learning methods from the “Deep Mimic” research project. Between the desire for control, progress and success lies both the fear and the humour of learning from mistakes and having to live with them.
In the presence of Nikita Diakur
HARDLY WORKING
AT 2022, D: Total Refusal, 20’, Engl. OV with German subtitles, DCP
Appropriation, exposure and rededication of a political apparatus. In their media art works, the pseudo-Marxist guerrilla collective Total Refusal work on the mainstream video games of our time. They create new perspectives based on ethnographic observations and capitalist categorisations in video games, as we experience it in the machinima HARDLY WORKING. There, NPCs (non-playable characters) – a laundress, a groom, a street sweeper and a craftsman – are placed at the centre of the film and based on their behaviour, reflections on work and existence are stirred up.
THE SUNSET SPECIAL 2
DE 2024, D: Nicolas Gebbe, 19’, Engl. OV with German subtitles, DCP
In the experimental mixed-digital media cacophony THE SUNSET SPECIAL 2, we follow hollow templates of human designs in search of their wholesome family happiness on an exclusive luxury cruise. Hyperreal, glossy interiors are followed by a storm of pixels, while the same Instagram posts and stock photos glide through the picture. The video game fever dream slipping off into psychedelia becomes a celebration of mistakes and disturbances that clash with established norms, superficialities and privileges.
| Sa 7. Sept | Schaubühne Lindenfels |
| 19:00 Uhr | In Anwesenheit von Nikita Diakur € 7 (6 reduced) |
Topic | OUR SCREENS
Video game worlds in film
Somewhere behind the screens lies a land, an island, an illusion. Its inhabitants are gamers, avatars, survivors, armed people. In OUR SCREENS, we are showing a two-day compilation of a short film programme and a feature-length film that take video game worlds as a starting and pivotal point and deconstruct them in order to create new chamber plays for film scenarios. With our selection of films, we want to sound out the points where gameplay and film art overlap, where they fertilise, decompose or repel each other.
In a short film programme, we are bringing together six films from the years 2012-2024, which – inspired by the diversity of video game technology – show a spectrum ranging from media art experiments to essay films and machinimas. The genre term machinima is a portmanteau of “machine” and “cinema”. It is a film technique in which real-time recordings in video games are used as material for film productions. Machinimas originated in the 1990s and still function today as an inexhaustible playground for reflecting on and exploring the digital worlds into which we are constantly advancing. The feature-length film KNIT’S ISLAND from 2023 follows the principle of machinima. In the in-game documentary, we see the long-term observation of a trio of filmmakers in the online survival game DayZ. As avatars themselves, they hold conversations with gamers and try to get to the people behind the game characters.
Filmmakers help themselves to the virtual bouquet of possibilities that they find in video game worlds and take on new roles in the process. They shoot films during the gameplay, are part of the gameplay or turn us into participants in the gameplay. They draw on the resources of the games industry, which are available to them as found footage, toolbox and material pit. In their new cinematic creations, they deconstruct open worlds, upcycle storylines and create new film protagonists. They grab bugs and ride on glitches. The first-person shooter appears as a POV shot. Avatars are simulated anew in virtual puppetry and seem to come into being and break up again at the moment the camera, the screen recording, is running and we see the film. In this way, the filmmakers build and test digital models of the future from current desires, fantasies and fears of our society. Acting out video games. Restaging virtuality.
| 7.09.24 Schaubühne Lindenfels | |
| 7 pm | MY OWN LANDSCAPES FR 2020, D: Antoine Chapon, 18’, English OV with engl. subtitles, DCP SHE FALLS FOR AGES CA 2017, D: Skawennati, 21’, English OV with engl. subtitles, File PARALLEL I DE 2012, D: Harun Farocki, 15’, English OV, File BACKFLIP DE 2022, D: Nikita Diakur, 12’, English OV with German subtitles, DCP In the presence of Nikita Diakur HARDLY WORKING AT 2022, D: Total Refusal, 20’, English OV with German subtitles, DCP THE SUNSET SPECIAL 2 DE 2024, D: Nicolas Gebbe, 19’, English OV with German subtitles, DCP |
| 8.09.24 Schaubühne Lindenfels | |
| 9 pm | KNIT’S ISLAND FR 2023, D: Guilhem Causse, Ekiem Barbier, Quentin L’Helgoualc’h, 95’, English OV with German subtitles, DCP |
Retrospective | BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN
US 1965, D: Doris Wishman, A: Gigi Darlene, Charles E. Mazin, Sam Stewart, 65’, English OV, DCP
“I go to New York – I’ll get lost in the crowds there.” After Meg Kelton kills her rapist inside her apartment building in self-defence, she flees to New York with a new identity and without telling her husband. It is only a brief respite, however, because the metropolis also is full of men who are up to no good with her. Doris Wishman’s BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL is an early example of US low-budget exploitation cinema, which on the one hand “exploits” its erotic and violent spectacle values and on the other criticises a patriarchal society in which women face constant threats.
| Fri 6 Sept | UT Connewitz |
| 10 pm | € 7 (6 reduced) |
