GEGENkino is getting underway and will kick off its 12th edition on September 10, 2026!
Once again, we remain true to our motto: GEGENkino is not against cinema, but in favor of a specific kind of cinema. Together with you and our international guests, we’ll explore various forms of unconventional and aesthetically transgressive cinema.
From September 10 to 20, we’ll be screening numerous feature-length and short films. We’ll also feature formats that expand the classic cinema experience, as well as critical discussions that examine individual works and the conditions under which films are created and distributed.
As always, we’ll be at UT Connewitz, the Luru-Kino in der Spinnerei, and the Schaubuehne Lindenfels—and this year we’ll also be on the road again with Milieu Kino in Leipzig.
More details on the program and its highlights coming soon.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
KOSMISCHE REISE (KOSMIČESKIJ REJS)
SU 1936, R: Wassili Schurawljow, D: Sergei Komarow, Xenija Moskalenko, Wassili Gaponenko 70′, OmeU, DCP
COSMIC JOURNEY by Vasily Shuravlyov is the last Soviet silent film and was made at a time when sound film had long since become the norm. The film depicts a fictional Moscow in 1946 as a city of the future: the space programme has advanced to such a technical level that a rocket can be launched into space. Professor Pavel Sedikh, who is to lead an expedition to the Moon, is regarded as too old and mentally unfit for the mission by his rival Professor Karin. Meanwhile, the first rocket tests go awry: the rabbit launched first is killed, and a cat vanishes without a trace. With the help of his assistant, Professor Marina, and the young Andryusha, Sedikh manages a successful launch, flight and landing on the Moon, during which the crew must contend with various problems: weightlessness, a lack of oxygen and insufficient body heat at sub-zero temperatures. Their mission turns into a rescue operation when Sedikh slips during a moonwalk, falls into a crevasse, becomes trapped under a boulder and slowly runs out of oxygen.
One of the film’s aesthetic features is its astonishingly realistic depiction of a journey to the Moon, long before such scenarios actually took place. Aided by the collaboration of the scientist and founder of modern cosmonautics, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the film depicts, with great aesthetic precision and remarkable foresight, the experimental laboratory, the enormous hangar, the spacecraft and its propulsion systems, as well as its interior and lighting, the space suits and the lunar surface. Soviet cosmonauts who saw the film 30 years later were impressed by the sets and the realism of the weightlessness scenes, which were animated using stop-motion techniques.
FM Einheit will be live scoring the film – in terms of avant-garde spirit and skilled craftsmanship, he could not be a better fit for the film. Whether as a drummer with the Hamburg punk bands ‘Abwärts’ and ‘Palais Schaumburg’, or hidden behind all kinds of metal percussion with ‘Einstürzende Neubauten’, whether as a solo artist or in numerous collaborations with Andreas Ammer and Ulrike Haage of the ‘Rainbirds’: this musical jack-of-all-trades has always been – and continues to be – on the lookout for uncharted territory, constantly challenging listeners’ expectations. He is active both in the realms of concert performance, as well as in theatre and the arts, and has long been internationally regarded as one of Germany’s most accomplished and renowned musicians.
The stage set-up consists of digital electronics, long metal springs suspended from the ceiling, sheets of metal, and a table full of bricks and crushed stone. FM Einheit will use this diverse and sometimes archaic apparatus in a physical live performance, belabouring it percussively with his hands, hammers, drills and other tools. He coaxes a range of noises from these industrial materials – from expansive sounds and rhythmic beats to ethereal tones – which, combined with the electronic composition, add a layer to the interstellar, utopian imagery on the screen that is constantly crackling, scratching and humming.
| Fri 11 September 2026 | UT Connewitz |
| 8 PM | VVK: € 15,50 (AK: € 20) |
PUNKU von J.D. Fernández Molero war eines unserer Highlights beim GEGENkino im September 2025, das wir euch Mitte Juni in Anwesenheit des Regisseurs noch einmal in voller Pracht (35 mm) im Luru Kino in der Spinnerei präsentieren.
PE/ES 2025, D: J.D. Fernández Molero, A: Marcelo Quino, Maritza Kategari, Ricardo Delgado, 132’, OV with english subtitles, 35mm
Quillabamba, Peru. A town in the south of the country, surrounded by the jungle of the Amazon rainforest and the high mountains of the Andes. Iván is found unconscious in the jungle with a serious eye injury and is taken to the nearest hospital by Meshia, a Matsigenka teenager. She takes care of him, gets a job in a bar and takes part in the beauty contest of “Miss Mermaid”. The film atmospherically tells the story of growing up in contemporary Peruvian society, which is characterised by lurking male gazes and violence, alcohol and a belief in supernatural powers. Formally flowing between analogue and digital, PUNKU navigates meditatively and surreally between myth, hallucinatory memory and identity.
| Fri 12 Juni 2026 | Luru Kino |
| 8 PM | € 7,50 (6,50 reduced) |
Trailer
DEMENTIA
US 1955, D: John Parker, 56‘, no dialogue, DCP
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413. A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA
US 1928, D: Robert Florey, Slavko Vorkapich, 13‘, silent, DCP
After our evenings with the experimental landscapes and puppet worlds of SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE and BLOOD TEA AND RED STRING, we at GEGENkino meets Kinoorgel are delighted to put your viewing and listening habits to the test for the third time. While previous Kinoorgel performances have combined contemporary cinema with time-honoured cultural practices from the silent film era, this time we are actually going back to the production period of the 1920s, then spanning the arc to the 1950s. Musically, we are also dealing with a ‘double feature’: organist Anja Kleinmichel will be joined by Lutz Eitel on electric guitar and samplers to live score John Parker’s DEMENTIA (1955) and Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapich’s THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413. A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA (1928).
An evening dedicated to American avant-garde and neo-avant-garde cinema, as well as nightmarish genre films: dimly lit alleys, cast shadows, dreamlike leaps in time and place, threatening cityscapes and landscapes of the soul that no longer convey a clear narrative, acting that, in its jerky and abrupt manner, leaves no pathos untouched and reaches directly out of the screen. In short: a world that seems to have fallen apart in form and content.
This is what connects both films of the evening, which are visibly influenced by European expressionism and surrealism of the 1910s and 1920s. The rarely shown THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413. A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA (1928) revolves around the world of Hollywood, more precisely around a man who seeks his fortune there as an actor but instead ends up as a nameless extra. A grotesque film essay that oscillates between satire and formal experimentation, it also anticipates the horrific worlds that director Robert Florey would create a little later in his adaptation of Poe’s MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932).
Also residing in the horror genre is DEMENTIA, a film composed without dialogue, which was initially banned in 1953 by the New York Film Board for being the ‘quintessence of gruesomeness’ due to its portrayal of female violence, which was perceived as sensationalist, which quickly fell into oblivion after its release. Such a protagonist was too much for the film market at the time: In the film, she wakes up at night and roams through Hollywood, haunted by the trauma of her past – another parallel to the previous film. But the present is also precarious. Shady men, figures straight out of the underworld, loiter on the streets and threaten her; the Hollywood Tribune reports a ‘mysterious stabbing’. She rides with a rich man in a limousine to his hotel room, where an éclat ensues. What fuels the heroine’s violent fantasies?
Incidentally, his only directing credit, John Parker stages DEMENTIA, which he also produced, like a nightmare, as a woodcut-like flow of images that seems to be heading towards a terrible finale. In the original, the music of avant-garde composer George Antheil provides a menacing soundtrack. We are very excited to see whether the performers Anja Kleinmichel and Lutz Eitel will follow suit, or whether they will take us on a completely different journey through horror noir Hollywood.
| Sun 17 April | Grassi Museum Musikinstrumentenmuseum der Universität Leipzig |
| 7:30 PM | Live Score by Anja Kleinmichel and Lutz Eitel Entry fee: 12€ (reduced: 10€) Tickets at tixforgigs |
US 2006, 71′, no dialogue, DCP
We are delighted to once again put viewing and listening habits to the test at GEGENkino meets Kinoorgel. After Scott Barley’s SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE, silent film organist Jürgen Kurz will again join us in the experiment – this time live scoring a film from 2006 live on the Welte organ – thus combining contemporary cinema with a venerable cultural practice associated with the silent film era up to the end of the 1920s.
This time we present: aristocratically dressed mice, friendly hybrid creatures that are a cross between ravens and bats, turtles pulling carriages, sunflowers and a monster spider with a human face, a frog healer figure, a raven with a skull, and intoxicating celebrations with blood tea and blank playing cards. That said, we are in the middle of the excsssive world of BLOOD TEA AND RED STRING, a surrealistic stop-motion fairy tale for adults, written, animated and produced over a period of 13 years by artist and director Christiane Cegavske. The film tells the story of a group of supercilious white mice who commission the forest creatures living under the oak tree to make a doll for them. The oak tree dwellers fall in love with the finished doll and refuse to give it up. The mice then kidnap the doll and the forest creatures travel after them to get it back.
Shot on 16mm film and rarely to be seen in Germany, BLOOD TEA AND RED STRING is something like a remarkably detailed, contemporary interpretation of Victorian children’s horror stories. The ominous fever dream of the plot goes beyond the conventional form of fairy tales with its mythological level: instead of an educational undertone, the characters relentlessly and now and then amorally pursue their needs. Recurring images and behaviours include substance abuse and intoxication, as well as obsessive, misguided needs for love. Aesthetic references of the film include the works of Jan Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers – other atmospheric kindred spirits include David Lynch and Edgar Allen Poe. Don’t miss the opportunity to experience this darkly sparkling film with a new soundtrack – we are very much looking forward to it!
| Sat 29 November | Grassi Museum Musikinstrumentenmuseum der Universität Leipzig |
| 7:30 PM | Live score by organist Jürgen Kurz Entry fee: 12€ (reduced: 10€) Tickets available at tixforgigs |
Trailer
