LIVE SCORE
UdSSR 1969, D: Sergei Paradschanow , A: Wilen Galustjan, Sofiko Tschiaureli, Spartak Bagaschwili, without dialogue/silent projection, DCP
The starting point for tonight’s live scoring is newly scanned 35mm material: outtakes, variations and screen tests from the shooting of Sergei Parajanov’s THE COLOUR OF POMEGRANATES (1969), also known as SAYAT NOVA. Incredibly, contrary to the instructions of Soviet officials at the time, the outtakes were not destroyed. More than 45 years after the film’s release, film historian Daniel Bird organized the scanning of this unknown material, totalling over six hours.
Originally conceived as a film poem about the poet and bard, also known as Ashugh, Arutin Sayadyan (1712 –1795), the film tells the story of his life. Beginning with his childhood, through his time in the monastery and his first love, going on to his death, the film focuses on decisive moments in Sayat Nova’s life. The fifteen film miniatures shown are based on biographical material about the poet and on Parajanov’s poetic imagination. Each miniature consists of textures – Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani architecture, landscapes and objects – that reveal the authenticity of the 18th century.
Using the original film music by Tigran Mansurian and Yuri Sayadian, Elvin Brandhi will highlight the musical legacy of SAYAT NOVA and reinterpret the performance of an ashugh, or singer-poet-bard, at the intersection of analogue and digital media at the beginning of the 21st century. Behind the pseudonym Elvin Brandhi is sound artist, singer and producer Freya Edmondes. Her sound compositions consist of field recordings, found tape and vinyl recordings, self-recorded instrumentals, glitches and her looped and manipulated voice, which is capable of producing a complete orchestra of affective sounds.
| Fr 12 Sept 2025 | UT Connewitz |
| 8 PM | € 20 (15 reduced) With an introduction by Daniel Bird |
FR/IL/CY/DE 2025, D: Nadav Lapid, A: Ariel Bronz, Efrat Dor, Naama Preis, Alexey Serebryakov, 149’, OV with English subtitles, DCP
Y., a musician, and Jasmine, a dancer, live the life of young parents in Tel Aviv. Shaken by the 7th of October, they operate between half-baked suppression, everyday life with a child and an escapist permanent party mode. They say Yes to a world of money, champagne and exaggerated nationalism. When a Russian super oligarch commissions Y. to write a new national anthem for Israel, he travels with his old love Leah to the Gaza border, where the bombs and bulldozers are raging, and ends up delivering the sounds – and words – for a cynical revenge song. Children’s choir included. A grotesque parable about the pleasurable affirmation of bootlicking. It involves dancing, singing and doing coke; vomiting, suffering, stoning and loving. An emphatic YES! With all its contradictions.
| Thu 11 Sept 2025 | Luru Kino in der Spinnerei |
| 9 PM | € 7,50 (6,50 reduced) |
Opening Film
HK/US/CH 2025, D: Jun Li, A: Jayden Cheung, Erfan Shekarriz, Sebastian Mahito Soukup, 87’, OV with English subtitles, DCP
“Do you do this often?” – “Not everyone is into it. Thanks for being so open minded.” Fetishes are negotiated. Snippets of dialogue from a gay sex date, many of which our protagonist experiences. The nameless person dates his way from lover to lover, for instance meeting a migrant worker from Thailand who is unable to return to his home country or a British-Taiwanese couple trying to fit into unfamiliar cultures. With each new encounter, he observes the living spaces of his partners and takes on parts of their identities in the following dates. A way of coming to terms with one’s own self, characterised by fleeting intimacy, alienation and imposture. Along these non-binding encounters and with a high degree of realism, QUEERPANORAMA unfolds a multi-layered portrait of Hong Kong, its multicultural hook-up scene and our very charming drifter.
| Thu 11 Sept 2025 | Luru Kino in der Spinnerei |
| 7 PM | € 7,50 (6,50 reduced) |
Trailer
Das GEGENkino geht weiter – vom 11. bis 21. September im UT Connewitz, im Luru Kino und in der Schaubühne Lindenfels. Unser Poster ist wieder von @ricaletto86 mit Typografie und Layout von @alex.brade_spam.service.24 gestaltet und von @hanneshirche bei Rainbow Posters gedruckt worden.
Wir freuen uns auf unsere 11. Ausgabe und stellen euch bald das volle Programm mit etwa 30 Lang- und 50 Kurzfilmen vor. Gemeinsam mit euch und internationalen Gästen widmen wir uns unterschiedlichen Spielarten des unkonventionellen und ästhetisch-querstrebenden Kinos.
Derweil läuft unser Crowdfunding, damit alles wie geplant stattfinden kann – und ihr zum ikonischen GEGENkino-Merch kommt.
UK 2017, D: Scott Barley, 90′, no dialogue, DCP
We are delighted to continue the cooperation between GEGENkino and the Musical Instrument Museum of GRASSI Museum, which began in 2023 with the soundtrack to BEGOTTEN (1989), and to once again put viewing and listening habits to the test at GEGENkino meets Kinoorgel: Silent film organist Jürgen Kurz will join us in the experiment of live scoring a film from 2017 on the Welte organ – thus combining contemporary filmmaking with a venerable cultural practice associated with the silent film era up to the end of the 1920s.
SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE is the title of Scott Barley’s award-winning British experimental film – and it is as ambiguous and other-worldly as the visual world of the film itself. It stands for a dreamlike, hypnotic, not least unusually decelerated cinema experience. In his first feature-length film, Barley shows us a world immersed in deep shades and sublime lighting moods. A world in which there are no people and only a few animals to be seen in front of the camera. It is a cosmos without words, without comments. During SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE, the audience is completely thrown back onto themselves and their own inner perception of nature impressions. Forests move eerily in the wind or are consumed by flames. Lightning flashes through the night sky and is reflected in water surfaces rhythmically set in motion by raindrops. Other natural formations are so shrouded in shadow and mist that they only gradually reveal themselves as grottos and forest clearings. Time is the topic of the film, if there is a topic: The trance-like stasis of the images brings us closer to the real passing of time, it confronts us with our inner sense of time. How much time has already passed? How long will it take for the sun to set behind the mountains?
What appears like a moving, strictly composed romantic painting and therefore “anachronistic” is nothing less than a technical marvel in terms of production: Barley shot the images for his film entirely on an iPhone 6 – now, the powerful soundscapes of an instrument from 1931 are added. Like us, the filmmaker is thrilled by this unorthodox pairing. We hope you are too!
| Sat 05 Apr | Grassi Museum Musikinstrumentenmuseum der Universität Leipzig |
| 7:30 PM | Live score by silent film organist Jürgen Kurz Tickets available at tixforgigs |
TRAILER
