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
US 1982, D: Stephen Sayadian, A: Andrew Nichols, Paul McGibboney, Michelle Bauer, 73′, OV with English subtitles, DCP
“Able to exist, to sense…to feel everything – but pleasure. In a world destroyed, a mutant universe, survivors break down to those who can and those who can’t. 99% are Sex Negatives. Call them ‘erotic casualties’. They want to make love, but the mere touch of another makes them violently ill. The rest, the lucky one percent, are Sex Positives, those whose libidos escaped unscathed. After the Nuclear Kiss, the Positives remain to love, to perform…And the others, well, we Negatives can only watch…can only come…to…CAFÉ FLESH…”
CAFÉ FLESH’s initial release as a hardcore film failed but the film was later rediscovered as a cult film on the midnight-movie circuit, breaking the house record at LA’s Nuart Theatre and replacing audience favourite PINK FLAMINGOS.
Restoration by Peter Blumenstock.
| Fri 04 Oct | UT Connewitz |
| 8 pm | Followed by a talk with Daniel Bird (author and curator) € 7 (6 reduced), together with DR. CALIGARI € 12 (10 reduced) |
US 1989, D: Stephen Sayadian, A: Madeleine Reynal, Fox Harris, Laura Albert, 80′, OV with English subtitles, DCP
As sexually deranged as it is stylistically unhinged, this psychedelic surrealist neo-noir reworking of the 1920 German expressionist classic features Laura Albert as Mrs Van Houten, a woman whose libido is dangerously out of control. With eye-popping set design from Stephen Sayadian, a luscious synth score courtesy of Mitchell Froom, not to mention acid-tongued dialogue written by Jerry Stahl, DR. CALIGARI drops a dirty bomb on Reagan era family values. Mining high art in bad taste, it parodies both mass media and pop culture through a roll call of staged citations and quotations as exquisitely framed as they are sexually charged.
| Fri 4. Oct | UT Connewitz |
| 10 pm | Followed by a talk with Daniel Bird (author and curator) € 7 (6 reduced), together with CAFÉ FLESH € 12 (10 reduced) |
Out with the horns!
Streamers!
Pop the corks!
Sip some champagne!
It’s GEGENkino’s special birthday!
10 years full of distinctive to offbeat cinema, daring film soundtracks, insightful conversations with you and our numerous guests, extravagant performances, parties, cigarettes and visual experiments beyond the classic screen. Well, if that’s not a reason for a slap on the back?! Well, perhaps very briefly. So it has been 10 years with us and the festival – a rose wedding, so to speak. A small milestone. Our relationship, however, is not centred around a homey twosome, but rather we are a network of (not so) many people who think about and work on GEGENkino almost all year round. THANK YOU to everyone who has been involved in any way so far – sponsors, venues, people, audience – we are delighted that we exist!
So. Now for the anniversary edition. This year, too, we are celebrating GEGENconceptions with relish. For example, the mangy punk poets from PISSE are live scoring the visionary 70s gay erotica classic BIJOU especially for us. In keeping with this, our series BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN takes a look at female-influenced US genre and exploitation cinema from the 1960s to the 1980s, with works by Roberta Findlay, Doris Wishman and Stephanie Rothman flickering across the screen. Besides, we will be focussing on the multifaceted work of German filmmaker and cinematopraher Rainer Komers in PLACES, WORDS, RHYTHMS and will be devoting an evening to the impressive film experiments of Peruvian-French artist Rose Lowder. Both will be guests in Leipzig to present their films in person. As always, we try to show the historical works as analogue copies in 16 or 35mm whenever possible. Our carte blanche to the feminist Kinothek Asta Nielsen, based in Frankfurt am Main, offers another analogue filmstrip treat. Lou Deinhart will present a short film reel specially compiled for us. With the programme OUR SCREENS, we are jumping into the digital age, interested in the interactions between film and computer game worlds: in addition to a short film programme curated by us, we will be showing the animated documentary KNIT’S ISLAND.
As always, we flank our programmes with unconventional gems from the current international festival scene. Gathered around the anniversary cake are an overworked Romanian content producer, a Tehran drug taxi courier, a queer-feminist prison musical from Argentina, a charismatic murderous Austrian billionaire, the often decelerated everyday life of left-wing struggles, a jazz musician bidding farewell to Addis Adeba, a snotty women’s clique in Sardinia, a hibernating humanity, a father-son relationship between Leipzig and Aleppo and a Brazilian re-education guru. What? That is not enough? Then off to Milieu Kino stationed in Rabet park! Just like last year, we are hosting the converted cinema truck from Vienna and projecting a selection of cartoons for the little ones and subculture classics alongside sexy camp flicks for the older ones. If that is still not enough for you, an erotic double feature awaits you shortly after the festival.
Because: after GEGENkino is before GEGENkino. The underground never sleeps. Even if, at the tender age of 10, we are not allowed to see our own programme ourselves and can only furtively press our noses against the advertising windows of UT Connewitz or try to catch fleeting glimpses of light through a gap in the cinema truck with reddened cheeks: We’re up for it. Come on people, celebrate with us!
ES 2024, D: Anna Cornudella, A: Clara Muck Dietrich, Demetrius Hollimon, Jane Hubbell, 90′, English OV, DCP
“To speculate” comes from the Latin word speculari, which means to catch sight, scout, observe or watch furtively. In THE HUMAN HIBERNATION, media artist Anna Cornudella uses a speculative research project as a basis to create a memorable world full of deformed social behaviour. The eponymous hibernation brings humans closer to the animal kingdom, changing habits, biology and belief systems. With its subtle, ambiguous narrative, the film invites us to think about ideas further, but also to let its images and sounds affect us in an immediate way. The fall from the crown of creation harbours the unknown. Let’s watch it.
| Sun 8. Sept | Schaubühne Lindenfels |
| 5 pm | € 7 (6 reduced) |
