CA 2026, D: Avalon Fast, Jillian Frank, A: Avalon Fast, Jillian Frank, Ethan Hawksworth, 105′, English OV, DCP

Iris and Palmer are in their early 20s and best friends. Neither of them has ever left the small town where they were born. They work in the same restaurant, share a bed and a phone, and enjoy driving around whilst drinking. One day, they bump into Levi, who they know from the past, and start spending time with him and his cousin Phoenix. When Levi shares a dream with Iris he’s had, things start to change within the group.

DRINKING AND DRIVING depicts a summery portrait, full of aimlessness and sensual abandon, of the young working class in rural Canada. Its authentic feel for places and characters gives the sense of gaining an insight into private worlds – much like Larry Clark’s early films from the 90s, but from a decidedly female perspective.

Thu 10 September 2026	Luru Kino
9 PM	German Premiere € 7,50 (6,50 reduced)

Things are getting seriously pixelated at GEGENkino. We holed up in the libraries between Christmas and New Year, poring over academic volumes. That’s when Hito Steyerl’s 2009 essay “In Defense of the Poor Image” fell into our hands. In just a few pages, she pointedly describes the political, aesthetic, social, global and commercial conditions surrounding “poor images”, being reproduced, edited and exchanged, downloaded and consumed endlessly. And so, in this issue, we turn our attention to the impure and flawed visual worlds that can embody so much: budgetary constraints, zeitgeist, format fetish, an anti-attitude or conscious artistic decision.

In DRY LEAF, we immerse ourselves in the poetic visual fragments of Aleksandre Koberidze, who filmed in Georgia using a Sony Ericsson W595, and follow Kamal Aljafari and his companion into the undamaged Gaza of 2001. Alongside WITH HASAN IN GAZA, which was created from rediscovered MiniDV cassettes, we present the artistic reappropriation of stolen Palestinian archive material in A FIDAI FILM. With THE KARTLI KINGDOM, we return once more to Georgia, where people displaced from the Abkhazia region are fighting for their rights in a dilapidated former hospital. In IF PIGEONS TURNED TO GOLD, director Pepa Lubojacki uses her mobile phone to portray her alcoholic brother and cousin. The popular drug also plays a central role in the German premiere of DRINKING AND DRIVING, in which endearingly disoriented characters celebrate their summer in the Canadian hinterland. All these films share a specific awareness of form, materiality and the implications of “poor” images. Thematically linked to this is our most extraordinary German premiere: the live performance by VJ Emmy, who is travelling to Leipzig specially from the Ugandan capital Kampala to accompany the latest release from the low-budget production house Wakaliwood at UT Connewitz with his voice and his very own energy: look forward to EATEN ALIVE IN UGANDA by Nabwana I.G.G.! To round off this thematic focus, guest curator Norika Sefa has brought together her ideas in an exciting short film reel entitled ORDINARY ERRORS: EVERYTHING ABOUT YOURSELF.

And finally, MILIEU KINO from Vienna is back! After a year’s break, we can once again treat you to forgotten (trash) gems and entertaining children’s programmes inside the truck. You’re probably already wondering: “But don’t they do some kind of live scoring every year?” And you’re absolutely right! This time, the Soviet silent film COSMIC JOURNEY will be flickering across the screen at UT Connewitz, accompanied by the exceptional soundscapes of musician and sound artist FM Einheit (former Einstürzende Neubauten, amongst others). And what else? Also featuring: a film shoot in Brazil that goes completely off the rails; a mythical apocalyptic world full of children; light and shadow in southern Patagonia, Argentina; passionate literary discussions in Berlin; a Canadian-Tibetan kleptomaniac in Toronto; Europe’s largest military training area in Saxony-Anhalt; an endangered language in Vietnam; and utterly sickening acts of violence from Indonesia, all topped off with a generous load of spot-on humour. Voilà – you’re welcome.

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)

COSMIC VOYAGE (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)