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) |
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) |
NL/TR 2018, R/D: Gürcan Keltek, Dok/Doc 35’, OmeU/OV with English subtitles, DCP
Gulyabani. A creature with supernatural abilities in Turkish mythology. A Djinn. A Ghoul. A little girl from Izmir is taken for it. She can see dead people. And cold hearts. Locked up by her own family, she is misused as a fortuneteller, medium and talisman. After the 1980 coup, fascist paramilitaries abduct her for similar intentions and retain her in a mine. Following his lyrical documentary work METEORS, filmmaker Gürcan Keltek starts another both acoustically and visually intriguing journey based on diaries and reports of a relative. In it, biography and history, superstition and state terror, the cosmic and the earthly are associatively blended. Lucid periods and dark terrains take turns. Abruptly, we enter the world of ghosts, get lost in fleeting memory pictures which have lain in silver for too long, faded by deprivation of light, having become porous by countless years of life, covered with stories and scarred by mental wounds.
Thu 11. April 8 PM – UT Connewitz – € 6,5 (5,5 red.)
Trailer
CL 2018, D: Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña, 75’, OmdU/OV with German subtitles, DCP
Colonia Dignidad, presented by an image film. In a sweetish voice, the “sheperd” narrator tells of life in the community formed by German emigrants, dispels some unpleasant rumours and also mentions Maria. Maria was able to flee with two little pigs alongside her. In the woods, she finds a house to hide herself and her companions from the claws of the wolf. It is rattling, creaking and cracking, inside and outside. The Chilean puppet and animation artists’ first full-length feature portrays a traumatised young woman’s ever-changing world. Paint streams across the walls, forming faces. The bodies made of papier-mâché melt and regenerate. Everything is crumbling, shaking, moaning and staring. THE WOLF HOUSE is based on a series of exhibitions, inviting the visitors to participate in the formation process. Meticulous detail work in Europa and South America brought the stop-motion arrangements to life. Uniting the widespread paintings and virtuous sculptural art with sounds, voices, and folk songs, the cinematic outcome forms both an intense and touching nightmare as well as a political parable on Augusto Pinochets’ frightening reign.
11 April, 8 pm – UT Connewitz – € 6,5 (5,5 red.)
Trailer
FRG 1971, D: Ula Stöckl, Edgar Reitz, A: Kristine de Loup, Bruno Bendel, Alf Brustellin, 22 episodes, total length: 220′, OV with English subtitles, digital
The dumpster kid – in Viennese snide humour the expression for afterbirth and the throw-outs and rejects of civilisation – grows up in a garbage can and is now to be integrated into civil society. At least this is the plan, whose failing is told in 22 episodes. The dumpster kid is frivolous, hedonistic, dirty and far to curious, it fucks, seduces and signalises this danger for the well-ordered surroundings already in its appearance: red shoes, red socks and a red dress. The dumpster kid goes to school and to church, it travels through time and leaves reality behind, meets Al Capone, transforms into a vampire and burns at the stake. But even the thousands of deaths it is threatened with will not ensure its readiness to assimilate.
It is only tonight that Pracht becomes a cinema pub, the dumpster kid cinema. Guests can choose single episodes from the menu card.
11 April, 10:30 pm – Pracht (Wurzener Straße 17, 04315) – Free entrance
