05-15.9.24 | GEGENkino #10

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!