Hommge | Pictures Behind the Pictures – Hito Steyerl
Introduction by Florian Mundhenke (Junior Professor of Media Hybrids, University of Leipzig)
After having a programme with films by Harun Farocki last year, this year our festival will pay an homage to filmmaker Hito Steyerl.
Pictures Behind the Pictures – Hito Steyerl
“In a time when the connection of pictures and things has become dubious, documentary work is under general suspicion.” Hito Steyerl herself has established this suspicion and pursues it in her essayistic works. Pictures that have been ideologically deformed are of equal interest to her to those that circulate globally or have been lost completely.
Based on Steyerl’s friendship to Andrea Wolf (alias Sehît Rohanî), November and Abstract investigate a political commitment that initially finds its expression in feminist martial-arts-flicks shot together on super8 film. Wolf later continued her struggle for the PKK and was talked up as revolutionary and martyr. Lovely Andrea depicts Steyerl’s quest for a bondage photo actually taken in 1987 in Tokyo—the photo features herself as a “bottom” practising nawa shibari. In cycles of themes and history, Free Fall interweaves the history of technology with insane recursions. With Howard Hughes’ hells-angels-aerial-war-action-film-stunts in 1929, the year of the crash, life and love cycles start: from Hughes’ Airline TWA that sells its Boeing models to the Israeli air force, via their deployment in the freeing of hostages in Entebbe 1976, continuing to feature film versions of this action, eventually up to the afterlife of the jets being museum air force cinemas or stunt sets.
November (2004, 25’) (engl. OV)
Lovely Andrea (2007, 29’) (jap. OmeU)
In Free Fall (2010, 32’) (dt./engl. OmeU)
19 April, 8 pm – Luru-cinema at the Spinnerei – € 6/5 (red.)
