Topic | OUR SCREENS
MY OWN LANDSCAPES
FR 2020, D: Antoine Chapon, 18’, Engl. OV with Engl. subtitles, DCP
Like a virtual re-enactment, in MY OWN LANDSCAPES a former designer for military video games comes to terms with his own traumatic experiences as a soldier after returning from the war. As a coping strategy, he uses the very thing that helped him sign a contract with the army: video games.
SHE FALLS FOR AGES
CA 2017, D: Skawennati, 21’, Engl. OV with Engl. subtitles, File
Kahnawakeronon multimedia artist Skawennati is the creator of the machinima SHE FALLS FOR AGES, which tells the story of the creation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) in the game setting of the Second Life metaverse. There, we meet a young mother with her growing twin children, who possess magical powers. Before our eyes, the story of Sky Woman and her fall into a new world unfolds. Ancient, indigenous knowledge meets science fiction in the game engine. A deep past is linked to a distant future.
PARALLEL I
DE 2012, D: Harun Farocki, 15’, Engl. OV, File
PARALLEL I is the first part of the essay cycle of a short history of computer graphics. We leaf through the virtual history book On the Creation of the First Trees and Clouds and, in Farockian style, are taken on a calm and analytically poetic split-screen journey and introduced to the inherent rules of computer-animated worlds as they have existed since the 1980s.
BACKFLIP
DE 2022, D: Nikita Diakur, 12’, Engl. OV with German subtitles, DCP
Nikita Diakur wants to learn how to do a backflip. After painful failed attempts, he now trains his avatar and its artificial intelligence in the virtual world. In keeping with the legacy of machinimas, BACKFLIP shows live footage of the incessant training attempts, based on machine learning methods from the “Deep Mimic” research project. Between the desire for control, progress and success lies both the fear and the humour of learning from mistakes and having to live with them.
In the presence of Nikita Diakur
HARDLY WORKING
AT 2022, D: Total Refusal, 20’, Engl. OV with German subtitles, DCP
Appropriation, exposure and rededication of a political apparatus. In their media art works, the pseudo-Marxist guerrilla collective Total Refusal work on the mainstream video games of our time. They create new perspectives based on ethnographic observations and capitalist categorisations in video games, as we experience it in the machinima HARDLY WORKING. There, NPCs (non-playable characters) – a laundress, a groom, a street sweeper and a craftsman – are placed at the centre of the film and based on their behaviour, reflections on work and existence are stirred up.
THE SUNSET SPECIAL 2
DE 2024, D: Nicolas Gebbe, 19’, Engl. OV with German subtitles, DCP
In the experimental mixed-digital media cacophony THE SUNSET SPECIAL 2, we follow hollow templates of human designs in search of their wholesome family happiness on an exclusive luxury cruise. Hyperreal, glossy interiors are followed by a storm of pixels, while the same Instagram posts and stock photos glide through the picture. The video game fever dream slipping off into psychedelia becomes a celebration of mistakes and disturbances that clash with established norms, superficialities and privileges.
| Sa 7. Sept | Schaubühne Lindenfels |
| 19:00 Uhr | In Anwesenheit von Nikita Diakur € 7 (6 reduced) |
Topic | OUR SCREENS
Video game worlds in film
Somewhere behind the screens lies a land, an island, an illusion. Its inhabitants are gamers, avatars, survivors, armed people. In OUR SCREENS, we are showing a two-day compilation of a short film programme and a feature-length film that take video game worlds as a starting and pivotal point and deconstruct them in order to create new chamber plays for film scenarios. With our selection of films, we want to sound out the points where gameplay and film art overlap, where they fertilise, decompose or repel each other.
In a short film programme, we are bringing together six films from the years 2012-2024, which – inspired by the diversity of video game technology – show a spectrum ranging from media art experiments to essay films and machinimas. The genre term machinima is a portmanteau of “machine” and “cinema”. It is a film technique in which real-time recordings in video games are used as material for film productions. Machinimas originated in the 1990s and still function today as an inexhaustible playground for reflecting on and exploring the digital worlds into which we are constantly advancing. The feature-length film KNIT’S ISLAND from 2023 follows the principle of machinima. In the in-game documentary, we see the long-term observation of a trio of filmmakers in the online survival game DayZ. As avatars themselves, they hold conversations with gamers and try to get to the people behind the game characters.
Filmmakers help themselves to the virtual bouquet of possibilities that they find in video game worlds and take on new roles in the process. They shoot films during the gameplay, are part of the gameplay or turn us into participants in the gameplay. They draw on the resources of the games industry, which are available to them as found footage, toolbox and material pit. In their new cinematic creations, they deconstruct open worlds, upcycle storylines and create new film protagonists. They grab bugs and ride on glitches. The first-person shooter appears as a POV shot. Avatars are simulated anew in virtual puppetry and seem to come into being and break up again at the moment the camera, the screen recording, is running and we see the film. In this way, the filmmakers build and test digital models of the future from current desires, fantasies and fears of our society. Acting out video games. Restaging virtuality.
| 7.09.24 Schaubühne Lindenfels | |
| 7 pm | MY OWN LANDSCAPES FR 2020, D: Antoine Chapon, 18’, English OV with engl. subtitles, DCP SHE FALLS FOR AGES CA 2017, D: Skawennati, 21’, English OV with engl. subtitles, File PARALLEL I DE 2012, D: Harun Farocki, 15’, English OV, File BACKFLIP DE 2022, D: Nikita Diakur, 12’, English OV with German subtitles, DCP In the presence of Nikita Diakur HARDLY WORKING AT 2022, D: Total Refusal, 20’, English OV with German subtitles, DCP THE SUNSET SPECIAL 2 DE 2024, D: Nicolas Gebbe, 19’, English OV with German subtitles, DCP |
| 8.09.24 Schaubühne Lindenfels | |
| 9 pm | KNIT’S ISLAND FR 2023, D: Guilhem Causse, Ekiem Barbier, Quentin L’Helgoualc’h, 95’, English OV with German subtitles, DCP |
Retrospective | BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN
US 1965, D: Doris Wishman, A: Gigi Darlene, Charles E. Mazin, Sam Stewart, 65’, English OV, DCP
“I go to New York – I’ll get lost in the crowds there.” After Meg Kelton kills her rapist inside her apartment building in self-defence, she flees to New York with a new identity and without telling her husband. It is only a brief respite, however, because the metropolis also is full of men who are up to no good with her. Doris Wishman’s BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL is an early example of US low-budget exploitation cinema, which on the one hand “exploits” its erotic and violent spectacle values and on the other criticises a patriarchal society in which women face constant threats.
| Fri 6 Sept | UT Connewitz |
| 10 pm | € 7 (6 reduced) |
Retrospective | BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN
US 1985, D: Roberta Findlay, A: Enrique Sandino, Joe Lynn, Martha De La Cruz, 94’, English OV, DCP
Like BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL, TENEMENT is a New York film, but Findlay’s film completely lacks Wishman’s touristy look. Here, the city resembles a post-apocalyptic wasteland: in the run-down South Bronx, there is a raid on a brick apartment block, the titular “Tenement”. The street gang arrested in the raid will return, reclaim their territory and take revenge on the tenement community… TENEMENT is fierce exploitation cinema in which faith in the good in people flares up here and there, but is mostly suffocated by pessimism and nihilism. Dehumanisation and segregation prevail, and a society beyond the tenement is barely perceptible.
| Fri 6 Sept | UT Connewitz |
| 8 pm | With an introduction to the series by Tilman Schumacher (GEGENkino) € 7 (6 reduced) |
Retrospective | BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN
BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN
The US-American exploitation cinema of Roberta Findlay, Doris Wishman and Stephanie Rothman
Genre cinema of the last about 120 years has been a male domain. It is only in recent decades that action, horror and erotic flicks in particular have been increasingly told and transformed from a female perspective – think of Kathryn Bigelow’s kinetic blockbuster cinema, Anna Biller’s lovingly decorated neo-exploitation pastiche or Catherine Breillat’s radical feminist eroticism.
However, in the exuberant US genre film industry from the 1960s onwards, there were already several female filmmakers who dedicated themselves to escalating genre cinema of exploitative provenance and now have a broad fan base. BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN would like to introduce three of them: Roberta Findlay (*1943), Doris Wishman (1912-2002) and Stephanie Rothman (*1936).
Film historiography is still in the early stages of acknowledging the work of these three filmmakers. GEGENkino, which always seeks to understand the present by looking at the past, presents a selection of six films in the spirit of this incipient reassessment, showing that genre cinema is not just genre cinema, and that the female perspective is not just the female perspective. At the same time, we cover a broad spectrum: from sun-drenched sex comedies to prison movie thrillers and home invasion roughness to an absolute “core competence” of grindhouse cinema along New York’s 42nd Street: the dream and nightmare worlds of naked bodies.
What all three have in common is the unconditional commercial orientation of their oeuvres while at the same time endeavouring to maintain their own signature within the industry. The budgets of Findlay, Wishman and Rothman are sometimes noticeably different: Doris Wishman, the great self-made filmmaker among the exploitation directors presented, often shot with micro-budgets, without a production sound and – particularly exciting as far as bizarre – without predetermined stories: a cinema of gestures and exaggerations, opulent atmospheres and unconditional commitment to its heroines. This is represented in our show by her best-known film BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL (US 1965), which was so influential for the feminist-turned-sexploitation genre, but also by the pulp fiction of the agent film sleaze of DOUBLE AGENT 73 (US 1974).
Within precarious B-movie production contexts, the films of Findlay and Rothman were somewhat better off financially. Rothman, the only trained filmmaker of the trio presented here (she went through the genre school of the recently deceased Roger Corman!), deliberately took on male-dominated genres riddled with sexism such as the libertarian sex comedy THE WORKING GIRLS (US 1974) or the muscle-bound prison action flick TERMINAL ISLAND (US 1973) in her sensitive ensemble films from the late 1960s onwards. Findlay’s film cosmos is similar: A WOMAN’S TORMENT (US 1977) uses extreme images – hardcore pornography meets horror motifs! – to tell of toxic gender relations and female self-empowerment. TENEMENT (US 1985), the most recent film in our small selection, is – despite the harshness of its “post-apocalyptic” setting – a utopian and hopeful film in the sense that the contradictions of gender, class and ethnicity in a house community seem to be briefly overcome facing of an external threat.
The worlds of motifs outlined above perhaps already hint at this: Exploitation cinema is a cinema of ambivalence. For what it critically draws attention to is at the same time – and not infrequently shamelessly – “converted” into cinematic show value. That such a cinema of calculated impositions, even if not always “valuable”, should have a firm place in film history: this is what this series stands for. Last but not least, Findlay, Wishman and Rothman have contributed to an alternative cinema in the USA. Quite often, it combines a female gaze and a diagnosis of the present with pleasurable enfant terrible vibes: a defiant “Bad Girls go to Heaven”, in a variation on the title of one of the films in our series.
| 06.09.24 UT Connewitz | |
| 8 pm | TENEMENT US 1985, D: Roberta Findlay, A: Enrique Sandino, Joe Lynn, Martha De La Cruz, 94’, English OV, DCP With an introduction to the series by Tilman Schumacher (GEGENkino) |
| 10 pm | BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL US 1965, D: Doris Wishman, A: Gigi Darlene, Charles E. Mazin, Sam Stewart, 65’, English OV, DCP |
| 10.09.24 Luru Kino | |
| 7 pm | A WOMAN’S TORMENT US 1977, D: Roberta Findlay, A: Tara Chung, Jennifer Jordan, Jake Teague, 84’, English OV, DCP With a video interview between André Malberg (film collector and historian) & Roberta Findlay |
| 9 pm | THE WORKING GIRLS US 1974, D: Stephanie Rothman, A: Sarah Kennedy, Laurie Rose, Cassandra Peterson, 80’, English OV, DCP |
| 14.09.24 Luru Kino | |
| 8 pm | TERMINAL ISLAND US 1973, D: Stephanie Rothman, A: Ena Hartman, Barbara Leigh, Tom Selleck, 88’, English OV, 35mm With an introduction to the evening’s double feature by Silvia Szymanski (author and film critic) |
| 10 pm | DOUBLE AGENT 73 US 1974, D: Doris Wishman, A: Chesty Morgan, Frank Silvano, Saul Meth, 73’, German version, 35mm |
