PT 2022, D: Jorge Jácome, A: Alexis Fernandez, Bárbara Matos, Celestine Ngantonga Ndzana, 85′, OV with English subtitles, DCP
“I am so glad you made it.” With this friendly invitation and gentle sounds from a cosmos of electronic cricket chirping, an artificial voice welcomes us. “Our images are moving.” Who does it mean by “we” and where are we moving to? We can neither ask nor answer, but only let the changing colour and sound surfaces affect us. Cyber-meditation. The cinema becomes a collective oasis. SUPER NATURAL is an experimental film that moves back and forth between fiction and documentary elements, as well as different film materials and image manipulations. And goes to the ground with us. “Where do I end and you begin?” – we cannot tell with certainty where the moving worlds of SUPER NATURAL will accompany us. Perhaps all the way into our own dreams.
| Sun 18 Sept | UT Connewitz |
| 7 pm | regular: 6,5€ / reduced 5,5€ |
AT 2021, D: Milena Czernovsky, Lilith Kraxner, A: Eva Sommer, Katharina Farnleitner, Marthe de Crouy-Chanel, 95′, OV with English subtitles, 35mm
Beatrix is house-sitting for a friend in the countryside. Watering the flowers. Feeding the cat. Her detoxing from the decision-making pressure of the big city is only occasionally disturbed by the visit of friends. She occupies the time of her self chosen isolation with her phone or in front of the fridge during the night. Cleaning, vacuuming, masturbating. The teletext proclaims something about migrants. And Trump has cancelled his trip to Denmark. Shortly after nine, there is Dawson’s Creek on TV. Somewhere along the line then: the (hair) cut! But actually, with her new flatmate, all is going along ritualised paths, too. Until, well, the budding homoerotic desire, previously only alive during intoxicated states, demands an existential frankness. That forces a jump out of the almost square picture. A wonderfully witty, intimate portrait of a woman on the edge of her own solitude.
| Sun 18 Sept | UT Connewitz |
| 9 pm | regular: 6,5€ / reduced 5,5€ |
JP 2004, D: Hayao Miyazaki, 119′, German version, DCP, approved for ages 6 and older
In HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE we see everything that makes Studio Ghibli’s animated films so adorable: a love story against all odds, a venerable Europe with giant gadgetry, amiable monsters and tragic heroes, sweeping fighting and food feast. HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE tells of the love between Sophie and Hauro. She is a hatter, turned into an old mummy by an evil witch, he is the beautiful wizard, travelling through no-man’s-land with his moving castle. There, Sophie signs up for housekeeping and now has enough time to approach her heartthrob, who yet has to find out that she is actually as young as he is. And then, there is a war to stop…
| Sun 18 Sept | UT Connewitz |
| 14:00 Uhr | 2€ |
Originally published as a novel by Dennis Cooper, JERK refers to the authentic story of sexual criminal and mass murderer Dean Corll, who abused, tortured and killed more than 20 young men at the beginning of the 1970ies. David Brooks, one of his accessories, put an end to the horror and killed Corll.
JERK
FR 2021, D: Gisèle Vienne, A: Jonathan Capdevielle, 60′, OV with English subtitles, DCP
In the fictional continuation of this story, David Brooks – sentenced to life imprisonment – looks back on the incidents and reappraises it as a therapeutic measure. The killer turns into the narrator and reconstructs the crimes in the form of a puppet theatre show. In this, setting and film language are minimized: only Brooks, performing with a couple of hand puppets, giving them – embodying perpetrators and victims alike – a voice. The horror of the crimes saturated with violence is accompanied by a sadist narrative. Within an aesthetic situation multiply broken by the theatre setting and the usage of puppets, Brooks’ imagination and the representation of his corporeality are completely absorbed in an extremely distance-free and what is for him a lustful reenactment of the killings.
| Sat 17 Sept | Schaubühne Lindenfels |
| 9:30 pm | In the presence of Jan Soldat With an audience discussion after JERK regular: 6,5€ / reduced 5,5€ |
STAGING DEATH | German Premiere
AT/GER 2022, D: Jan Soldat, 8′, OV with English subtitles, DCP
During his acting career that started in the middle of the 1960ies, Udo Kier worked hard for the presumably longest records in the usual film databases. Beside engagements by cinematic artists including Lars von Trier, he is frequently booked for remote trash and low-budget productions. Here and there, the characters played by him are very often sent to kingdom come. In STAGING DEATH, Jan Soldat collects a selection of the more than 70 deaths that Kier has died in front of the camera. In the montage, iconic episodes are assembled, like Dracula being impaled, a moon-nazi being squashed by a T-Rex and the physical disappearance of Jason whose body can hardly be detected in the billowing reed. At the same time, the juxtaposition of scenes from over 50 years gives an entertaining insight into the evolution of special effects. One thing is for sure: Kier gives his unmistakable peculiarity even to his playful deaths – from falling asleep peacefully to being massacred.
ASMODEUS | German Premiere
CA 2021, D: Éric Falardeau, A: Éric Falardeau, Stéphanie Cadieux, Annaëlle Winand, 11′, no dialogue, DCP
In the form of an occult ritual, ASMODEUS depicts the invocation and awakening of three female incarnations of the eponymous demon of lust and wrath. In this, director Éric Falardeau, who plays the male protagonist, orients himself at the principles of the affective transgressions of gore and splatter: down with good taste! During the ceremony, blood and other body fluids are flowing, ecstasy lends the power to the people (men) to turn into a higher self, to get rid of handles and constraints of morality.
Bruno Sukrow, who called himself a “film tinkerer” throughout his life, was born in Berlin in 1927 and died earlier this year at the age of 94. Originally trained as a machinist, he switched to being a film amateur at the age of 82 – from then on, he created a remarkable oeuvre on his home computer. In them, Sukrow created a new world for himself, completely steeped in his personal preferences, whose quirky second-life-aesthetics are full of heroes, monsters, plot twists and jokes that run into the void. The films following this approach were initially thought for a family context – no one dared to dream that his private, computerised auteur cinema would make it to the International Film Festival of Rotterdam.
SATURNUS is the planet promising eternal life. Astronauts set out in a space shuttle to rescue the last survivors of an earlier expedition. Accompanied by ambient music, they stumble across the planet that Sukrow has filled with all kinds of fantasy creatures. The decelerated mystery thriller MARTINS FEUER is situated in a British small town. A psychiatrist is shot, Martin was his last patient. The police begins to look behind the curtains of the single-family homes. VERGISSMEINNICHT concludes the triple: small town plus aliens. Tulip-Toni becomes entangled in a romance and is contacted by an UFO – the animations here are more filigree, the soundscape more organic. You can tell that Bruno Sukrow has been tinkering for several years.
| Sa 17 Sept | Schaubühne Lindenfels |
| 7 pm | With an introduction by Alexander Klotz regular: 6,5€ / reduced 5,5€ |
SATURNUS
DE 2011, R: Bruno Sukrow, 30′, OmeU, DCP
MARTINS FEUER
DE 2013, R: Bruno Sukrow, 44′, OmeU, DCP
VERGISSMEINNICHT
DE 2021, R: Robert Sukrow, 18′, OmeU, DCP
