BE/LU/IT/FR 2025, D: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, A: Fabio Testi, Yannick Renier, Maria de Medeiros, 87’, OV with english subtiltes, DCP
An ageing spy, a glamorous hotel on the C.te d’Azur, a mysterious disappearance: REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND is a psychedelic spy thriller that breaks down the Eurospy genre of the 1960s into its dazzling components. John D. was once an agent in the service of glamour, but today he is merely a weary witness to his own legend. What begins as a nostalgic reunion with his own history rapidly disintegrates into a kaleidoscopic puzzle of sensory impressions, flashbacks and illusions. Cattet and Forzani continue their cinema of excess: hyper-stylised, fragmented, hypnotic. A sensual, formally rigorous puzzle between Bond pastiche, pop art and paranoid inner worlds.
| Sa 12 Sept 2025 | Luru Kino |
| 10 PM | € 7,5 (6,5 reduced) |
Trailer
Personal Focus | SABINE HERPICH
DE 2024, D: Sabine Herpich, 109’, OV with english subtitles, DCP
At the beginning of the film, musician Barbara Morgernstern turns to the camera while working on her new album, addressing the filmmaker: “Do you know what I intuitively realise? I feel the need to explain to you what I’m doing. But I’m just not going to do that now”, to which Sabine Herpich replies: “You don’t have to.” BARBARA MORGENSTERN: DOING IT FOR LOVE is not a fly-on-the-wall film that attempts to disguise the presence of the camera and the sound recording device out of a desire for immersion. Nor is it a ’participant observation’, but rather an equal exchange between people whose work generally remains invisible to others until the final result.
| Sa 12 Sept 2025 | Luru Kino |
| 8 PM | € 7,5 (6,5 reduced) In the presence of Sabine Herpich |
Trailer
Personal Focus | SABINE HERPICH
DE 2016, D: Sabine Herpich, 81’, german OV, DCP
When David the shoemaker is not just working with leather, nails and wooden blocks, he devotes himself to his sculptures, which are scattered all over the workshop. Over the years, he has distanced himself more and more from natural models – up to today he has arrived at forms that no longer depict anything concrete, but only express themselves. Herpich’s intimate portrait of the artist, which like all her work progresses calmly without background music, never pushes meaning at any point. The camera observes calmly as David pursues his creative activities. Sometimes the taciturn man says something, but it is usually the forms and materials that speak.
| Sa 12 Sept 2025 | UT Connewitz |
| 6 PM | € 7,5 (6,5 reduced) In the presence of Sabine Herpich Introductory talk by film scholar Friederike Horstmann (in German) |
Personal Focus | SABINE HERPICH
How something develops Sabine Herpich’s films on artistic work
This year’s GEGENkino personal focus is dedicated to the German documentary filmmaker and editor Sabine Herpich (*1973). Her short and medium-length as well as her feature-length films have been guests at well-known festivals with a documentary focus such as the Berlinale Forum, DOK Leipzig and the Duisburger Filmwoche, and she has already been written about on Mubi Notebook – and yet her works, produced mostly with her own money, have so far been under the radar for a wider cinema audience. Herpich’s films, which in her words were made “on the side, without time or pressure to succeed and almost always without money”, are all impressively directed in a straightforward manner, caring and, since DAVID, have been determined by a theme that accompanies many of us in our everyday lives: by the need to create something that has to do with oneself, by creativity and its (rocky) paths.
Herpich’s gentle studies, which accompany individuals in a restrained and observant manner, can be understood as a large cycle, as a group of works dedicated to the processes of artistic work and to people working artistically. The films do this without an explanatory voice-over and with only sparse, spontaneously curious enquiries from behind the camera, which is operated by Herpich herself. Her works lack the narrative voice typical of television reportage that “explains” something to us. In contrast, the aim is to discover something together with us, to grasp a process sensuously – be it the production and properties of abstract sculptures by a Berlin shoemaker (DAVID), the process of applying layers of colour for weeks on a painting (AN IMAGE BY ALEKSANDER GUDALO), the pencil and coloured pencil strokes that eventually come together to form a work full of detail and exuberant imagination (ART COMES FROM THE BEAK THE WAY IT HAS GROWN) or the lengthy tinkering involved in working on a music album, from rehearsals to studio recordings (BARBARA MORGENSTERN: DOING IT FOR LOVE).
While a conventional reportage compresses the time needed to create such works, Herpich’s documentary films allow us to immerse ourselves observing and listening to such processes in peace and without authorial guidance. The gentle calm that prevails in the Mosaik art workshop, for example, is transmitted directly to the audience. ART COMES FROM THE BEAK THE WAY IT HAS GROWN portrays artists with intellectual disabilities who put their imagination on paper with the help of the workshop staff. The film condenses nothing less than Herpich’s special view of art: her films are not about understanding in a conventional sense, but about capturing and preserving something that outsiders can never fully grasp, namely creativity, on film – when it flows and when it stalls.
The retrospective will be complemented by the German premiere of Herpich’s latest miniature TASTENDER BLICK, in which a blind cultural mediator is accompanied in her work. Beyond that, we are bringing Herpich’s cycle into dialogue with a historical documentary and essay film that is important for the filmmaker with regard to her films on creative processes – and at the same time was shot by an icon of GEGENkino: with Harun Farocki’s (1944–2014) artist portrait AN IMAGE BY SARAH SCHUMANN. In addition to Sabine Herpich, who will be present on both days, we have art and film scholar Friederike Horstmann as a guest. Horstmann teaches, researches and writes about art and cinema. She has been teaching film history at the German Film and Television Academy since 2020 and has been a guest lecturer at the film studies department of FU Berlin since 2024. On the opening evening, she will give a lecture on Herpich’s special (film) view of art and artistic work processes.
| Sat 13.09.25 Luru Kino | |
| 6 PM | DAVID DE 2016, D: SabineHerpich, 81’, german OV, DCP Lecture by Friederike Horstmann In presence of Sabine Herpich |
| 8 PM | BARBARA MORGENSTERN: DOING IT FOR LOVE DE 2024, D: Sabine Herpich, 109’, OV with english subtitles, DCP In presence of Sabine Herpich |
| Sun 14.09.25 Luru Kino | |
| 7 PM | ULRIKE DAM IS WRITING DE 2020, R: Sabine Herpich, 13’, german OV, DCP AN IMAGE BY ALEKSANDER GUDALO DE 2018, R: Sabine Herpich, 45’, german OV, DCP AN IMAGE BY SARAH SCHUMANN DE 1978, R: Harun Farocki, 30’, OV with english subtitles ,DCP In presence of Sabine Herpich |
| 9 PM | ART COMES FROM THE BEAK THE WAY IT HAS GROWN DE 2020, D: Sabine Herpich, 106’, OV with english subtitles, DCP TASTENDER BLICK AT/DE 2024, D: Sabine Herpich, Gregor Stadlober, 39’, german OV, DCP with audio description, German Premiere In presence of Sabine Herpich |
LIVE SCORE
UdSSR 1969, D: Sergei Paradschanow , A: Wilen Galustjan, Sofiko Tschiaureli, Spartak Bagaschwili, without dialogue/silent projection, DCP
The starting point for tonight’s live scoring is newly scanned 35mm material: outtakes, variations and screen tests from the shooting of Sergei Parajanov’s THE COLOUR OF POMEGRANATES (1969), also known as SAYAT NOVA. Incredibly, contrary to the instructions of Soviet officials at the time, the outtakes were not destroyed. More than 45 years after the film’s release, film historian Daniel Bird organized the scanning of this unknown material, totalling over six hours.
Originally conceived as a film poem about the poet and bard, also known as Ashugh, Arutin Sayadyan (1712 –1795), the film tells the story of his life. Beginning with his childhood, through his time in the monastery and his first love, going on to his death, the film focuses on decisive moments in Sayat Nova’s life. The fifteen film miniatures shown are based on biographical material about the poet and on Parajanov’s poetic imagination. Each miniature consists of textures – Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani architecture, landscapes and objects – that reveal the authenticity of the 18th century.
Using the original film music by Tigran Mansurian and Yuri Sayadian, Elvin Brandhi will highlight the musical legacy of SAYAT NOVA and reinterpret the performance of an ashugh, or singer-poet-bard, at the intersection of analogue and digital media at the beginning of the 21st century. Behind the pseudonym Elvin Brandhi is sound artist, singer and producer Freya Edmondes. Her sound compositions consist of field recordings, found tape and vinyl recordings, self-recorded instrumentals, glitches and her looped and manipulated voice, which is capable of producing a complete orchestra of affective sounds.
| Fr 12 Sept 2025 | UT Connewitz |
| 8 PM | € 20 (15 reduced) With an introduction by Daniel Bird |
