Thanks a lot to all those who supported our festival in whatever way and a huge thank you, of course, to all of you, for attending our events! We were glad to see so many people coming to the screenings—far more people than we expected. Your interest and appreciation really fueled us to continue our small festival. Thanks thanks thanks for keeping alternative cinema alive!
Now, let’s all enjoy the summer.
Check back every once in a while here for updates about GEGENkino. Let’s see what the future will bring. We hope to see you all again!
Love,
your GEGENkino crew!
A jolly 1st of May everybody!
And also: the end is near! Today’s the last day of GEGENkino 2016.
What could be better after a long, hard Day of Labour than watching a film, where all dialogue’s comprised of quotes from US American TV shows and soap operas and seeing Peaches, Rummelsnuff, Blixa Bargeld, Nina Hagen and Wolfgang Müller in the same film afterwards?! Exactly…!
Fort Buchanan
FR/TN 2014, D: Benjamin Crotty, A: Andy Gillet, Iliana Zabeth, David Baiot, Mati Diop, 65’, OV with English subtitles, DCP
In Benjamin Crotty’s debut feature, the eponymous »Fort Buchanan« is located in the French countryside and actually, it’s more a queer rural commune than a military base. Although, most of the inhabitants have husbands still in the active service. Like Roger, whose significant other Frank is in Africa and whose mutual daughter Roxy likewise is dreaming of a future in the army. Apropos of nothing, her juvenile sexuality awakens, a fact that the polyamorous fort notices with joy. Father No. 1 is tormented by solitude and fidelity, which is why the community summarily decides to fly to Djibouti to visit father No. 2. But after 18 years of marriage, passion and desire refuse to really arise, even hot pants and a new haircut cannot help that. What a virtuoso film! So full of sensuality: the colours, the bodies, the light, the coarseness of the 16mm material. Along with it, a mixture of country tunes, classical music and electro party sounds. A hybrid full of artificiality, confusing cuts, and dialogues that are all taken from US soap operas and which in French appear as completely bizarre! Down with expectations! A cheer for fine humour! Here’s Queer Cinema at its best!
1 May, 8 pm – Schaubühne Lindenfels
€ 6,5/5,5 (red.) / € 9/8 (red.) as a combined ticket with Desire Will Set You Free
Desire Will Set You Free
GER 2015, D: Yony Leyser, A: Yony Leyser, Tim Fabian Hoffmann, Chloe Griffin, 92’, OV with German subtitles, BluRay
Ezra, an US-American writer, comes to Berlin. Because of David Bowie. He spends his days clubbing, taking drugs, having pseudo-philosophical conversations and wanting to be more punk, whilst wishing he wrote more. Most of his time is spent with his dark and witty friend Catharine, who has an unsettling fetish for Nazi paraphernalia. At a bar, he meets Sasha, a Russian immigrant working as an escort. Both of them are drifting through the queer subculture and the excessive underground of the city, doing their job or seeking for life, love, sex and ecstasy. With its many playgrounds for marginalised cultures, the city of Berlin becomes the main character of the film. Filmed on real locations, many people play themselves, featuring among others Peaches, Rummelsnuff, Blixa Bargeld, Blood Orange, Nina Hagen and Wolfgang Müller.
1 May, 9.30 pm – Schaubühne Lindenfels
€ 6,5/5,5 (red.) / € 9/8 (red.) as a combined ticket with Fort Buchanan
Sibs Shongwe-La Mer talks Necktie Youth | TRUE Africa
The end is approaching. Two more days and GEGENkino 2016 will be history. Today already is the last day of our AFRICAN OUTLINES section with two screenings tonight!
8pm at Schaubühne Lindenfels we will present a collection of short films by up-and-coming filmmakers from different African countries in our »Young Africans« programme. And there’s quite a lot to show! Short films with topics ranging from life on the streets to corporeal self-definition. Check out the whole programme here:
Dr. Claudia Böhme from the Institute of Ethnology at Universität Trier will come to screening and introduce the films by giving an overview about the contexts in which these African realities are situated.
10pm, also at Schaubühne Lindenfels we will screen the »Necktie Youth« by the only 23-year-old Sibs Shongwe-La Mer—a teenage drama in the vein of movies like »Ken Park« and a representation of youth in Johannesburg. Stylish as hell!
According to TRUEAfrica, »[Necktie Youth] feels like a revolutionary film; a political awakening that shows another side of Africa, far from the slums, the child soldiers and acacia trees; an Africa which is tapped into the same social network as the kids in a Larry Clark movie or in a Bret Easton Ellis novel«.
Oh, by the way, we will also offer combined tickets for both screenings for 9/8 (red.) euros.
Your GEGENkino crew
Preparations for VERTICAL CINEMA yesterday went pretty good as you can see! So, you all know what will be going down tonight, don’t you? If not, read again about it here on our blog.
Plus, here’s some further useful information about tonight:
Doors and ticket counter will open at 8pm.
The address of Paul Gerhardt church is Selneckerstraße 5.
Reserved tickets can be picked up until 8:30 pm.
For those of you, who didn’t reserve tickets: There’s still plenty of them left!
The screening is supposed to start at 9pm and will take approx. 2 hours (including a break). Afterwards, there will be an artist talk with Johann Lurf—one of the Vertical Cinema filmmakers.
Be aware, that some of the films may cause photosensitive eplileptic seizures. So, take care!
C’est Les Trucs!
Tonight the dada synth-punk duo from the Knertz Collective will come to GEGENkino festival and present their most recent project—a live score for F. W. Murnau’s classic The Last Laugh – at UT Connewitz.
If you know the band’s music you can guess that this performance will be quite different from your usual pianist-adds-live-score-to-Metropolis-or-whatever events.
Prepare yourselves!
And if you want to spoil the surprise for yourselves, see what tonight’s live score may sound and look like here:
Les Trucs add live score to The Last Laugh
GER 1924, D: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, A: Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft, 90’, silent, BluRay
“Today you are first and best, respected by everyone, a minister, a general, maybe even a prince— do you know what you will be tomorrow?”—with these words Murnau’s Weimar classic The Last Laughopens up and then goes to tell a story of social decline. The main character, played by Emil Jannings, climbs down the career ladder and, formerly a concierge of good standing, he becomes a lavatory attendant. Not only regarding the narrative and acting the film is committed to the expressionist film language prevalent in the 1920s, but also from a technical point of view. For the first time in film history, cinematographer Karl Freund turns loose the “unleashed camera”: from now on, in cinema, not only images and characters are moving, but also the view now wanders through space.
Aided by synthesisers, sequencers and various sounding devices, Charlotte Simon and Zink Tonsur alias LesTrucs will enrich Murnau’s silent film with live sound in the hall of UT Connewitz. Music and performance of this duo are full of a Dadaist spirit. Everyone present will have to accept the fact that what is happening before one’s own eyes and inside one’s own ears cannot even roughly be described. Wonderful it is at least. If Murnau will show his magnificence on screen, it is rather unlikely that LesTrucs will withdraw themselves in their performance in front of the screen.
27 April, 9 pm – UT Connewitz – € 12 / 10 (red.)
