Doppelgänger Festival

Film as the genuine medium of the doppelganger

Film is the perfect medium to visualize the doppelgänger motif. Every figure that romps about the silver screen in the darkened movie theatre seems exceedingly alive, as if it was not a copy but the revenant of the original instead. Filmmakers discovered early on that they could duplicate deceptively realistic characters by means of double exposure so that every nook and cranny of the filmic space is filled with ostensibly identical figures.

In the over 40 films to be screened at the festival, viewers will encounter all sorts of doubles, clones and robots, mirror images, distorted and puzzle pictures. The films inquire about the difference between original and copy, negotiate the political dimension of the interchangability of both and fathom how doppelgänger become projection surfaces and orientation points in a world where copies are more omnipresent than originals. 

The filmic personifications of doppelgängers are just as diverse as doppelgängers themselves: The question concerning where the “self” end and “you” begin is dealt with in feature-length films, documentaries and experimental films in precisely the same way as in animations, video art and music videos. In the process, simple tricks with mirrors encounter complicated digital animations. The artists often appear in their own films, thus confronting copies of the self with the outer or inner world, sometimes in the shape of a lively slapstick, sometimes as a disturbing vision.

The eight film programs were curated by Marcel Schwierin (Berlin) and Luc-Carolin Ziemann (Leipzig).

The doppelganger as the subject of experimental films

But the doppelganger is much more than just a character in Hollywood movies. Especially in experimental forms, documentaries and short films doppelgängers are frequently represented in a wide range of different embodiments. They function as reflection and projection surfaces of inner conflicts or enable the occupation with taboo subjects as doubles and placeholders. And as supposed identical copies they are the object of debates concerning originality and authenticity in the digital age.

Preview of the program:

A good example of this is the piece by the Israeli artist Omer Fast that he produced for dOCUMENTA (13) and will now also be shown in Halle. In the contemporary revenant story about a young returnee from Afghanistan splendidly staged by André Hennicke and Iris Böhm, Fast combines the real and the fictional featuring well­calculated borrowings from horror movies and melodramas in order to make the burden of the traumata of war visible and tangible. The musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson explored the doppelganger theme in her
1977 performance “At the Shrink’s/ A Fake Hologram.” Anderson sits in an armchair, or better: the illustration of the artist is projected onto the chair. She tells a mirror anecdote from a session with her psychiatrist and comes to the conclusion that things can be viewed from completely different perspectives, both literally and figuratively. The visit to the psychiatrist becomes superfluous.

Bjørn Melhus is one of the world’s best known German media artists. As in almost all of his films, Melhus also acts out all of the main roles in “I’m Not the Enemy” (2011). The film plays with the absurd and uncanny, occupies itself with the suppressed memories of a war veteran, his brother and their mother. The action evidently takes place in a German apartment. All three characters repeat quotations from American (anti) war movies up to the level of unconsciousness. A threatening atmosphere ensues in which it is no longer possible to differentiate between dreams, trauma and reality.

In “Real Snow White” (2009), the Finnish filmmaker and performance artist Pilvi Takala explores the resistant potential of the doppelganger. When she tries to enter Disneyland Paris dressed as Snow White, she is hindered by security guards. The visitors, it was explained to her, could mix her up with the real Snow White and become confused. Disney’s slogan “Dreams come true” is subtly counteracted in Takala’s short video. It is apparent that it does not concern dreams here but rather the control of fantasy.

Curators of the film program

The film program of the 2014 Werkleitz Festival has been organized by the curators Marcel Schwierin (Berlin) and Luc­Carolin Ziemann (Leipzig). The complex theme will be viewed from various perspectives in eight film programs.

Opening event: Friday, April 25, 8.30 p. m., film program and subsequent opening party.
Further screenings on the weekends at 7 p. m. and 9.30 p. m.
Zazie Kino Bar, Kleine Ulrichstr. 22, 06118 Halle (Saale) (April 26 and 27, May 2 and 3)

Admission 5.00 Euros/ 3.00 Euros (discount)

Filmprogramme

Fri 25.4. 20:30 Bühnen Halle Puppentheater
Musikalische Begleitung durch Sebastian Herzfeld
Auftakt Filmprogramm
Virgil Widrich, Copy Shop, 2001

Dream sequence from The Playhouse, Buster Keaton, US 1921, 6 min [live musical accompaniment: Sebastian Herzfeld]

[Speeches]

What You Mean We?, Laurie Anderson, US 1986, 3 min

Copy Shop, Virgil Widrich, AT 2001, 12 min

Mathilde, Mathilde…., Mathilde ter Heijne, DE 1999, 5 min

Real Snow White, Pilvi Takala, FR/NL 2009, 10 min

Kurator Marcel Schwierin
Kuratorin Luc-Carolin Ziemann
  • The Playhouse,

    Buster Keaton, US 1921, 6 min

  • What You Mean We?,

    Laurie Anderson, US 1986, 3 min

  • Copy Shop,

    Virgil Widrich, AT 2001, 12 min

  • Mathilde, Mathilde....,

    Mathilde ter Heijne, DE 1999, 5 min

  • Real Snow White,

    Pilvi Takala, FR/NL 2009, 10 min

Sat 26.4. 19:00 Zazie Kino und Bar
Guest: Myrna Maakaron
Gegenüber // Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
Christoph Girardet, The Eternal Lesson, 2012

Mirrors form a visible vis-à-vis and give us the opportunity for self-observation – providing that every mirror also alters and influences the image it transports. Christoph Girardet concerns himself in his elegant found-footage film The Eternal Lesson with the observation of art students who not only try to mirror reality in their work but to capture it as well with their creative means. Girardet reproduces the tentative, constantly renewed comparative approximation of the model with filmic devices. In Amy Mike Hoolboom asks how media pictures can influence and disturb self-perception, creating in the process the (fictional) portrait of a young woman who has lost her image. The artist Ferhat Özgür observes two elderly Turkish women in Metamorphosis Chat: One of them is employed and lives a more or less secular life, the other wears a headscarf and has a considerably more religiously-oriented world view. They gigglingly decide to simply take the figure of speech “to walk in someone else’s shoes” literally. In the charming, nimble-footed film BerlinBeirut Myrna Maakaron portrays two very different cities that merge before the camera into an imaginary place where the lightness of “now” suppresses the heaviness of history. The Dutch artist Marjoleine Boonstra combines a high formal aspirations with a clearly political perspective on her themes. For her touching film Sa Nule she observed people in a Bosnian-Croatian refugee camp who after a year saw each other for the first time in a mirror. Kip Fulbek, finally, focuses on mass media stereotypes and humorously shows that media-oriented clichés of multiethnic characters come nowhere close to being able to create an adequate mirror image of the complexities of reality.

Kuratorin Luc-Carolin Ziemann
  • The Eternal Lesson,

    Christoph Girardet, DE 2012, 7 min

  • Amy,

    Mike Hoolboom, CA 2003, 16 min

  • Metamorphosis Chat,

    Ferhat Özgür, TR 2009, 10 min

  • BerlinBeirut,

    Myrna Maakaron, DE 2003, 23 min

  • Sa Nule,

    Marjoleine Boonstra, NL 1996, 10 min

  • Lilo & Me,

    Kip Fulbeck, US 2003, 9 min

Sat 26.4. 21:30 Zazie Kino und Bar
Me as We
Niklas Goldberg, Ten, 2010

The program describes the fundamental confusion that arises from the endless number of doppelgängers, duplicates and derivatives, and in the process bridges the gap running between the first cinematographic animation techniques to an imaginary retirement home for disused cartoon characters. J. Stuart Blackton’s Princess Nicotine caused a sensation back in the day; people could not see enough of the fairy that was reduced in size with the help of a mirror. At the Shrink’s employs an extremely simple form of three-dimensionality earlier used in museums: Laurie Anderson projects her own self-portrait, analogue to the theory of projection known from psychology, onto a sculpture. The ten perfectly-made clones that Niklas Goldbach made of himself in Ten carry out a series of curious rituals involving symbols of political power. Real Snow White documents Pilvi Takala’s failed attempt to visit Disneyland Paris while dressed up as Snow White – the concern wants to maintain control over all copies of its own creation: “Only the real Snow White can dress like that.” For The Bohemian Rhapsody Project Ho Tzu Nyen carried out castings lasting two months and assembled his film from this material; we consequently see 21 actors all playing the same role. In Multiple Barbie Joe Gibbons gives therapy to a schizophrenic doll; the focus is on the question posed to all doppelgänger: “Do you feel that you are not real?” In David OReilly’s animation The External World, which has already won numerous awards, the harmless aesthetic of children’s films is transformed into a dystopian horror, whereby the following comforting text is inserted into the film: “Remember: this is merely a cartoon”.

Princess Nicotine, J. Stuart Blackton, US 1909, 5 min

At the Shrink’s (A Fake Hologram), Laurie Anderson, NL 1977, 4 min

The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, Ho Tzu Nyen, SG 2006, 6 min

Ten, Niklas Goldbach, DE 2010, 12 min

Real Snow White, Pilvi Takala, FR/NL 2009, 10 min

Multiple Barbie, Joe Gibbons, US 1998, 9 min

The External World, David OReilly, DE 2010, 17 min

Guest: Niklas Goldbach

Kurator Marcel Schwierin
  • Princess Nicotine,

    J. Stuart Blackton, US 1909, 5 min

  • At the Shrink’s (A Fake Hologram),

    Laurie Anderson, NL 1977, 4 min

  • The Bohemian Rhapsody Project,

    Ho Tzu Nyen, SG 2006, 6 min

  • Ten,

    Niklas Goldbach, DE 2010, 12 min

  • Real Snow White,

    Pilvi Takala, FR/NL 2009, 10 min

  • Multiple Barbie,

    Joe Gibbons, US 1998, 9 min

  • The External World,

    David OReilly, DE 2010, 17 min

Sun 27.4. 19:00 Zazie Kino und Bar
Lecture with selected film example by Ralf Donis
Doppelgänger im Horrorfilm
Philip Kaufman, Die Körperfresser kommen, USA 1978

The doppelgänger plays a particularly important role in horror films. They instil fear and terror as zombies and replicants, as aliens they represent everything the human protagonists are not or do not want to be and as the undead they open up paths into the underworld that are better left closed.

Ralf Donis (Leipzig), a profound authority and horror film specialist sets off on a filmic search for doppelgänger in the spine-chiller genre and demonstrates in a lecture with selected film examples where the true abysses of this year’s festival theme lay.

Kuratorin Luc-Carolin Ziemann
Sun 27.4. 21:30 Zazie Kino und Bar
Sisters (Die Schwestern des Bösen)
Sisters, 1973
Sisters, 1973
Sisters, 1973
Sisters, 1973

In his Sisters from 1973, Brian de Palma paid homage to his great model Alfred Hitchcock. The skilfully constructed screenplay ostensibly tells a genuine 1970s thriller about attractive Siamese twins, a murder without a corpse and the destructive lover of a physician with omnipotence fantasies. The director (congenially supported by the soundtrack composed by Hitchcock’s time-time collaborator Bernard Herrmann) simultaneously operates on a further level at the border between madness and normality in order to fathom the stability of the framework that makes up our identity.

We are screening the film with an introduction by Ralf Donis (Leipzig).

Brian De Palma, 1973, 92 min

Kuratorin Luc-Carolin Ziemann
Fri 2.5. 19:00 Zazie Kino und Bar
Guests: Wiltrud Baier & Sigrun Köhler
Puppen, Doubles und andere Stellvertreter
Ruben Östlund, Incident by a Bank, 2010

There can be several reasons for employing dolls or other surrogates in a film instead of real persons. On the one hand it is only possible for hand-picked protagonists from the toy chest to undertake such difficult excursions (like those in Dagie Brundert’s refrigerator). On the other hand, however, filmmakers such as Ruben Östlund, who has undertaken the scenic reconstruction of a bank robbery, urgently require extras in order to reconstruct the robbery and its elaborate choreography in a single shot. Uli Versum as well works on – his own – past, projecting himself and his siblings in the children’s world of a doll house that is watched by an over-sized, because real-sized mother. The haunting story of the young refugee Sharaf was realised as an animated documentary – in order to protect Sharaf and to show that there are many more refugees like him who risk their lives every day. Chris Landreth’s monument to his great model Ryan Larkin has won numerous awards. He interviewed the animation artist whose drug habit plunged him into social exclusion and visualised his vis-à-vis’s inner demons on the computer in postproduction. In Photograph of Jesus Laurie Hill finds pictures while looking for unearthly photographs that gradually develop an uncanny life of their own. The participatory art project HomeMade shows what happens when children try to copy industrially produced snacks at home. Pascal Lièvre shows his respect to the master of the performance in his remake of Wegman’s Dog Duet, even though his human actors are nowhere as good as their canine predecessors. 

Die 6 Astronauten, Dagie Brundert, DE 1992, 6 min

Incident by a Bank, Ruben Östlund, SE 2010, 12 min

Faszinierendes Puppenhaus, Uli Versum, DE 1987, 9 min

Sharaf, David Aronowitch & Hannah Heilborn, SE 2012, 13 min

Ryan, Chris Landreth, CA 2004, 14 min

Photograph of Jesus, Laurie Hill, UK 2008, 7 min

HomeMade, Wiltrud Baier & Sigrun Köhler, DE 2007, 5 min

Dog Duet, Pascal Lièvre, FR 2009, 3 min

Kuratorin Luc-Carolin Ziemann
  • Die 6 Astronauten,

    Dagie Brundert, DE 1992, 6 min

  • Händelse vid bank – Zwischenfall vor einer Bank,

    Ruben Östlund, SE 2010, 35mm, col, 12 min

  • Faszinierendes Puppenhaus,

    Uli Versum, DE 1987, 9 min

  • Sharaf,

    David Aronowitsch  & Hannah Heilborn, SE 2012, 13 min

  • Ryan,

    Chris Landreth, CA 2004, 14 min

  • Photograph of Jesus,

    Laurie Hill, short film, UK 2008, 7 min

  • HomeMade,

    Wiltrud Baier & Sigrun Köhler, DE 2007, 5 min

  • Dog Duet,

    Pascal Lièvre, FR 2009, 3 min

Fri 2.5. 21:30 Zazie Kino und Bar
Identical (?) Twins
Omer Fast, Continuity, 2012

For A Season Outside, Amar Kanwar travelled to Wagah, the sole larger border post between the two enemy states of Pakistan and India. In a battle of symbolisms elite soldiers from each side march up and down in elaborate fantasy uniforms, execute wild goose-step choreographies and celebrate each changing of the guard with much encouragements being shouted out loud from both sides. An overdose of sovereign gestures causes the militaristic performance to take on absurd qualities. Amar Kanwar confronts the images of symbolic violence with scenes of real aggression in the everyday life of both countries and shows that it is particularly the manic demarcation that uncannily leads both sides to resemble each other.

The Israeli artist Omer Fast produced the piece Continuity for dOCUMENTA (13) and it is now being shown in Halle for the first time. Brilliantly cast with André Hennicke and Iris Böhm, the Berlin-based film artist blends the real and the fictional in this contemporary revenant story about a young returnee from Afghanistan and employs in the process some well-calculated borrowings from horror films and melodramas in order to make the strain resulting from the trauma of war visible and tangible. War does not appear as a pompous spectacle in Fast’s film but rather as a concealed, almost private worst case scenario that completely catapults its victims out of their previous lives, leaving them confused and disoriented while everyday German life goes on as if nothing had happened. 

A Season Outside, Amar Kanwar, IN 1997, 30 min

Continuity, Omer Fast, DE 2012, 41 min

Kuratorin Luc-Carolin Ziemann
  • Begin Began Begun,

    Sarah Vanagt, BE 2003, 36 min

  • Continuity,

    Omer Fast, DE 2012, 41 min

Sat 3.5. 19:00 Zazie Kino und Bar
Guest: Yashaswini Raghunandan
Ghost Stories
Bjørn Melhus, I'm Not the Enemy, 2011

Ghosts usually appear unsolicited and often accompany us unnoticed for a long while. We only rarely catch a glimpse of them from the corner of our eyes and we must submit to the fact that they move beyond our will. The same is true for David Bowie; Floria Sigismondi confronts David Bowie in this video with his own past in the form of a group of androgynous rock musicians who move in next door to him. He idly – and with marvellous self-irony – watches how his tranquil senior citizen existence and that of his wife played by Tilda Swinton, who uncannily resembles him, is gradually (re)infiltrated by the madness of youth. Oliver also struggles with the demons and ghosts that regularly threaten to flood his consciousness. The visually stunning illusions of the young Estonian who suffers from schizophrenia is integrated into the film by Katre Haav with the help of animation elements. In I’m Not the Enemy, Bjørn Melhus likewise concerns himself with the theme of a returning war veteran who has trouble finding his way in a society where the state of war is virtually unknown. As always, the artist acts out all the roles in his film himself – a doppelgänger par excellence. Abigail Child tells a fictional story based on the pictures in an anonymous family archive dating from the 1930s in which the approaching political disaster long seems like a footnote to history. Presence betakes itself to the realm of the Asian migrant workers who are building the boomtown of Bangalore City. In the evenings they sit in the darkness of their ramshackle Nissen hut and tell each other ghost stories while dreaming at the same time about taking the step into a life beyond invisibility.

Kuratorin Luc-Carolin Ziemann
  • The Stars Are Out Tonight (David Bowie),

    Floria Sigismondi,  CA 2013, 6 min

  • Living in Space,

    Katre Haav, DE 2013, 12 min

  • I’m Not the Enemy,

    Bjørn Melhus, DE 2011, 13 min

  • The Future Is Behind You,

    Abigail Child, US 2005, 18 min

  • Presence,

    Ekta Mittal & Yashaswini Raghunandan, IN 2012, 17 min

Sat 3.5. 21:30 Zazie Kino und Bar
Guests: Ute Hörner & Mathias Antlfinger
Dancing with Myself
Cyriak, We Got More (Eskmo), 2011

Billy Idol’s snotty hymn Dancing with Myself provides this program’s title and tempo. The starting point is the story of man who works in a Copy Shop and multiplies himself until the whole world is made up solely of him. A similar result can also be found in Cyriak’s explosive visual multiplication of reality in the video We got more. Michel Gondry restaged for Björk’s song Bachelorette her own rise as a superstar, already anticipating in the process her own future withdrawal from the Pop world. Mathilde ter Heijne cinematically comes to terms with the ideal of female self-sacrifice by throwing a life-sized copy of herself – as a surrogate for all of the tragic movie heroines – from a bridge. Such emotional outbreaks are foreign to Le nouveau OMIZA although the robot was developed for use in a human environment and can be taken for an elegant walk by young Japanese women. The film pioneer Maya Deren likewise struggles with conflicting emotions, which she lends expression to through the skilful use of double projections in her classic avant-garde film Meshes of the Afternoon. Garth Jennings entangles the singer Thom Yorke in a symbiotic dance with his female alter ego and Kylie Minogue is – likewise by Michel Gondry – multiplied until there is no more room to move about, which however does not prevent her drifting through this bustle in a wondrously graceful manner. With his Audition Tape Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay recommends himself as an ideal member of the Russian girlie band TATU and hopes to become famous with them. Robbie Williams has not had to concern himself with such unimportant matters for a long time; he inimitably presents his view of the world in a “behind the scenes” interview he gave to Johan Renck, the director of his “She’s Madonna” music video: “I don’t communicate with the crowd, I just channel the Lord and the Lord speaks through me.”

Copy Shop, Virgil Widrich, AT 2001, 12 min

We Got More (Eskmo), Cyriak, UK 2011, 3 min

Bachelorette (Björk), Michel Gondry, FR 1997, 5 min

Mathilde, Mathilde…., Mathilde ter Heijne, DE 1999, 5 min

Le nouveau OMIZA, Ute Hörner & Mathias Antlfinger, DE 2007, 6 min

- probably conversation with Ute Hörner & Mathias Antlfinger -

Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, US 1943, 14 min

Ingenue (Atoms for Peace), Garth Jennings, UK 2013, 4 min

Come Into My World (Kylie Minogue), Michel Gondry, FR 2002, 4 min

Audition Tape, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, CA 2003, 8 min

She’s Madonna (Robbie Williams), Johan Renck, UK 2007, 15 min

 

Kuratorin Luc-Carolin Ziemann
  • Copy Shop,

    Virgil Widrich, AT 2001, 12 min

  • We Got More (Eskmo),

    Cyriak, UK 2011, 3 min

  • Bachelorette,

    Michel Gondry, FR 1997, 5 min

  • Mathilde, Mathilde....,

    Mathilde ter Heijne, DE 1999, 5 min

  • Le nouveau OMIZA,

    Ute Hörner & Mathias Antlfinger, DE 2007, 6 min

  • Meshes of the Afternoon,

    Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, US 1943, 14 min

  • Ingenue (Atoms for Peace),

    Garth Jennings, UK 2013, 4 min

  • Audition Tape,

    Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, CA 2003, 8 min

  • She’s Madonna (Robbie Williams),

    Johan Renck, UK 2007, 15 min

Filme

Filmprogramm

Auftakt Filmprogramm

What You Mean We?
What you mean we, 1986
Bildrechte bei Künstler, mit freundlicher Genehmigung von Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org

Strapped for time due to her busy schedule of personal appearances, Anderson creates a rather clumsy looking clone to take over and keep up her artistic production. Anderson plays both parts, pitting the chain-smoking, productive male half against the laid-back female half.

Laurie Anderson, US 1986, 3 min

Copy Shop
Copy Shop, 2001
Copy Shop, 2001

“The story of a man who works in a copy shop and who copies himself so often til the whole world only consists of him.”

Virgil Widrich, AT 2001, 12 min

Mathilde, Mathilde....
Mathilde, Mathilde..., 1995
Mathilde, Mathilde..., 1995
Mathilde, Mathilde..., 1995
Mathilde, Mathilde..., 1995

Mathilde is the name of the tragic heroine of Truffaut’s film La Femme d’à Côté, 1980, whose love for an older man ends in death. Also the leading female characters in Jean-Claude Briseau’s Noce Blanche, 1990, and Patrice Leconte’s Le Mari de la Coiffeuse, 1991, are named Mathilde and broken by their romantic attachments. Rather than falling victim to a disillusioning reality, the women find their escape in suicide. Mathilde ter Heijne takes these stories of self-sacrifice for an utopian ideal of love. Can fate be linked to a name? She mixes original sound extracts from the three films with video scenes in which she herself assumes the role of the tragic heroine. Using a special effects dummy, Mathilde ter Heijne depicts her death leap from the bridge and the struggle with her “alter ego.” The location for the short drama is Amsterdam where the artist used to live and work.

Mathilde ter Heijne, DE 1999, 5 min

Real Snow White
Real Snow White, 2009

The absurd logic of the ‘real character’ and the extreme rules of Disneyland become apparent when a real fan of Snow White is banned from entering the theme park dressed as Snow White.

Pilvi Takala, FR/NL 2009, 10 min

Filmprogramm

Gegenüber // Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

The Eternal Lesson
The Eternal Lesson, 2012

The raw material for an uncompleted 1939 documentary shows art students working in painting and sculpture classes as well as in museums. Many scenes were filmed several times with only slight variations. The shots have been edited into two seemingly identical films, but this is in fact not the case. While the students involved in the creative process compare their works with the models, the viewer examines the differences between the two films projected side by side. (Christoph Girardet)

“By choosing to project the two films alongside each other, Christoph Girardet echoes the subject matter of the scenes. The viewer inevitably assumes the position of the students when he tries to identify similarities and differences between the two films that result, for example, from a change in the camera position or the use of a different picture detail. The films become a sculpture, as it were, within the video installation, which have to be fathomed based on the other one, respectively. A perfect match comes to naught; the lesson cannot come to a conclusion.” (Isabelle Schwarz, exhibition­flyer at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, June 27th – September 23rd 2012)

Christoph Girardet, DE 2012, 7 min

Amy
Amy, 2003
Mit freundlicher Genehmigung von ARCHIV FILM
Amy, 2003
Mit freundlicher Genehmigung von ARCHIV FILM

Amy is a careful portrait of a woman who has again and again been photographic object and now struggles to distinguish between her own perception and her image.

Mike Hoolboom, CA 2003, 16 min

Metamorphosis Chat
Metamorphosis Chat, 2009
Metamorphosis Chat, 2009

The video work Metamorphosis Chat (2010) cites the narrative frame of Turkish soap operas. The actors in Özgür’s films are often acquaintances and relatives. They all seek images and gestures to visually express the difficulties facing especially women living in a patriarchal society and in a present that is constantly producing new realities and questioning traditional ideas of a successful life. In Metamorphosis Chat, Özgür’s mother, who wears a traditional headscarf, meets a neighbour, a teacher in modern dress, for tea. The women decide to switch roles and begin to exchange clothes. Özgür’s influence as director recedes as the women, allowing themselves to get carried away by the merriment of dressing up, become their own authors. Their hearty friendliness, their openness in dealing with what might otherwise be embarrassing, their laughing at each other and themselves – all poke fun at the fear and aggressive moralising found in debates on symbols with religious connotations.

Ferhat Özgür, TR 2009, 10 min

BerlinBeirut
Berlin Beirut, 2003
Berlin Beirut, 2003
Berlin Beirut, 2003

Berlin and Beirut were occupied, destructed, divided, reconstructed and today people still say East and West in both cities. Through the whole film, Berlin and Beirut become one city. One space. A space where you feel the weight of the past and the lightness of life sharing with Myrna
her stories, adventures and memories.

Myrna Maakaron, DE 2003, 23 min

Sa Nule
Sa Nule, 1996

Most people cannot imagine what it means, driven by hunger and war, not to see your own reflection in a mirror for a whole year. This happened to the refugees who settled in Kamp Kuplesnko, on the border between Bosnia and Croatia. And when they eventually saw their own faces, they were all shocked to see their ageing and emaciated countenances. Marjoleine Boonstra portrayed several of them, while they watch themselves without much comment, clearly shocked about their aged and emaciated features. They hardly dare to look at themselves. Their eyes restlessly wander along the contours of their faces. Gradually the refugees start asking questions. They say not to know how they must face the war atrocities, not ot mention how to look someone in the eyes who is them, but who they do not recognise.

Marjoleine Boonstra, NL 1996, 10 min

Lilo & Me
Lilo & Me, 2003
Bildrechte bei Künstler, mit freundlicher Genehmigung von Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org
Lilo & Me, 2003
Bildrechte bei Künstler, mit freundlicher Genehmigung von Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org

Which celebrity do you most resemble? For artist Kip Fulbeck, this question starts a rollicking ride that is part autobiography, part family portrait, part pop­culture survey, and all Disney* all the time. Watch as Fulbeck documents his uncanny resemblance to Pochahontas, Mulan, Aladdin, and other “ethnically ambiguous” animated characters. Both hilarious and touching, this educating video examines the muting of race in mainstream media and its effects on multiracial Americans. *Disney is a registered trademark of Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Kip Fulbeck, US 2003, 9 min

Filmprogramm

Me as We

Princess Nicotine
Princess Nicotine, 1909
Princess Nicotine, 1909

Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy is a 1909 five minute silent film directed by J. Stuart Blackton based on an earlier musical starring Lillian Russell. In the film, a smoker (Paul Panzer) falls asleep and is visited by two fairies (one of which is played by Gladys Hulette). Audiences marveled at the primitive special effects featuring the fairies interacting with objects much larger than themselves.

J. Stuart Blackton, US 1909, 5 min

At the Shrink’s (A Fake Hologram)
At the Shrink’s (A Fake Hologram), 1977
At the Shrink’s (A Fake Hologram), 1977

During a performance at De Appel, Amsterdam, Anderson is sitting in an easy chair, or rather: an image of the artist is projected onto the chair. She is telling an anecdote about a session with her psychiatrist. Anderson eventually comes to the conclusion that she and the psychiatrist see things from a totally different angle, both literally and figuratively. From then on, visiting the psychiatrist becomes superfluous.


The installation serves to illustrate the anecdote told. The story and the form in which it is moulded are connected. The projection is a kind of staging, a décor in which the narrative has a natural place. Anderson plays with the space in which the projection is shown: a game of scaling up and down whereby the space in which the story takes place is eventually relativized. Everything seems different from what it is in reality, both in the narrative and in the images shown.

Laurie Anderson, NL 1977, 4 min

The Bohemian Rhapsody Project
The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, 2006
The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, 2006
The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, 2006
The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, 2006

The Bohemian Rhapsody Project is a film set in the Supreme Court of Singapore, which takes its spoken dialogue entirely from the lyrics of the song. The context is a courtroom trial and the characters are the accused, wearing orange suits and the judge in traditional court garb, along with the police, jury and the public and, although not generally present in the courtroom, a chorus of girls in white. The film further explores the mechanisms of the media by documenting its own production as the apparatus of the film’s own making are folded into the film itself. This film-within-a-film quality, the theatricality of the piece, along with the adoption of a pop-culture framework, alludes to the theatrical nature of the courtroom as it is presented in the media and popular culture.

Ho Tzu Nyen, SG 2006, 6 min

Real Snow White
Real Snow White, 2009

The absurd logic of the ‘real character’ and the extreme rules of Disneyland become apparent when a real fan of Snow White is banned from entering the theme park dressed as Snow White.

Pilvi Takala, FR/NL 2009, 10 min

Multiple Barbie
Multiple Barbie, 1998
Bildrechte bei Künstler, mit freundlicher Genehmigung von Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org

Shot in Pixelvision, Multiple Barbie features the artist as a smooth-talking psychoanlayst imploring the silent doll to explore her multiple personalities in order to purge their power from her psyche.

Joe Gibbons, US 1998, 9 min

The External World
The External Wold, 2010

A boy learns to play the piano.

David OReilly, DE 2010, 17 min

Filmprogramm

Puppen, Doubles und andere Stellvertreter

Die 6 Astronauten
Die 6 Astronauten, 1992
Die 6 Astronauten, 1992
Die 6 Astronauten, 1992
Die 6 Astronauten, 1992

A day in the life of the 6 astronauts Hili, Pävonen, Ngoum, Pirx, Nelson and Dupont.

Dagie Brundert, DE 1992, 6 min

Händelse vid bank – Zwischenfall vor einer Bank
Incident by a Bank, 2010
Incident by a Bank, 2010

A detailed and humorous reconstruction of a failed bank robbery witnessed in June 2006. A realtime study with over 96 people choreographed for the camera. Golden Bear Berlinale 2010.

Ruben Östlund, SE 2010, 35mm, col, 12 min

Faszinierendes Puppenhaus
Faszinierendes Puppenhaus, 1987

For its part, Uli Versum´s short feature film is a fascinating treat on its own, a very beautiful, very exact work on highly indistinct emotions, diffuse moods and latent outbreaks. The film takes the melodrama of the doll´s house seriously, but at the same time takes an ironic and oblique distance to it, thus reducing the universe for children to a work with apertures. Images are mirrored on and off, transisions are made with fades and dissolves, all in the style of experimental art. The grand artist Uli Versum is at the same time also a big child playing with the doll´s house, and this lends sincerity to the film. The motivation is not to evaluate a work of the avant gade, but to participate: to share the experience, to get involved, and above all, to play along.

Uli Versum succeeds in bringing the film home to the viewer in a seemingly effortless way, and although we see the “Fascinating Doll´s House” as a highly artistic avant garde piece of work, we want to draw attention to this particular achievement. He is a show master, an animator, a mediator that triggers and moves something within us, something that lingers long after the show has finished. It is the gesture, the attitude that counts. The art of striking the right note. The magic of having a universe emerge out of light and shade: even if allowed, captions, so to speak. We are talking about the grand art of the silent movie picture. Uli Versum´s is no silent movie, it does without words because words are much too fast at establishing and setting subject matter. Instead of words we listen to the breath of the children in the doll´s house and hear when the bolts of lightning strike. Without having to be told, we know that communication between the children and wild nature outside is as it should be. It even seems as if lightning, thunder and conflagration can be entreated upon on a magic level. This level of communication is missing between the world of adults and that of children, expecially on the verbal level. The three part mirror on the mother´s dressing tablereflects the doll´s house, but allows no access to the world of the children. The children are fulfiled and fascinated by something else, something more difficult to define.  Glumly the mother´s eyes move over the table. On the side table, standingon a lace mat, is the doll´s house. Below, the telephone derectories lie carefully stacked. “ Mother´s children live in the doll´s house” is written on the caption. Also: “Ades has returned to Mother and Sister”. Ades Zabel and Uli Versum make their entrance, dressend incostumes tailored in the style of the doll´s clothes. They are mirrored into their empire, in full view of the mother, but stillinaccessable to her, However, the universe on the side table attracts lightning. Abeaming look of a child at the forces of nature. On the one hand, tears turn to pearls. On the other, the cute snub nose turns into a neritable probusmus. The bliss of regression brings something catastrophic along eith it. “ Ades died during the night” is what the caption says, while fire starts to spread in what is clearly the mother´s appartement. “Mother died during the night” and: “The doll`s house wasnever seen again”. The ending is clear, no matter how much glowing and wavering there is in the film: the children´s empire mother which does not mean that it exists anywhere at all.

Dietrich Kuhlbrodt in: Dokumentation, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 1987

Uli Versum, DE 1987, 9 min

Sharaf
Sharaf, 2012

“The boat was like a little fly in the sea, in two­metre high waves. We just drifted without any food or water.” Sharaf, 17, is one of thousands of boat­refugees who have arrived in Gran Canaria over the past couple of years.

Sharaf is completed during the spring of 2012. It is the third and final part in a series of animated documentaries about children and young people in difficult situations by David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn.

David Aronowitsch  & Hannah Heilborn, SE 2012, 13 min

Ryan
Ryan, 2004
Ryan, 2004
Ryan, 2004
Ryan, 2004
Ryan, 2004
Ryan, 2004

Chris Landreth’s film is a homage to the animator Ryan Larkin, the producer of some of the most influential animated films of the 1970s. A few years later he was living on public assistance and panhandling in Montreal. How could such a talented man end up like this? Chris Landreth met Ryan Larkin and carried out a long interview with him. He employs the technical possibilities of animation to visualise for the viewer some of the inner scars, rifts and demons that Larkin talks about in their conversation. Using strangely deformed, broken and disembodied beings, he gives Ryan himself and some of his companions the chance to speak, creating in a process a film that the renowned critic Roger Ebert said “cuts deeply into the truth of human life”.

Chris Landreth, CA 2004, 14 min

Photograph of Jesus
Photograph of Jesus, 2008
Image courtesy of Getty Images
Photograph of Jesus, 2008
Image courtesy of Getty Images

Looking for photographs of Jesus, yetis and Hitler in 1948? Help is at hand with this documentary­fantasy based on true stories of requests for impossible images. Real­life archives become the stage where fact and fiction collide, belief runs amok and unruly images have a life of their own.

Laurie Hill, short film, UK 2008, 7 min

HomeMade
HomeMade, 2007
© Böller und Brot 2007
HomeMade, 2007
© Böller und Brot 2007
HomeMade, 2007
© Böller und Brot 2007

The german filmmakers ‚Böller und Brot‘ realized the series “HOMEMADE” during their artist-in-residency in Huntly/ Scotland based on the idea to make children do the impossible and prepare popular – but mysterious in preparation - snacks (such as MARS BARS, SMARTIES, FRAZZLES and so on..) by using only the ingredients written on the packages as recipe.

8 films in TV-cooking serial style have been developped.

Wiltrud Baier & Sigrun Köhler, DE 2007, 5 min

Filmprogramm

Identical (?) Twins

Begin Began Begun
Begin Began Begun, 2003

April in Rwanda; the month of mourning in the new Rwandan calendar. While the country is commemorating the 10th anniversary of the genocide, children play games. Filmmaker Sarah Vanagt spent the easter holiday in a “children’s republic”, governed by genocide orphans and refugee children growing up in the war-torn border zone between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Sarah Vanagt, BE 2003, 36 min

Continuity
Continuity, 2012
Continuity, 2012
Continuity, 2012

We follow a young Bundeswehr soldier just returning home from Afghanistan. What first appears to be strange anomalies in an otherwise familiar domestic environment gradually becomes a nightmare scenario. As the young man struggles to make sense of his increasingly surreal and alien home, it becomes really doubtful whether he’s ever actually returned from service. With Continuity, the artist is getting closer to the cinematographic tradition. For the first time, its format borrows to cinema temporality with almost a beginning and an end.

Omer Fast, DE 2012, 41 min

Filmprogramm

Ghost Stories

The Stars Are Out Tonight (David Bowie)
The Stars Are Out Tonight, 2013
The Stars Are Out Tonight, 2013
The Stars Are Out Tonight, 2013

Floria Sigismondi confronts David Bowie in this video with his own past in the form of a group of androgynous rock musicians who move in next door to him. He idly – and with marvellous self-irony – watches how his tranquil senior citizen existence and that of his wife played by Tilda Swinton, who uncannily resembles him, is gradually (re)infiltrated by the madness of youth.

Floria Sigismondi,  CA 2013, 6 min

Living in Space
Living in Space, 2013
Living in Space, 2013
Living in Space, 2013

Imagination and reality merge to create a confusing but dangerously wonderful world for Oliver. It would be so easy for him to yield to his illusions again. But Oliver keeps fighting and is happy about every normal day. An animated documentary about a young schizophrenic from Tallinn.

Katre Haav, DE 2013, 12 min

I’m Not the Enemy
I'm Not the Enemy, 2011
I'm Not the Enemy, 2011
I'm Not the Enemy, 2011

Home is a place of comfort, of security and peace. Delve into the world of a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder suffering war veteran however, and such notions drastically become perverted and uneasy. The home becomes alien and family members come to encapsulate the demons against whom the veteran has to fight. Appropriating dialogues from Hollywood movies that deal with the legacy of the Vietnam War and firmly implanting them amongst quiet German suburbs, I’M NOT THE EMEMY cuts open the ways in which a society engaged in war deals with the guilt of problematic returns. In a society that has such little interest in the faraway Afghan war that is fought in its name, how then is the war veteran ever to find any degree of acceptance?

Bjørn Melhus, DE 2011, 13 min

The Future Is Behind You
The Future Is Behind You, 2005
© ARCHIV FILM

An artistic work from anonymous found footage, fictive stories around two sisters and their complicated love­life that reflects on how the past is born out of the narration of the future.

Abigail Child, US 2005, 18 min

Presence
Presence, 2012
Presence, 2012

Presence, stories of ghosts as narrated by workers building the city of Bangalore. www. tinsheets.in

Ekta Mittal & Yashaswini Raghunandan, IN 2012, 17 min

Filmprogramm

Dancing with Myself

Copy Shop
Copy Shop, 2001
Copy Shop, 2001

“The story of a man who works in a copy shop and who copies himself so often til the whole world only consists of him.”

Virgil Widrich, AT 2001, 12 min

We Got More (Eskmo)
We Got More (Eskmo), 2011

The animator Cyriak created a veritable panopticon of doppelgängers for the song “We got more” (Eskmo, Ninja Tune). He composed a visual symphony of doublings, reflections and hybrids from a few scenes filmed on a busy street corner which pull the rug out from under the viewer, leaving him with a pleasant sense of dizziness.

Cyriak, UK 2011, 3 min

Bachelorette
Bachelorette (Björk), 1997
Bachelorette (Björk), 1997

The Icelandic singer Björk already explored the question about her existence as a Pop star would be consistent with her own understanding of herself as a critical artist at the start of her international career. As opposed to reality, where she could regularly reinvent herself and thus hinder artistic torpor, she sketched out in her song “Bachelorette” the story of her life as a star who constantly tells the same story in an endless, self-referential routine until it finally grows ever more meaningless and void of content, occasioning the protagonist to leave the Pop world and withdraw to nature.

Michel Gondry, FR 1997, 5 min

Mathilde, Mathilde....
Mathilde, Mathilde..., 1995
Mathilde, Mathilde..., 1995
Mathilde, Mathilde..., 1995
Mathilde, Mathilde..., 1995

Mathilde is the name of the tragic heroine of Truffaut’s film La Femme d’à Côté, 1980, whose love for an older man ends in death. Also the leading female characters in Jean-Claude Briseau’s Noce Blanche, 1990, and Patrice Leconte’s Le Mari de la Coiffeuse, 1991, are named Mathilde and broken by their romantic attachments. Rather than falling victim to a disillusioning reality, the women find their escape in suicide. Mathilde ter Heijne takes these stories of self-sacrifice for an utopian ideal of love. Can fate be linked to a name? She mixes original sound extracts from the three films with video scenes in which she herself assumes the role of the tragic heroine. Using a special effects dummy, Mathilde ter Heijne depicts her death leap from the bridge and the struggle with her “alter ego.” The location for the short drama is Amsterdam where the artist used to live and work.

Mathilde ter Heijne, DE 1999, 5 min

Le nouveau OMIZA
Le nouveau OMIZA, 2007
Le nouveau OMIZA, 2007
Le nouveau OMIZA, 2007
Le nouveau OMIZA, 2007

Since the mid­1980s HONDA has been working on the development of humanoid robots for use within the human environment. ASIMO, one of the most advanced humanoids, will in the future be able to carry out such tasks as, for example, looking after the elderly. His counterpart OMIZA places himself on the other side of the mirror. In the company of a woman he learns of a well­ordered world which exists only for him and for their endless walks through the labyrinths of heart.

Ute Hörner & Mathias Antlfinger, DE 2007, 6 min

Meshes of the Afternoon
Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943

With Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid created one of the most important and influential experimental films of the 20th century. Starting from the real, the film moves step by step in the direction of fantasy, dreams and surreality. Employing montages, imagination breaks through into reality, reassembling the elements of time and space into a new unreal chronology. Psychoanalysis confronts symbolism when numerous egos of the protagonists (played by Maya Deren herself) encounter each other in dreamlike situations. At the end, a knife flashes, a mirrors breaks and the waves of the Atlantic wash the broken fragments into the ocean.

Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, US 1943, 14 min

Ingenue (Atoms for Peace)

The singer Thom Yorke has been known as an enthusiastic dancer ever since he gave an impulsive performance in the video to his song “Lotus Flower”. The British film director Garth Jennings likewise made the elaborate music video to “Ingenue” (Atoms for Peace). Yorke is brilliant here in an extremely complex choreography – together with the dancer Fukiko Takase – in which the two dancers sometimes seem like doppelgängers, sometimes like duet partners. Their movements become ever more asymmetrical at the end of the sad love song, until Yorke finally stands alone before a white screen.

Garth Jennings, UK 2013, 4 min

Audition Tape
Audition Tape, 2003

In Audition Tape, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, who describes himself as a “gay white male, 5’11”, 155 lbs, 29 years old, good singing voice and co-ordination” stands before the camera in order to apply for a job as a performer in the Russian girl pop group t.A. T.u. The elements of confession, identification and memory in the tape intertwine to produce a new format: mainstream culture, political history and sexual politics become visible as invocations in which the individual wish for recognition and success are enmeshed.

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, CA 2003, 8 min

She’s Madonna (Robbie Williams)
She's Madonna (Robbie Williams), 2007
She's Madonna (Robbie Williams), 2007
She's Madonna (Robbie Williams), 2007

“Do you really know who you are?” “Yes, I got a very clear perception of who I am. I am quite a few people. A great bunch of guys.” “Who is your favorite?” “I can’t say, because the others would get jealous.”

Here is Robbie Williams as he has never been seen before – as an exalted drag queen talking about “her” multiple personalities in an interview and presenting himself on stage as a testosterone-emitting entertainer. 

Johan Renck, UK 2007, 15 min

Videorama — Fenster in die Stadt

Dog Duet
01. May 2014 to 31. May 2014
Werkleitz Zentrum für Medienkunst
Dog Duet, 2009

The French video artist Pascal Lièvre used Wegman’s well-known work as the starting point for his own film in which the scene is restaged, albeit without dogs but “real” actors instead who, despite giving a good performance, pure and simply lack a game partner.

Pascal Lièvre, FR 2009, 3 min

Videorama
Ten
01. April 2016 to 30. April 2016
Ten, 2010
Ten, 2010
Ten, 2010

In the video installation TEN (2010), Niklas Goldbach stages a summit of today’s rulers in the penthouse­suite of a luxury hotel in Berlin, in which he creates a tenfold image of himself as only actor. The film seems to have come out of a laboratory, from a mysterious, undiscovered time where future and present have merged. All individual aspects are removed, everything is subjected to the protocol of efficiency and the mute poker of power under the mask of equality.

Niklas Goldbach, DE 2010, 12 min

Trailer

 

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