I like funny holidays. Whether National Hugging Day or National Chocolate Cake Day, in any case the not quiete serious commemoration day are diversified. And today as well is one these days. Today, we celbrate the ‘Contract new Friendship Day’. This day is about to find new friends. Go out and meet new people. To say it in the words of Freddie Mercury: ‘Hold out your hand cos friends will be friends right till the end’.
Cyclops Observes the Celestial Bodies
Cyclops Observes the Celestial Bodies
USA 2014
15′
Director: Ken Jacobs
“Cyclopean 3D is the most 3D a single eye can come up with. This means the celestial horde on display here can only seem to be galloping through space. Actual seeing into depth must be denied, it’s the law.” (Ken Jacobs)
12.30 pm, Kino Arsenal 1
Orchard Street
Orchard Street
USA 1955
27′
Director: Ken Jacobs
Presented for the first time in the originally planned half-hour cut: Avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs’s first foray into the world of cinema – a document of the vibrant Jewish neighborhood in Manhattan where Jacobs grew up.
12.30 pm, Kino Arsenal 1
El hombre nuevo
The new man
Uruguay/Chile 2015
79′
Director: Aldo Garay
At the tender age of twelve, Roberto supported the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and fought for education and social reforms. He was to continue his political struggle fighting alongside the communist Tupamaros in Uruguay. Thirty years later he is struggling to live his life as a woman named Stephanía and striving to be accepted by both society and his family. Documentary filmmaker Aldo Garay has followed Stephanía for over twenty years. In El Hombre Nuevo he provides a personal and tender portrait of a woman who can look back on a tempestuous life in which violence, drugs, prostitution and political commitment all found its place. Scenes from her day-to-day life are interspersed with interview material that includes conversations with old friends, fellow-travellers and siblings, as well as a passionate, heated exchange with her mother. The picture of society that emerges is as diverse as it is intimate, and spans a time of great political upheaval in the 1970s to the present day.
14.00 pm, Kino International
I am Michael
I am Michael
USA 2015
100′
Director: Justin Kelly
Cast: James Franco, Zachary Quinto, Emma Roberts
San Francisco in 1998. Queer activist Michael is passionately committed to supporting gay and lesbian youths. His own deep longing to belong means that he is tirelessly engaged in redefining his own existence, absorbing with apparent ease young Tyler into his long term relationship with his friend Bennett. The trio decides to travel America to record on film the lives of gay teenagers. They subsequently manage to raise the cash to launch Michael’s own LGBT magazine. But Michael isn’t happy with the way he’s living his life. Following a suspected heart attack he strives to find a way to balance sexuality and spirituality and decides to leave his chosen family and friends. After engaging in meditative contemplation and heterosexual experiments, he firmly embraces Christianity.In his sensitive directorial debut, Justin Kelly deftly juxtaposes different periods of time to describe the unusual transformation of Michael Glatze, the co-founder of the magazine ‘Young Gay America’ and a one-time inspirational figure of the LGBT community who, after prolonged and persistent soulsearching, decided to reject homosexuality and become a preacher.
14.30 pm, Cubix 9
Fassbinder – lieben ohne zu fordern
Fassbindern – to love without demands
Denmark 2015
109′
Director: Christian Braad Thomsen
Cast: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Irm Hermann, Harry Baer, Andrea Schober
Rainer Werner Fassbinder was probably Germany’s most significant post-war director. His swift and dramatic demise at the early age of 37 in 1982 left behind a vacuum in European filmmaking that has yet to be filled, as well as a body of unique, multi-layered and multifarious work of astonishing consistency and rigour. From 1969 onwards, Danish director and film historian Christian Braad Thomsen maintained a close yet respectfully distanced friendship with Fassbinder. Fassbinder – Lieben ohne zu fordern is based on his personal memories as well as a series of conversations and interviews he held with Fassbinder and his mother Lilo in the 1970s. The film also contains current interviews with Irm Hermann and Harry Baer, both of whom were close to Fassbinder. Beginning with Fassbinder’s extraordinary childhood in traumatised post-war Germany, the film, which is divided into seven chapters, provides an illuminating, intimate and moving tribute that bears witness to the
enduring relevance of both the man and his work. Today in particular his oeuvre continues to provoke us to engage with controversy and tension – be it aesthetical, creative or critical.
14.30 pm, CineStar 7
La Isla está Encantada con Ustedes
The Island is enchanted with You
USA/Switzerland/Australia 2014
28′
Director: Alexander Carver, Daniel Schmidt
Cast: Raul De Nieves, Lydela Leonor, Lea Cetera, Carlos Solis-Keyser
In 1511, indigenous people in Puerto Rico seduced and murdered a representative of colonial power. Some 300 years later, a further chapter of colonial history: In 1803, by order of the Spanish Crown, a doctor named Francisco Javier de Balmis travelled to Puerto Rico with a number of orphans. They were carriers of the live vaccine with which Balmis executed one of the first mass immunisations
against smallpox. A glance to the present day: In 2014, Puerto Rico produced an enormous amount of pharmaceuticals with subsidies from the USA. By interweaving strands of colonial and postcolonial history, the filmmakers of La Isla está Encantada con Ustedes have created a lyrical work that mirrors and completes the dynamics of power and lust. A modern roundelay, that restages the past in the present. Lead by a gaze of sexual subtext, this is a comedy in which reality is subordinate to strategies of power –while revealing the closely intertwined nature of health and economics, in the past and present.
16.00 pm, CinemaxX 5
The Mad Half Hour
The Mad Half Hour
Argentina/Denmark 2015
22′
Director: Leonardo Brzezicki
Cast: Julian Larquier, Diego Echegoyen, Laila Maltz, Martina Juncadella
Once a day, domestic cats go completely mad. A total burst of energy. It’s all over within half an hour. No one knows why. That’s just how it is.Juan is rather similar. He doesn’t know why, it just seizes him. The loss of commitment. Why should he bother to hit a ball over the net and wait for it to be returned, while making sure it stays within the white line? Does he still love Pedro, no, perhaps yes?
Pedro is used to it and takes him by the hand. They venture into the night together and stray, likes cats, through the streets of Buenos Aires. Far more than pursuing narrative logic, the film follows
human feelings without ever fully relinquishing the threads of the storyline.
16.00 pm, CinemaxX 5
Untitled (Human Mask)
Untitled (Human Mask)
France 2014
19′
Director: Pierre Huyghe
A macaque monkey, trained to work as a waitress at a restaurant in Japan, sits alone in a deserted dining hall. Waiting amid the dystopian setting for her moment to perform, the monkey seems trapped within her role, forced to enact the human condition.
16.15 pm, Kino Arsenal 1
Kumu Hina
A Place in the Middle
USA 2014
25′
Director: Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson
She feels more like a boy than even most boys. This documentary follows eleven-year-old Hawaiian girl Ho’onani who dreams of leading her school’s traditional hula group. Hula is a mixture of dance and theatrical performance that is central to the culture of the Hawaiian people and requires a lot of practice. Here too, Ho’onani would like to dance on the boys’ side. Normally she wouldn’t be allowed to do so but Ho’onani is fortunate to have as her teacher the charismatic Kumu Hina, who assigns Ho’onani a special place in the middle. In ancient Hawaii there was always a life between genders, and a place for those who embrace both men and women. Kumu Hina knows what she is talking about for, twenty years ago, she was a man. Kumu Hina uses her profound knowledge to convey to her pupils the culture of their ancestors – a culture that has not been forgotten, in spite of years of influence by Christian missionaries. The magic word is ‘aloha’, meaning a life in harmony with nature. It also means that every man and every woman should be loved, respected and valued.
17.30 pm, CinemaxX 7
Je suis Annemarie Schwarzenbach
My name is Annemarie Schwarzenbach
France 2015
85′
Director: Véronique Aubouy
Cast: Julia Perazzini, Nina Langensand, Megane Ferrat, Pauline Leprince
Annemarie Schwarzenbach was a shimmering figure of bohemian society of the 1920s. A talented writer, she was lesbian, addicted to drugs, a globetrotter, bewitchingly androgynous and – much to her domineering Nazi-loving mother’s chagrin – also anti-fascist. Berlin photographer Marianne Breslauer described her as the most beautiful creature she had ever encountered. Schwarzenbach died young at the age of 34. She remained forgotten until the 1980s when her books began to be republished and her biography reconstructed. Director Véronique Aubouy does more than merely save Annemarie Schwarzenbach from obscurity, she brings her into the present. Sixteen young actors of both genders slip into different roles in order to play Schwarzenbach, her friends and lovers. Increasingly fascinated by the pull of this figure, their oscillations between genders becomes a joint project. Something that begins as an audition in which the young actors are asked to attach their biographies to that of the writer, ends in a dance of relationships in which the borders between reality and dramatization are blurred.
17.30 pm, CineStar 7
Blood Below the Skin
Blood Below the Skin
USA 2015
32′
Director: Jennifer Reeder
Cast: Jennifer Estlin, Kelsey Ashby-Middleton, Morgan Reesh, Marissa Castillo
‘Blood Below the Skin’ chronicles a week in the lives of three teenage girls who attend the same high school class. Coming from different social circles, the girls prepare for the most important night of their life – Prom Night. They have formed a dance group and rehearse the choreography. Two of the girls are drawn to one another and fall in love. The third is forced to take care of her distraught mother in the wake of her father’s disappearance. Each girl finds refuge in her room and bed, comfort and a place to explore new feelings. The music blasting from the turntable provides a magical synchronicity between them all – the space-time continuum is expanded by the dimension of music.Jennifer Reeder tells everyday stories with stylistic elements of magic realism that recall Latin American cinema. All it takes is the power of thought in order to express your love to another.
17.45 pm, Colosseum 1
54: The Director’s Cut
54: The Director’s Cut
USA 2015
106′
Director: Mark Christopher
Cast: Ryan Philippe, Salma Hayek, Neve Campbell, Mike Myers
We’ve revolutionised going out‘, pronounces club owner Steve Rubell. At the legendary Studio 54, the mother of all nightclubs since the invention of disco, clubbing was much more than just socialising to music. In 1998, director Mark Christopher created a cinematic monument to this ostentatious mixture of Art Deco and plush, frivolous 1970s hedonism and drug-induced 24-hour party people. At the producers’ behest his film about this up-market disco in New York was changed considerably prior to its theatrical release and an extra 25 minutes of new material was added – including an ending that differed from the one in the original screenplay. Now, seventeen years after the premiere of the producers’ version, the Panorama is presenting for the first time the painstakingly reconstructed original version telling the story of young, curly-haired blond Jersey boy Shane O’Shea who loses himself in the bewitchingly glamorous world of sex, drugs and disco and who only just manages to jump ship before the club is closed down by the police. This reintegrated version is weightier, darker, more drug-addled and above all queerer than the version that received the nod at the time.
17.45 pm, CineStar 3
Eisenstein in Guanajuato
Eisenstein in Guanajuato
Netherlands/Mexico/Finland/Belgium 2015
105′
Director: Peter Greenaway
Cast: Elmer Bäck, Luis Alberti, Rasmus Slatis, Jacob Öhrmann
In 1931 the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein travels to Guanajuato to direct his film Que viva México. There he encounters a new culture and its dealings with death; he also discovers another revolution – and his own body. Peter Greenaway depicts Eisenstein as an eccentric artist who travels to Mexico filled with the hubris of being an internationally celebrated star director. Once there, he gets into difficulties with his American financier, the novelist Upton Sinclair. At the same time he begins, in the simultaneously joyful and threatening foreign land, to re-evaluate his homeland and the Stalinist regime. And, in doing so, he undergoes the transition from a conceptual filmmaker into an artist fascinated by the human condition. Under his gaze, the signs, impressions, religious and pagan
symbols of Mexican culture assemble themselves anew.Making use of extreme close-ups, splitscreens and a dramatic montage – all to enact the transformation of a hero who presents himself as a tragic clown – Greenaway deliberately quotes and modifies Eisenstein’s own cinematic tools. Scene by scene the film gets closer to Eisenstein the man, who finds himself surprised by an unexpected desire.
19.00 pm, Berlinale Palast
Haftanlage 4614
Prison System 4614
Germany 2015
60′
Director: Jan Soldat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMg9po7DP2Q
In the world of fetishes there’s a niche for every type of proclivity. Arwed caters to a special type of customer: he runs a private prison where he is happy to find all sorts of ways to bully and victimise his paying guests on the other side of the bars. As prison director he is master of ceremonies; during the course of one week, he and his partner Dennis help fulfil their prisoners’ wildest fantasies. The inmates treat the days and nights they spend in handcuffs and leg irons as a real holiday – here at last is a place they can finally switch off and relax. The role play looks a bit like improvised theatre, especially when director Arwed and his assistant Dennis plan the next day’s performance in the bare cells and corridors of their institution. But even when using the whip these ‘torturers’ never forget to be humane and, in spite of their tough prison warder guise, they are fully aware, in way that is almost caring, of their responsibility for those in ‘detention’. Director Jan Soldat poses his questions offscreen, in the same interview style that he adopted in his short films.
20.00 pm, CineStar 7
Wonderful World End
Wonderful World End
Japan 2015
82′
Director: Daigo Matsui
Cast: Ai Hashimoto, Jun Aonami, Yû Inaba, Gô Rijû
In her Gothic Lolita guise 17-year-old Shiori attracts a lot of followers for her blogcast. Whenever she can she talks about herself, offers make-up tips and is delighted at the growing number of visitors to her site. After a music video shoot, confident Shiori meets a strange young girl named Ayumi. The girl is a big fan of Shiori’s and tries to copy her style. She also seems to be rather distracted and monosyllabic, as if she had nothing of her own to say, but she has run away from home to be with Shiori. Hesitant, but also flattered, Shiori allows herself to be drawn in by this girl. This story of the odd friendship between these two girls is also a multi-coloured romp through the artificial world of Japanese teenagers. They do crazy things and dream of making it big. Their private thoughts are shared only in blogs. The film also reflects the disintegration of traditional forms of communication in its aesthetical approach: online chats pop up regularly over the proceedings. It’s as if the smartphone display has been brought to the big screen. Based on two music videos by Seiko Oomori – Shiori’s favourite female musician in the film – the drama ends like a comic book dream.
20.00 pm, HKW Kino 1
Bizarre
Bizarre
France/USA 2015
98′
Director: Étienne Faure
Cast: Pierre Prieur, Adrian James, Raquel Nave, Rebekah Underhill
Maurice, a reticent young homeless man somehow manages to get by in Brooklyn; he spends his nights in parked cars until he finds himself at ‘Bizarre’, an underground club renowned for its burlesque shows. Maurice is fascinated by the club’s playful revues celebrating self-determined sexuality and creative otherness, and the two female club owners both adore him. He soon becomes a part of their chosen family, and begins to bond with introverted Luka. But Maurice turns his back on Luka’s growing affection. Running away from his true emotions he drifts aimlessly through the city. He tries to find his feet at a boxing club, where he meets Charlie. Unable to withstand the pressure of his repressed feelings, Maurice unleashes a mounting foment of emotions, pervaded by tenderness and menace. Étienne Faure shot his film on location at ‘Bizarre’. Illuminating the promise of an independent future for his aimless escapees in the resplendent creations of ‘Bizarre’s’ artistes, Faure moulds his keenly sensitive observations of these lost, disturbed souls to form a mesmerising trance.
20.15 pm, CineStar 3
Gineva
Gineva
Switzerland 2014
43′
Director: Nicolas Cilins
Adi and Florin, two illegalized migrants from Romania, earn money working as escorts in various Geneva bars. Extracted from reality in front of a blue screen, they are reenact their own experiences and talk about their dreams of money and cinema.
20.30 pm, AKD Hanseatenweg
Viaggio nella dopo-storia
Journey into Post-History
France 2015
80′
Director: Vincent Dieutre
Cast: Simon Versnel, Vincent Dieutre, Emmanuel Pierrat
A couple travels to Italy. During their trip, the state of their relationship becomes clear to them: They argue, take different paths and wonder whether to divorce. Vincent Dieutre has remade Viaggio in Italia and adapted it to his own life. Alex and Kate have become Alex and Tom, played by Vincent himself and his partner Simon. This new couple goes to the same places, experiences similar things, but their time in Naples is inevitably not the same. The city has changed, as has the nature of relationships, tourism has become more digital. As the two become increasingly alienated, Vincent the filmmaker moves through the city with his camera. He talks about how Rossellini’s film shaped him. We hear his thoughts about a remake, notes to himself, his discussions with a copyright lawyer. Isabella Rossellini says she doesn’t want to be involved. In Vincent and Simon’s world, much like that of Tom and Alex, the procession of the final scene gives way to a football match. What was still sacred back then becomes a riot here. Yet the miracle of Rossellini’s film remains, inscribing itself on the bodies of the two men: voices superimposed on to images and images superimposed on to bodies.
21.45 pm, CinemaxX 4
Sueñan los androides
Androids Dream
Spain/Germany 2014
61′
Director: Ion de Sosa
Cast: Manolo Marín, Moisés Richart, Marta Bassols, Coque Sánchez
The year may be 2052, yet this is a future with one foot in the past. Between the strangely artificial skyscrapers along the coastline and the neon-lined broadwalk, there’s nothing here to suggest it isn’t still 1975, 1995 or 2015. But there are fewer people around nowadays and many apartments lie empty, a tranquil wasteland of exposed wires, unfinished plasterwork and endless dust. Those that remain are at least house-proud, eager to show off their knickknacks and traditional costumes, when not meeting up for the occasional dance. Hardly the most obvious place for a bounty hunter, but the robots still need to be exterminated, particularly as they already look so much like you and me. Ion de Sosa’s spare, enigmatic adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is at once a minimalist genre piece, an oblique treatise on difference and an essayistic almost-documentary on the unreal status quo of contemporary Spain. And as the title suggests, these androids do indeed dream: of far-off places and new opportunities; of the songs of past summers; of a shared embrace, a sheep on a leash, as the towers and mountains open out beyond.
22.00 pm, AKD Hanseatenweg
San Cristóbal
Saint Christopher
Chile 2015
29′
Director: Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo
Cast: Samuel González, Antonio Altamirano
Lucas and Antonio. Two young men meet and fall in love in a remote fishing village in the south of Chile. One lives there, the other is visiting. Sensuality dictates the pace of the narrative and the lives of both in the days to follow: Being one another’s mirror. Recognising one another. Yielding to one another. When the village rebels against their love, the experience of this limitation marks a momentous step in Lucas’ and Antonio’s adulthood.A simple story of love and devotion, shot in the style of Direct Cinema. A not-so-simple setting, in Chile’s Deep South, where anything that breaks out of the perceived norm is to be destroyed immediately, punished. The characters know of the limitations within the village. The romantic notion of resistance is brief; of greater importance are life and the love that is found. Going further. Going beyond the self.
22.00 pm, CinemaxX 3
Onthakan
The Blue Hour
2015
97′
Director: Anucha Boonyawatana
Cast: Atthaphan Poonsawas, Oabnithi Wiwattanawarang, Duangjai Hirunsri, Panutchai Kittisatima
Tam, a timid loner, is bullied regularly by his fellow pupils at school. He is met with similar rejection and suspicion within the narrow confines of his parents’ dingy home, where his father beats him. One day Tam arranges online to meet Phum at a derelict swimming pool. They are both looking for sex, but their encounter leaves them with a feeling of comfort and security. A close bond develops between the two boys and, before long, they are roaming the rubbish heaps and dark corners of the city together, day and night. Phum opens a door for Tam, revealing a fantastical parallel universe full of spirits and dangerous encounters. Although he feels safe and loved for the first time in his life, Tam can no longer differentiate between dream and reality and finds himself increasingly drawn into a spiral of paranoia and violence.In his feature debut Boonyawatana leads his protagonist into an ambiguous microcosm full of chasms, at the same time cleverly toying with the conventions of different genres.
20.00 pm, Zoo Palast 1
The Yes Men Are Revolting
The Yes Men Are Revolting
USA/Germany/France/Denmark/Netherlands
2014
92′
Director: Laura Nix, Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno
After almost two decades of humorous guerrilla activism against economic greed and political corruption as The Yes Men, everyday life and a crisis of identity seem to have caught up with the duo: Mike Bonanno now has a wife and children, and Andy Bichlbaum has not given up hope of a lasting relationship with his male partner. Their critical interventions, in which amongst other ruses they pretended to be spokespeople for the US Chamber of Commerce or for Shell and announced a change of tack to nonplussed members of the press have fizzled out without having had the desired effect. Growing responsibilities in their private lives have influenced their ability to stage interventions together. In spite of this they still feel a duty to oppose climate change – which far overshadows any of humanity’s other problems – with all they have. Alternating between Andy and Mike’s diary-like perspectives, this third film about The Yes Men (2009 Panorama Audience Award), describes the ups and downs of a creative friendship and takes an amusing look at the duo’s successful and not so successful interventions from 2009 to the present.
22.30 pm, CineStar 7