We will open the
anniversary edition of the festival with a short film program that presents
versatile documentary forms and approaches and possibly already allows us to
draw initial conclusions to these questions. How do images shape our
imagination and what limits do they set? Who has the interpretational
sovereignty over the images that influence us on a daily basis? And what
dimensions will these questions develop in a future in which image production
will be increasingly determined by AI?
The images we
encounter on the screen today are creations of artists, journalists or
machines. They are researched, constructed, appropriated, animated or compiled.
How we see and read them determines their meaning. The program is framed by two
films from the festival archive. The first is by Bjørn Melhus, the last by
Rotraut Pape. In their films, both filmmakers offer visions that, like the new
works that complete the opening program, challenge ingrained ways of seeing.
They all make us realize that, despite our doubts about the credibility of
images in general, we depend on them. Through them we express ourselves, they
represent and document, and encourage us to learn. They let us dream and
celebrate.
Rerun
of the short film compilation on Nov. 15, 3:30 pm at BALi cinemas
This work was visionary a good 30 years ago and focused on the important questions related to image, attribution and media. “A young man tries in vain to enter into a dialog with his female reflection on the television screen. After a brief flirt based on the German version of the 1950 Western romance, “Broken Arrow”, his desirable alter ego vanishes again. A satire about the paradoxical fascination contemporary culture cultivates for images and a hyped sense of self, Bjørn Melhus’ early video THE MAGIC GLASS hints at how media ‘mirrors’ our phantasies, replacing human interaction with virtual reality.” (Transmediale, 2019)
Since 1990, films and installation works by Bjørn Melhus have been part of the Kassel Dokfest. As a professor for “Virtual Realities” at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, he has also interested countless students in the festival since 2002. In 2018 he was presented with the Honorary Award of the Kassel Dokfest.
… >>>
What do abortions look like? What kind of images shape our perceptions of them? And where do they come from? From a feminist perspective, Franzis Kabisch’s desktop video essay GETTY ABORTIONS examines how German-language media illustrate the topic of abortion, clicking through stock photo databases, BRAVO Girl magazines, and private documents of a real abortion experience. The film jumps from the early 2000s to the late 19th century, interrogates feminist knowledge treasures and chats with fictional characters – above all, the question is: Why doesn’t anyone actually look into the camera?… >>>
Nominated:
Goldener Key
- Director: Franzis Kabisch
The short animation raises the question of whether an artificial intelligence can become a co-author in a creative process. In this experiment, different AIs work together and are given increasing freedom of design. This shows how vague or, in some cases, very narrow our conception of images and concepts is. A study on the work of art in the age of its technical generateability.… >>>
Premiere:
World Premiere
- Director: Eleonora Dieterichs
HARDLY WORKING sheds light on extras from the computer game “Red Dead Redemption 2”: NPCs (non-player characters). The non-player characters create a sense of normality in the digital world. With ethnographic precision, the film observes a laundress, a stable boy, a street sweeper and a carpenter in their daily routine. Their repetitive activity patterns are only interrupted by bugs. The voice-over analyzes the work of these Sisyphus machines in terms of meaningfulness and resistance in the age of capitalism.… >>>
"Deliver, deliver, deliver, deliver, I'm your delivery deliver, I'm your deliver delivery deliver ... I deliver everything!" raps the “Delivery Heroine” in the battered quarterback dress in some kind of basement storage room. She "delivers'" the sound of a rebellious exhaustion in a world increasingly determined by algorithms and AI in the service of a turbo-accelerated platform capitalism, where everything, without exception, threatens to become a commodity, and we all become breathless suppliers. The limit of growth, which has long since been exceeded, is wonderfully performed and questioned here.… >>>
- Director: Stefan Panhans, Andrea Winkler
At first, POWERNAPPER’S PARADISE leads us down a wrong track. We see people in the Philippines sleeping at their workplace, be it at the cash register, in the office or simply on the street. Gradually, however, it becomes clear that this is part of a culture that opposes the pressure to perform of Western society with a different concept and views the notion of happiness from a fundamentally different perspective.… >>>
- Director: Samir Arabzadeh
