contact: th.george(at)posteo.de
Kasseler Dokfest (2021-24)
Curation for short and mid-length film compilations*** 2021 ***
Open Skies and Stealthy Retreats The line between what is civil and military is blurred. Hybrid wars – with unclear fronts and opaque actors – are only the most obvious evidence of this. But ‘war culture’ has a much more far-reaching influence. It is part of our language, our music, fashion and architecture, our desires, bodies, movements and gazes. Not even the sky remains untouched by it.
Silence Along the River (2021) Sherko Abbas, Iraq, 7:02
Contraindre (2020), Antoine Fontaine & Galdric Fleury, France, 11:00
Gander Islands (2020), Myriam Yates, Canada, 14:40
Hauptmann Lupo (2021), Jan Soldat, Germany/ Austria, 10:41
Just Apologies (2020), Avi Krispin, Israel, 6:00
Now, if you look at the Sky (2021), Maissa Maatouk, Lebanon, 11:57
Paracapitalism (together with Azin Feizabadi) About 100 years ago Max Weber identified the demystification of the world through science and rationality. The program PARACAPITIALISM doubts that and exhibits how capital and technology enter ever new liaisons with the supernatural. Witchcraft seems to be a neoliberal vocation; fancy devices conjure unknown spirits. But even beyond spiritistic circles,“the eerie” (Mark Fisher) resonates like hell. Ghosts circulate globally, abandoned commodities haunt us forever, while the “invisible hand of the market” is pulling the strings.
Hexenwerk (2021), Laura Heinig, Germany,20:33
Horror Vacui (2020), Fritz Polzer, Canada, 12:30
S P A C E L A N D (2020), Caitlin Ryan, 7:04
Er is een geest van mij (2021), Mateo Vega, Netherlands/ Peru 6:00
Abisal (2021), Alejandro Alonso, France/ Cuba, 30:00
Public Interventions (together with Afsun Moshiry, in collaboration with the Institute of Political Science Kassel ) Public spaces always have a history. They trace political struggles and interventions long forgotten or invisible to those unknowing. The films of this program utilize several means to oppose this public oblivion. They thematize poverty, racism, and segregation by acutely localizing them as they confront their political present with their past and their future. All films aspire to raise consciousness for power relations usually tangible only for those suffering under them. (Esra Sönmez, Maximilian Pichl)
Fronteras Visibles (versión discursiva) (2021), Christian Diaz Orejarena, Germany/ Colombia, 16:17
MADRID, MALA VIDA (2021), Ignacio Ruiz, Isabela Bianchi, María Gómez, Pablo Adiego Almudevar, Spain, 13:00
The Door of Return (2021), Anna Zhukovets & Kokutekeleza Musebeni, Germany, 29:58
I Tried to Shout with Them (2020), Nafiseh Moshashaeh, France/ Iran, 9:40
Time and Tides (together with Jessica Manstetten) The tide is turning: in the Mississippi Delta, the water is engulfing more and more swampland and marshland. In Lusatia, by contrast, mining pits are being flooded on purpose. The thinking in these two regions seem to have something in common: it begins from the end. Whether it is the end of industrial culture or the collapse of an ecosystem – it also means the final cessation of the desire to measure, map and control the world once and for all. The two films in this program go without nostalgia, but also without a bright visions of the future.
Sweat (2020), Elsa Brès, France, 29:59
Derweil (2021), Samuel Parkes Heinrichs, Germany, 43:12
*** 2022 ***
Of Each Other Closeness sometimes reveals itself through separation and difference. In ACORDATE DAME UN BESO AL DESPERTAR, Estefanía Clotti reads a series of letters and notes that her family members have left each other over the years, while in SEKUNDENARBEITEN, a filmmaker and a painter get close through different modes of expression. In ELLE we watch father and child taking the freedom to make their own acquaintances in the park one day. And MADRUGADA shows a final farewell: A mother leaves and to those left behind only vague gestures and isolated words remain to tell a story. What do we have, learn, and know of each other?
Acordate dame un beso al despertar(2021), Estefanía Clotti, Argentina, 23:45
Sekundenarbeiten (2021), Christiana Perschon, Austria, 14:00
ELLE (2021), Luise Donschen, Germany, 14:00
Madrugada (2021), Leonor Noivo, Portugal, 28:50
Immersive Powers Our gaze calms down. It follows the thin wisp of smoke and wanders up to the sky. There we see a flock of birds, a firework, or the looming dawn. Something ends, something else begins. Was there a melody? Footsteps rustle in the branches, lovely monsters join in. We step inside. Our breath steadies, and the traffic on the winding motorways falls silent, too. What we cannot see anymore, we will feel.
SSRC (2022), Yalda Afsah, Germany, 20:05
野草丛生 (SOLASTALGIA, 2022), Weipeng Huang, China, 14:25
美女與野獸 (Beauty & the Beasts, 2021) Äggie Pak Yee Lee, Hong Kong/ Estland, 3:32
Sarson ka Saag (2022 ), Karan Talwar, India, 9:26
MARS EXALTÉ (2021), Jean-Sébastien Chauvin, France, 17:50
Sonic Teachings Being silent, listening, formulating, and pronouncing correctly. Hitting the chords, keeping the rhythm, and finding the genre. Our auditive education goes deep. It starts early and never ends, it is part of our bodies and of our cultures. The desire to detach oneself from it is inscribed in the program SONIC TEACHINGS. Four idiosyncratic films rebel against boundaries drawn with a red pen: We hear the permanent sound of being deaf, listen to music history through vibrating bodies, celebrate the vibrance of language and are finally driven by jazz beats into the vastness of the Georgian mountains.
SilencioVozRuido (2021), Gonzalo Lugon, Peru, 9:28
Leiyla and the Poet – da la la la ti-ra-ta (2021), Jasmina Hanaa Metwaly, Germany, 27:15
eine Wohlverzogene (2021), Moira Zoitl, Germany/ India/ Austria, 18:40
ვიდინოთ! Let us flow! (2022), Sophio Medoidze, Georgia/UK, 24:09
*** 2023 ***
We Are Here Past and present wars and crises are overwhelming. The suffering they evoke is unimaginable. Many wounds remain unhealed, hopes are disappointed a million times and the inclination to give up becomes stronger. The program WE ARE HERE is meant to encourage people to become political again with interest and passion, humor and creativity. Don't pull back now, take a chance.
Promise to Love Me All (2023), Jacques Sorrentini Zibjan, France, 9:19
My Uncle from Kabylia (2022), Leila Touati, France, 5:11
دارتاش – Dartaş (Carpenter 2023), Xelîl Sehragerd, Iran, 13:52
فجأة قناة (Suddenly TV, 2022) Roopa Gogineni, Sudan/ Qatar, 18:41
Ich bin da (2023), Franca Marquardt& Viktoria Lukina, Germany, 20:36
My Eyes are my Voice “My Eyes Are my Voice”, says the protagonist in CABBAGE, not only summarizing his way of communicating, but also defining the convoluted thread of this short film program: We observe a woman video-monitoring herself, see a tribute to Taiwanese karaoke culture in which text has become voice, listen to an archive of old answering machine messages that encourage us to envision own images, and finally encounter the words that lent the program its name.
Ring (2023), Tanita Olbrich, Germany/Japan, 9:11
Inner Need of Karaoke (2023), Radek Ševčík, Petr Chromčák, Czech Republic, 8:45
Infinite Distances (2022), Pablo Alvarez-Mesa, Canada, 24:38
Cabbage (2023), Holly Márie Parnell, Ireland/ Canada/ UK, 25:41
The Revolution Has Begun Here, Now From the anarchist Tolstoy College on a U.S. campus in the 1960s, and the political struggles of guest workers in the Federal Republic of Germany a decade or two later, to the subsequent revolution in 1989 – many political struggles against authoritarian conditions were courageously waged, many of them failed, and yet made a difference. The program pays tribute to them, speculates and thereby transforms our view of the past that forms our future.
Growing Up Absurd (2022), Ben Balcom & Julie Niemi, USA, 15:04
BOND (2023), Anna Witt & Jugendforum Gröpelingen, Germany, 28:40
Es gibt keine Angst (2023), Anna Zett, Germany, 31:29
Flight Proposal (together with Matti Ullrich) Outside the window, the young birds hatch and PROCÈS-VERBAL begins. Between nest and desk, a protocol evolves that turns everyday life into poetry. In UP THE RIVER WITH ACID, poetry offers the opportunity to grasp the long life a couple has shared. He now is suffering from dementia – his body still there, but “the subtlety of his intelligence” already lost. She opens the windows in the morning and writes about the process of dying that she is witnessing. Both stand together and remember the river where they met. (Matti Ullrich, Theresa George)
Procès-verbal (2023), Matthew Wolkow, Canada, 5:18
Up the River with Acid (2023), Harald Hutter, France, 63:03
***2024***
Care Frictions Database maintenance, grocery shopping, cooking, feeding algorithms, cooling down fears, repairing what’s broken, filling in cracks, keeping track. Overall, caretaking remains a time-consuming, stressful and burdensome side effect of the technological progress. In the films of this program, they stretch time, repeat themselves over an over, flicker. And then, eventually they stop to be a mere disruption. They become the essence in which we recognize ourselves.
Ajar (2024), Kanthy Peng, China, 14:59
Wind (2023), Mike Hoolboom, Canada, 8:15
The Electric Kiss (2023), Rainer Kohlberger, Austria/Germany, 18:00
Felicidade numa panela (2024), Clara Jost, Portugal, 19:09
Missing Images (Screening and Performance) The world seems to be flooded by images and yet so many are missing. They were forgotten, forbidden, burned and banned. We cannot imagine, rediscover or remember them. MISSING IMAGES summons a few of them. Between fragments, an idea timidly emerges: while flipping the book page, while changing the side of the vinyl record and with each click of the slide projector.
休息一下 (Break no 1 & Break no. 2, 2024), Lei Lei, China, 17:32
Cinema Rex: Die Geschichte von Feuer & Projektion (Lecture Performance, 2017-2023), Azin Feizabadi, Germany, 35:00
Zwillinge (2024), Luisa Greenfield, Germany, 11:10
Life Insurances People always die. Especially on screen. The cinema- deceased transform according to genre; their death is business and as unfreed from patriarchy as life. So, the advice from writer Langston Hughes comes at just the right time: “Birthing is hard, and dying is mean – so get yourself a little loving in between.”
Pistoleras (2023), Natalia del Mar Kašik, Austria, 2:00
Die schöne Tote (2024), Jan Soldat, Germany/ Austria, 6:44
Servicio necrológico para usted (2023), María Salafranca, Cuba, 11:52
Loving in between (2023), Jyoti Mistry, Austria/ South Africa, 18:00
Tudo Que Vi Era o Sol (2023), Leonardo Amaral & Ralph Antunes & Pedro Maia de Brito, 20:46
BaLi Cinema Kassel