Film Categories: Language

  • RGB

    A mantra of self-optimisation, not unlike the nervous state of mind of a new-economy entrepreneur.

  • Kitâb al-Isfâr: Book of the Journey

    An immersive cinematic poem of a seven year journey of return, Kitâb al-Isfâr: Book of the Journey weaves together stories of near-death and mystical experience in Andalucia. When I was 19 I set out, hoping I could learn the meaning of life by “experiencing everything.” I bought a car for 20 marks in a cafe in Ulm. I spray painted it yellow and green and drove it from Holland to Romania to Spain, sleeping in the back seat in a red blanket. Driving down to Malaga, at the crest of the mountains, the brakes went out. As the car sped…

  • A Kiki with Bobby Bowen

    This short documentary-style interview film takes a quick look at some key terms that originated within queer Black and POC communities (such as the ballroom scene), tracing their cultural significance to contemporary mainstream popular culture.

  • unexplained as yet

    The vernacular of gender identity is ever growing and changing, yet many continue to live beyond these definitions, defying language and category; we are unknown, akin to mythical creatures. Multiple exposures of a single roll of Super 8 film allow a brief glimpse into the heart of this chimera: to be unidentified…unexplained.

  • Contents

    An old wallet, abandoned intact, kept for unknown reasons. Uncorroborated memories of a close (but distant) relation. How are these documents speaking to each other? What is the nature of their harmony? Official versus living memory: each useless, unstable, disintegrating. Is memory the bureaucracy of the self? How does it order our lives?

  • ARTIFACT (circa 2006)

    The archaeology of Identity. Consider a world where all human communications are represented by numbers, a digital world. Imagine a future archaeologist finding a DV cassette from hundreds of years ago (a real found object, circa 2006, full length and uncut). Imagine trying to decode this ancient digital object, codecs unknown, obsolete, hardware long lost. Crack the code? Available algorithms scan, databases compare, construct, deconstruct, reconstruct the artifact. 2006, the dawn of self-by-numbers, digitized identity. What human fragments, fugitive narratives, remain? Do we have a future history? What will the algorithms decide? All bookings of this film include a free…

  • Through Foreign Eyes

    The filmmaker thought of making this poetic, mosaic documentary in a bookshop, when she came across the words of poet Manoel de Barros about “the accent of the place of our origin we carry in our eyes”. She never found the quote again, but in the course of the next few years, she carried out the project with the help of other contributors, mainly the film editor. She created a film essay combining reflections on the identity and ethnic roots of several natives of the Brazilian city of Recife, who live abroad, and the images of the places where they…

  • Heimat

    The short film “Heimat” is one story from ten stories in “Three Borders.” It is the story of the filmmaker’s father about migration and homeland. “Three Borders” is a 55-minute found-footage film reminiscent of Chris Marker’s “La Jetée” (1962). It consists of family photos of the artist and of other anonymous found (family) photos. In the style of Magic Realism, the video narrates anecdotes from the families of Alisa Berger’s Jewish father and her North Korean mother. They address the overcoming or the construction of inner and outer borders which span three generations.

  • 6 Permutations

    A trial-and-error attempt to reconcile presence and absence.

  • Dear Grandpa

    Using my grandfather’s old eight-millimetre film camera, I explore the deteriorating relationship I had with my grandfather during his final days after being diagnosed with cancer.