Film talks and evening events
In a temporary TV studio within the exhibition, daily film screenings with talks will take place. There will also be a panel on the editorial history of the Kleines Fernsehspiel and one on models for making broadcast archives accessible to the public, as well as the performance CHEAP & XIU XIU TV LIVE by the CHEAP Art Collective.
Film talks
To Show Or Not To Show: Point of view (Jana Keuchel & Katharina Knust 2023)
To Show or not to Show is a film experiment by Jana Keuchel and Katharina Kunst in which filmmakers of the 60 years of Das kleine Fernsehspiel comment on and analyse both their own works and the works of others without actually ever being in the same room. “The protagonists give personal responses and offer the audience a wide and profound perspective on showing oneself and being seen in the film world,” write the filmmakers. People from diverse backgrounds come together in the film: different generations, cultural influences and views on filmmaking meet in a studio resembling an experimental set-up. We transfer the experimental set-up to the temporary stage of silent green and let the film continue to roll.
To Show or not to Show | Jana Keuchel & Katharina Knust | 2023 |103 min | Original version
Guests: Jana Keuchel, Katharina Knust, Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay, Maya Constantin, Angelika Levi, Jutta Brückner, Sarah Blaßkiewitz
Moderation: Bettina Ellerkamp & Merle Kröger
Film screening with discussion in German language
18.11. I 8 pm, TV Studio Betonhalle I Registration here
System Crasher, Revolt of the children (Nora Fingscheidt, 2019)
Nine-year-old Benni is loud, wild and unpredictable. She pushes the welfare state’s support system to the limit. “How is a child whose only continuity is change to find stability anywhere?” asks director Nora Fingscheidt. “Benni’s behaviour may be shocking but the audience is supposed to love her and fear for her.” Actress Helena Zengel manages to do just that with such force in the film System Crasher that the question is whether a child blows up the system or vice versa. In the podcast of the same name, co-host Timo Grampes, a journalist specialising in schools and inclusion, responds: “A child is never a system crasher” (Menno Baumann, Episode 1). We invite Prof. David Zimmermann, special educator focusing on trauma in childhood and adolescence, to discuss this important topic and how society deals with it. An event aimed at social workers, film and media professionals, parents, teachers and all those interested.
System Crasher | Nora Fingscheidt |120 min | 2019 | OV with English subtitles
Guests: Nora Fingscheidt, Timo Grampes, David Zimmermann, Moderation: Bettina Ellerkamp & Merle Kröger
Film screening with discussion in German language
19.11. I 4 pm, TV Studio Betonhalle I Registration here
Iracema: Tragedy of the Amazon (Jorge Bodanzky & Orlando Senna 1975)
“The industrial development of the Amazon by domestic and foreign corporations,” it says in Das kleine Fernsehspiel’s programme text in 1976, “the destruction of the primeval forest, the construction of a gigantic road system across the South American continent, the displacement and enslavement of the indigenous population through ruthless industrial expansion, the Brazilian economic miracle with its
boom of speculators and gamblers, provide the setting for the story of the fifteen- year-old Iracema.” She is the main protagonist of the documentary feature film by Jorge Bodanzky, who created a milestone of Brazilian Cinema Novo. The film is unique in its complex critique of the exploitation of people and the environment, especially indigenous peoples and women. “All the problems that Iracema exposed have intensified today,” says Bodanzky in 2022. As a guest in Berlin, a “man with the camera”, a grand old master of political cinema from Latin America.
Iracema (Iracema – Uma Transa Amazônica) |Jorge Bodanzky & Orlando Senna | 86 min | 1976 | OV with German subtitles
Guest: Jorge Bodanzky, Moderation: Bettina Ellerkamp & Merle Kröger
Film screening with discussion in German language
20.11. I 7 pm, TV Studio Betonhalle I Registration here
Anou Banou – Daughters of Utopia (Edna Politi, 1983)
Edna Politi’s debut film from 1974 bears the still provocative title: For the Palestinians: An Israeli reports. In 1981, she films a second documentary in Israel on the role of women. While the pioneering women still took part in the struggle for a new society in which they expected the right to work, autonomy and equality, the establishment of the state turns women’s liberation into a myth that contradicts lived reality. The filmmaker and graduate of the DFFB in Berlin, born “as a Jewish Lebanese woman who became an Israeli and then a French-European woman living in Geneva”, makes it her mission to explore the power of the utopian in her work, which can only be a coexistence, a life among equals. Where utopias show cracks, she raises objections. Her voice should not be absent from the discourse on the significance of a pluralistic historiography.
Anou Banou – Töchter der Utopie (Anou Banou ou les filles de l’utopie) |Edna Politi | 84 min |1983 | OV with German subtitles
Film screening
Unfortunately, the announced meeting had to be cancelled. There will be a rescheduled date, which will be communicated as soon as possible.
21.11. I 7 pm, TV Studio Betonhalle I Registration here
Bab el-Oued City: Chronicle of the present day (Merzak Allouache, 1994)
In 1993, when Merzak Allouache was making a film, Algeria was at the onset of a bleak decade during which the state secret service and fundamentalist Islamic groups were engaged in a bitter war at the expense of the civilian population. Nonetheless, through the story of Boualem the baker, who rips out the muezzin’s loudspeaker and dumps it into the sea because he can’t sleep, Alloauche takes a close look at the neighbourhood where he was born. Full of sympathy and humour, this look at Algeria’s postcolonial present day characterises the filmmaker’s style. His work reflects this present day on the screens of Cannes and Venice and becomes an important voice of world cinema, putting into perspective typical media representation of young men from North Africa: Be it the nameless refugees on rubber dinghies to whom he dedicated Harragas or the jihadists he talks about in Le Repenti and Vent Divine. In conversation with the filmmaker as chronicler, his work as an archive of contemporary history.
Bab el-Oued City | Merzak Allouache | 91 min | 1994 | OV with German subtitles
Film screening
Unfortunately, the announced discussion had to be cancelled.
22.11. I 7 pm, TV Studio Betonhalle I Registration here
Yalda: Reflection of Reality (Massoud Bakhshi, 2022)
After much international success as a documentary filmmaker, director Massoud Bakshi’s feature film debut A Respectable Family shifts the gaze to within the family, mirroring the political reality outside. In his second film in 2018, based on an Iranian reality show, he stages a drama that unfolds one evening in a TV studio. The guest on the live show is Maryam, sentenced to death for the murder of an elderly family friend with whom she had a so-called “temporary marriage”. Seated across from her is Mona, his adult daughter, who has the power to decide over life and death, while the audience is invited to televote via SMS. With this film too, Bakshi, who lives in Tehran, skilfully uses the film as a mirror that confronts the audience with itself in the role of judge. The discussion will focus on how contemporary cinema can provide a glimpse into the future of media reality.
Yalda (Yalda, la nuit du pardon) | Massoud Bakhshi | 82 min | 2022 | OV with German subtitles
Guest: Massoud Bakhshi, Moderation: Bettina Ellerkamp & Merle Kröger
Film screening (Original version with German subtitles) with discussion in English language
23.11. I 7 pm, TV Studio Betonhalle I Registration here
The Snake in my Bed: Poetry of Rebellion (Omah Diegu, 1992)
The living archive: Only in recent years has the group of independent African, Caribbean and African-American filmmakers from the 1970s and ‘80s at UCLA, who countered American mainstream with a New Black Cinema, been in the spotlight of film history. The artist and filmmaker Omah Diegu from Nigeria made the autobiographical short film African Woman U.S.A. in 1980, which addresses the subject of immigration to the USA. She followed this up with her essay film from 1995, in which she tells her son Ozim the story of his origins. This begins in Nigeria with the director’s marriage to
a German engineer. But it soon becomes clear: He is already married and refuses to acknowledge the child. So she travels to Germany to register her son there. A film like a revolutionary song that declares war on racism and misogyny by means of poetry. With Omah Diegu, an icon of the L.A. Rebellion, will be in Berlin.
The Snake in my Bed | Omah Diegu | 86 min |1995 | OV with German subtitles
Guest: Omah Diegu, Moderation: Bettina Ellerkamp & Merle Kröger
Film screening(German original version) with discussion in English language
24.11. I 7 pm, TV Studio Betonhalle I Registration here
Panels
Was anderes machen: Fernsehen der Zukunft
Researching the editorial history of Das kleine Fernsehspiel means taking an excursion into the political and cultural currents of contemporary history. 1963 to 2023, these were six decades full of change: of systems, of world order(s), of gender relations, of relationships between the global South and North, of media reality, of technical development, of demographics, etc. Kathrin Brinkmann undertakes this excursion from an inside-outside perspective, looking at the films in the exhibition as a consulting curator. This will be followed by a discussion with the editorial department’s former editor in chief Claudia Tronnier and the current head Burkhard Althoff. We invite you on a journey into the past, where the television of the future was created.
Talk: Kathrin Brinkmann, Guests: Burkhard Althoff, Claudia Tronnier, Moderation: Bettina Ellerkamp & Merlin Kröger
17.11. I 7 pm, TV Studio Betonhalle I Registration here
Right of public Access IV: The Foundation stone for a Libaray of Images
26.11. I 11 am–4pm, TV Studio Betonhalle I Registration here
Part 1: From programme assets to the library model, 11 am–1 pm
A lot of work is currently being done in the background on the future of digital public broadcasting in Germany: What are the key tasks - information, entertainment, local reporting? How can new structures and distribution models be created? What could a uniform digital programme of the “public broadcasters” look like? Often left out are the enormous archives of the radio stations. How can this common cultural heritage and these"programme assets", financed by the mandatory broadcasting contributions for all citizens, companies, institutions and public welfare organisations in Germany, be made accessible to everyone in the future? Viable models need to be found that, based on a royalty model - similar to that for books - do not undermine copyright law, but aim to provide non-commercial educational opportunities for the broad spectrum of society.
11 am Keynote with Bart van der Linden (Editor-In-Chief, Sound & Vision Museum, NL)
11:30 am–1 pm Discussion with Klaudia Wick (Head of Television and Library, Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek ), Rabea Limbach (Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv) and Bart van der Linden
Moderation: Vivien Buchhorn & Merle Kröger
Part 2: World (cinema) cultural heritage: the transnational archive of Das kleine Fernsehspiel , 2 pm – 4 pm
With more than 1,500 co-productions spanning six decades, the archive of Das kleine Fernsehspiel is a cultural heritage comprising major film works from Germany and the world. As a model project of public assets, this archive should become a living archive in the future, accessible for research and academia, for restorative and curatorial projects and for film education. For this, cooperation between different institutions and a common financial and structural vision are essential. Such a pilot project could lay the foundational stone for a prospective library of images.
Discussion with: Burkhard Althoff (Editor in chief of ZDF – Das kleine Fernsehspiel), Prof. Alexandra Schneider (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz), Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (Artistic Director Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art), Vivien Buchhorn (Curator of Shahid Saless Archives)
Moderation: Bettina Ellerkamp & Merle Kröger
Performance
CHEAP & XIU XIU TV LIVE
“Home is where the heart is” is one of those kitschy, nostalgic slogans that calls forth the warm fuzzies of an evening with the family in front of the TV set watching mindless entertainment as an excuse to be together. “Homo is the where the heart is,” equally kitschy, attempts to subvert the heteronormativity of the first slogan so as to open up domestic space to the possibilities of queer difference. CHEAP & XIU XIU TV LIVE is a live television talk show that will make you long for those cuddly nights of yesterday spent on the sofa in front of some queer experimental midnight movie on late night TV. Use us as an excuse to be together with those you love.
With: Jonathan Berger, Maximilian Brauer, Vaginal Davis, Mischa Leinkauf, Susanne Sachsse, Angela Seo, Marc Siegel, Martin Siemann, Pola Sieverding, and Jamie Stewart.
25.11. I 8 pm, TV Studio Betonhalle I – fully booked! –
