Was anderes machen (The Home and the Movie) | Charles Burnett: My Brother’s Wedding

silent green presents

With the festival Was anderes machen (The Home and the Movie), silent green takes the archive of Das kleine Fernsehspiel as the starting point for a historical retrospective, a description of the state and the question of the future of auteur film with events, an exhibition and a symposium. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the ZDF editorial office and the Arsenal Archive, television and film heritage will be commemorated together for the first time.

 

My Brother's Wedding, Charles Burnett, USA 1983, 115'
In this tragicomic work of realism, Pierce Mundy is employed at his parents’ South Central dry cleaners with no prospects for the future – his childhood buddies are all in prison or dead. Pierce’s best friend Soldier is just getting out of jail. Pierce’s brother Wendell, an up-and-coming lawyer, is busy planning a wedding to a snooty upper-middle-class black woman named Sonia. Pierce navigates his conflicting obligations and his mistrust of the upper crust while trying to figure out what he really wants. Pierce’s pious, bible-quoting mother provides both comic relief and a heartfelt moral backbone to the film.

"The story focuses on a young man who hasn’t made much of his life as of yet, and at a crucial point in his life, he is unable to make the proper decision, a sober decision, a moral decision. This is a consequence of his not having developed beyond the embryonic stage, socially. He has a distinct romantic notion about life in the ghetto and yet, in spite of his naive sensitivity, he is given the task of being his brother’s keeper; he feels rather than sees, and as a consequence his capacity for judging things off in the distance is limited. This brings about circumstances that weave themselves into a set of complexities which Pierce desperately tries to avoid." Charles Burnett

Introduction: Lukas Foerster

 

Filmscreening and discussion
Thursday, October 19

Kino Arsenal
Tickets

Was anderes machen (The Home and the Movie) is a project of silent green Film Feld Forschung gGmbH in cooperation with Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art and Film Studies/Media Dramaturgy at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. With the kind support of the ZDF editorial department Das Kleine Fernsehspiel. Supported by the Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin. Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.