Curated by Sarnt Utamachote, Popo Fan and Ragil Huda
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
How can a new kind of cinema be collectively created within a transnational society? SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, the cinema-experiment by bi’bak, explores cinema as a space of social discourse, exchange, and solidarity. The curated film series brings together diverse social communities and connects places both near and geographically distant; it links pasts, presents and futures and moves away from a eurocentric gaze towards transnational, (post-)migrant and postcolonial perspectives. SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA is a different kind of cinema, one simultaneously committed to local and international communities, that understands cinema as an important public sphere of sociality; it considers film history as crucial to the work of cultural memory and is committed to a diversity of film culture and film art. In Haus der Statistik at Berlin-Alexanderplatz, SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA builds a bridge between urban practice and film to create a space that opens access, stimulates discussion, educates, moves, provokes and encourages.
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA is funded by Haupstadtkulturfonds, Conrad Stiftung and the Programm NEUSTART KULTUR
Past event series can be found in the archive.
Curated by Sarnt Utamachote, Popo Fan and Ragil Huda
Berlinale Forum Special Programme
Curated by Can Sungu, Karina Griffith, Jacqueline Nsiah, Biene Pilavci and Enoka Ayemba
Children's cinema from SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
Concept by Malve Lippmann and Dr. Martin Ganguly
Curated by LaborBerlin e.V.
LaborBerlin´s vitality comes from the shared interest in sustaining a collective space built around practices involving photo-chemical film. This space is constantly in flux thanks to the people who pass through it, their various perspectives, and origins. Out of Focus LaborBerlin is a film series that approaches the laboratory as a transitory place. On five evenings, the limits of the collective’s visible structure will be explored. Join us for conversations with and works by current and former members exploring themes and perspectives beyond actual analogue film-making itself.
Funded by Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa and is part of Draussenstadt
LaborBerlin e.V. is a self-organized space for working with film. The collective is open to anyone interested in an experimental approach to analogue film practice. LaborBerlin is a platform for the exchange of ideas and experiences of film making, and provides all the tools necessary to its members.
Iranian Cinema Before 1979
Curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht
Curated by Can Sungu and Malve Lippmann
Cinema beyond the Screen
un.thai.tled Film Festival 2021
Curated by Sarnt Utamachote and Rosalia Namsai Engchuan
Feminist Gestures in Film
Curated by Pia Chakraverti-Würthwein & Eirini Fountedaki
Archive screenings with films from Navina Sundaram
Curated by Merle Kröger and Mareike Bernien
Symposium, Screenings, Talks
(Post-)Yugoslavian experiences
Curated by Borjana Gaković and Madeleine Bernstorff
Curated by Darunee Terdtoontaveedej
Perspectives from the South
Curated by Nafiseh Fathollahzadeh and Berke Göl
Curated by Jade Barget and Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee
A program by C/LENS in cooperation with Sinema Transtopia
Curated by Tang Xuedan (Echo)
OV with English subs
Followed by a talk with Bernd Lützeler
Bernd Lützeler lives and works as an artist and filmmaker between Berlin and Mumbai. With his films, installations and expanded cinema works he explores techniques of moving image production and presentation in relation to film aesthetics and perception. Another major influence on his work is popular Indian culture, often juxtaposed against the dystopian backdrop of a contemporary urban India. Bernd's works have been shown at venues and festivals worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Berlin International Film Festival, Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival and Views from the Avant-Garde to name just a few.
OV with English subs
Followed by a talk with Philip Widmann and Siska
Independence Day: A work in progress
Siska, 2011/2012, 7 min. Super8
with live audio by Christian Blumberg
Latent Border(s) - (Extract)
Siska, 2019, 5 min, 16mm
In the Ruins of Baalbeck Studios
Siska, 2017, 47 min, 16mm & Super8 transferred to HD
Despite carrying a city name in its title, LaborBerlin has always invoked other places. Places of origin and possibility, of partnership and ongoing collaboration. For many, Berlin is but one of a multiplicity of places that defines their everyday lives, and its importance in relation to cities from A to Z is ever changing. In Berlin and its laboratory, the factual presence of these other places remains at times unseen or unacknowledged, unless they become objects of films or direct artistic exchanges. Philip Widmann has invited artist and filmmaker Siska for a cine-conversation on the universal periphery that these place relations constitute. Siska was a member of LaborBerlin for a brief time around 2010, when he was still commuting between his native Beirut and Berlin. He continues to work on Super 8 and 16mm, moving between amateurism, cinema screens and exhibition spaces, exploring the visual and spatial histories of Beirut and Berlin, among others.
Philip Widmann makes films, texts, and film programmes at the intersection of experimental documentary cinema, science, and visual art. His film and video work has been shown in various film festivals and art spaces, including Berlinale, IFF Rotterdam, New York FF, Yamagata International Documentary FF, FID Marseille, Videonale Bonn, Wexner Center for the Arts, and others. He has also selected film programmes for Arkipel Jakarta, Image Forum Tokyo, Kassel Dokfest and others. Philip has been a member of LaborBerlin since 2009.
Siska’s practice is often centered on archiveology examining sociopolitical narratives in relation to personal and collective pasts. His use of film language and cinematographic codes, as strategic mediations to activate archival material, allows him to experiment with new forms of storytelling and his own biography. Siska's work has been internationally exhibited, such as at Martin Gropius Bau, Paris 104, Beirut Exhibition Center, Mosaic Rooms London.
OV with English subs
Film screening with a performance by Ilker Abay and François Régis, moderated by Nora Molitor
Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst und das ist…
Der Maler im Wedding (Hans-Hendrik Grimmling)
Laurence Favre, Germany 2020, 5 Min., Super 8, OV
Portrait of Pauli, tattooing session
Ludovic DeOliveira, Germany 2020, 3 Min., Super 8, OV
Around LoBe (Dave von der Heyden)
Bea MacDonald, Germany 2020, 3 Min., Super 8, OV
Werkstätten (KFZ-Gutachterbüro Ali Mroué)
Nora Molitor, Germany 2020, 3 Min., Super 8, OV
Der Kiezkönig (Frankie)
Misha Bours, Germany 2020, 3 Min., Super 8, OV
Sunkiez
Kornél Szilágyi alias Igor Buharov, Germany 2020, 3 Min. Super 8
Die Fremdenverführerin
Jan Eilhardt, Germany 2021, 3 Min., Super 8, OV
Untitled
Michael Abt, Germany 2021, 3 Min., Super 8, OV
Messpunkt
Jack Hogan, Germany 2021, 6 Min., Super 8, OV
Millionärsbrücke
Pilar Falco, Germany 2021, 3 Min., Super 8, OV
In August 2020, a group of more or less eccentric people and places came together under the motto "Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst und das ist…" (I spy with my little eye...). Six filmmakers - three of them LaborBerlin members - set out to explore the Badstraßenkiez in Wedding. Equipped with a Super 8 camera and a sound recorder, they portrayed people who live and work in the neighborhood. In the third edition of Out of Focus LaborBerlin, we will show these cinematic portraits as works-in-progress accompanied by a live soundtrack and performance. We invite you to reflect on the relationship between laboratory and film, collective and individual, protagonists and filmmakers in a city that has more than one center.
eccentric*
Ilker Abay is a filmmaker, actor and the artistic project manager of AUCH - Nachbarschaft ist Kunst. Nora Molitor is a cultural studies scholar, both a workshop organizer and workshop participant, and member of LaborBerlin e.V., Francois Régis is a composer and musician. As a child his only excuse not to play football with his friends was this: to play the piano.
OV with English subs
A film evening presented by Sophie Watzlawick. Followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.
After being exposed, analog film images initially remain invisible. In the phase between recording and chemical treatment, the images are called latent: an image in the making, in a place of transition between diffuse memory and illusory projection. The program L'image latente consists of eight films in which the filmmakers, open to surprises, enter into dialogue with the images. In this open-endedness, undreamed-of new worlds emerge that move metaphorically around the latent image – from the bottom of the sea to outer space – and explore the invisible in the visible.
Fultu Faltu Filim
Bernd Lützeler, 2018, 2 min., 35mm
Sillage #2
Aurélie Percevault & Antoine Ledroit, 2014, 5 min., 16mm
L’étoile de mer
Maya Schweizer, 2019, 11 min., HD
H(I)J
Guillaume Cailleau, 2009, 6 min., 16mm
Grrr
Manque la Banca. 2012, 10 min., 16mm/HD
Ich bin 33
Jan Peters, 2000, 3 min., Super8
Dark Matter
Lucile Desamory, 2010, 7 min., Super8/HD
I don't think I can see an Island
Emmanuel Lefrant/Christopher Becks, 2016 , 4 min., 35mm/HD
Sophie Watzlawick is an artist living in Berlin. Her handmade films are situated between concrete everydayness and cosmic worlds. They are based on visual-acoustic experiments and philosophical narratives. In her works she invites us to see events that are commonly perceived as static in a new way and to wander the borderlands between the hidden and the visible.
Director Luciana Mazeto / Vinícius Lopes Brazil 2020
36 Min., 16mm / Super-8 bw, OV with English subs
Followed by a talk with Minze Tummescheit
Following the screening reading with Ilhami Peker and online talk with the filmmakers, moderated by Minze Tummescheit.
In Teewald, Brazil, a small settlement founded by German emigrants at the end of the 19th century, national identity is a complex issue. After several generations, the inhabitants still speak the language of their ancestors and celebrate a traditional festival every year to proudly proclaim the strength of their German roots.
Painterly 16mm images of factories, landscapes, and festivals, all processed through multiple recopying and outmoded coloring techniques such as toning, take the viewer to a seemingly distant time from which stories of a harsh and fearful colonization originate. The filmmakers confront these stories with the contemporary narrative of the German-Turkish author Ilhami Peker, who, upon visiting Teewald, draws parallels to the migration history of his own family. Through this clever construction, the film calls into question the ongoing defense of a perceived national identity.
Minze Tummescheit reflects on social and economic issues in her experimental documentary works, which include lectures, performances, installations, and films. Based on interdisciplinary artistic research, her works transcend classical genre boundaries and are represented in both film festivals and art exhibitions. She is copine of cinéma copains [BH1] and has been a member of LaborBerlin since 2009.
