At the turn of 1961/62, Agnès Varda travelled to Cuba and saw a country that integrated Marx and Lenin into the everyday life of the Caribbean. Cha-cha-cha was part of it, but also cars à l’américaine. At her Parisian animation stand, Varda animated the black and white photos she had brought back home in an almost jaunty photo film. Chris Marker, her close friend from the Rive Gauche circle of the French Nouvelle Vague, had just paved the way for this cinematic form. They also shared an enthusiasm for the Cuban Revolution – and finally even a bit of Leipzig festival experience: In 1964, Varda’s moving photo montage won the Silver Dove. Despite or because of the subtle irony with which she looks at this somewhat improvised socialism?

On a train to Rostov-on-Don in 1980, Malian-Mauritanian bursary holder Abderrahmane Sissako met the Angolan Afonso Baribanga, who had also been sent to the USSR. Both are supposed to learn Russian. Sissako studied film directing at the WGIK in Moscow, while Baribanga pursued a different career and eventually returned to Angola, where a post-colonial civil war was raging. Years later, Sissako sets off in search of his vanished friend, travelling to his own and Baribanga’s African homelands, where the old and new world powers have left devastating traces. In 1997, in a side section, DOK Leipzig presented the feature-length version of Sissako’s travelogue, which is steeped in contemporary and colonial history. The 2024 Retrospective presents an abridged version.

This still controversial ethnofiction is one of Jean Rouch’s most famous films. It stages followers of the Hauka cult in Ghana incorporating their colonial masters to marching music imported from Europe. The disturbing work was released at the same time as the first Leipzig festival year, but would have gone beyond the scope of the “Culture and Documentary Film Week”. This was because the festival did not adopt an international focus until 1960. Nevertheless, Rouch floats through Leipzig’s festival history as an inspiring genius: He is regarded as the founder of Cinéma-Vérité, a documentary concept that was pursued with great interest in Leipzig, and he irritated the colonial gaze by encouraging African filmmakers to determine the images of their continent themselves.