Third Ways in a Divided World. Utopia and Subversion

Until 1989, the ideological world of our festival ended at the European demarcation line between the two superpowers of the Cold War: the western border of the GDR. The geographical world of the festival was more generously proportioned. Filmmakers from all over the world gathered here – provided their struggle was directed the right way. This Retrospective explores side streets and back alleys, presenting the dazzling and blind spots of Leipzig’s (un-)screened flm history.

So Comrades, Come Rally! The GDR in Solidarity

International solidarity with the oppressed of the earth was not only celebrated in countless songs, but was also a moral obligation for the GDR as one of the lessons learned from National Socialism. This ran counter to a bi-partite world order in which foreign politics had to bow to geostrategic and power-political calculations.

Gudrun Krebitz_Moïa Jobin-Paré

One evening, two female artists whose works could not be more diferent at frst glance. Here: a love of language, complex characters, artistic diversity. There: shadowy fgures, minimalism in image and sound. An artists’ dialogue in which they present their flms and practices to each other and the audience.

Spinning Dreams and Beats

Monsters open their jaws, coloured dots spring from the depths – the art of animation showed its psychedelic potential early on. In 1832, movement illusions were drawn on discs – today, the phenakistiscope has long been a fxture of club culture. An intoxicating evening of optical-kinetic miracles in eight flms and a live set by Sculpture from London.

Giving a Voice

Born in Algeria and raised in France, Cabrera examines the fractures that characterise life, treating transience and dying, mental and physical illness as natural aspects of human existence. At the same time, her flms are always testimonies to her unconditional empathy with the people she portrays.

The Meeting of Creative Minds

Translucent colour planes set against porous ink strokes in rich black, idiosyncratic perspectives and expressive animation – this is the signature style that has made Isabel Herguera’s more recent flms unmistakeable. Three flm programmes and a masterclass ofer insights into her creative practice.

Odds and Ends

DOK Leipzig makes documentarist Thomas Heise’s voice heard. It survives its owner: in “Iron Age” and “Barluschke”, both of which won awards in Leipzig, and in the monumental “Heimat” flm with which his flmography ends. His voice still resonates: permeable to old and new German presents, between whose fragments it searches for a foothold and a stance.

Dear Thomas,...

Director and writer Thomas Heise was only able to make two documentary flms at DEFA: “Snack Bar Special”, begun just before the fall of the Berlin wall, and “Iron Age”, completed in 1991. His relationship with DEFA was and remained critical. Heise consistently refused to be co-opted, neither by the East nor the West nor even by a reunifed Germany.