April 16, May 14, May 28, 6.30 pm

Film program

Join in.

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compiled by Madeleine Bernstorff

Mach’s mit (Join in): with this explicitly cheerful challenge I would like to put up for discussion our voluntary participation in processes of monopolization—as witnessed by four films screened on three evenings. The films digress a bit, but thus hit the mark all the more accurately in the controversial project of not letting oneself be taken possession of by others and their interests. Each investigates in its own way the social aspect and how it is coming under attack by increasingly unscrupulous players.
The reflexive direct-cinema-style study of the modeling and advertising industry in Frederick Wiseman’s «Model» (1980) explores the work involved in producing «good looks», while the intervention «Glückwünsche» («Best Wishes») by the group «MeineAkademie» at the VW (=Volkswagen) Library parodies the affirmative image policies involved in the corporate restructuring of the universities in 2006. In their film «Schuldnerberichte» («Debtor Reports», 2002), Stefan Hayn and Anja-Christin Remmert take radical stock of private crises unwinding in today’s neoliberalist social conditions, and in «Malerei Heute» («Painting Today,» 2005) they conflate advertisingspeak with government policymaking, communicated in a painterly-filmic manner. … >>