07.04.2017 | Films in the programme
The 14th Hamburg Documentary Film Week takes place from 19 to 23 April. Four subsidised productions will also be presented in the Dokland Hamburg section.
"We open up new perspectives on Documentary and create space for discussion and discourse," the organisers write about the festival. They are hoping for "resistance, tensions and a change of perspective, because the question of how reality is conveyed by the media seems more relevant than ever."
This canon also includes the four sponsored projects that will be performed at the festival this year:
Philipp Hartmann,D 2016, 98 min, German OF
With his essay filmTime flies like a roaring lion Philipp Hartmann set off from Hamburg on a year-long tour of Germany. In his luggage was a specially purchased compact camera, with which he explored the country's cinema venues. Whether in the Alpirsbach monastery cinema, the Munich Werkstatt-Kino or the Meldorf Verzehrkino, Hartmann encountered charming, individualistic people of conviction who keep cinema as a cultural asset alive. The upheavals in the industry also become visible. The 35mm projectors are gathering dust in the screening rooms, but the digitalisation that has taken place everywhere has not fulfilled the hopes placed in it in many places. And so for many operators, their cinema is a "labour of love" on the brink of profitability. A cinematic journey through the German cinema landscape away from the multiplexes, just as sympathetically handmade and improvised as the operation of many of the cinemas visited.
Pablo Narezo, MEX/D 2016, 56 min, span. OmU
It begins with a lost rucksack full of old film material, which eventually mysteriously reappears. The 8mm reels in the rucksack document the everyday life and travels of the Director's Mexican family over three generations. In the course of filming, a fifth generation is added through the birth of his daughter. This serves as an opportunity to conduct further research into the past and to look at current events in his home country.Casi Paraíso is an essay film in which 8mm footage, tape recordings, photos, letters and his own recordings are brought together with great ease. He glides associatively back and forth between times and places and creates new contexts. In this way, a personal and universal picture of the filmmaker's family and of life with the ever-present violence in Mexico is drawn.
Carsten Rau, Hauke Wendler, D 2016, 85 min, German-Albanian OF OmU
A collective deportation in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, meticulously prepared and carried out with considerable effort. Startled in the night, frightened people are brought to the charter plane by police officers, while Interior Minister Caffier accompanies the deportation team. The mantra of the repatriation management staff is that the law is being enforced. The invocation of the rule of law is to a large extent self-protection for those who are responsible for and have to enforce the measures to terminate residence. After all, our rule of law has now come to an end for those being returned here, and behind the sober conceptualisation of the authorities lie disappointed hopes and human dramas. Over 20,000 people were deported from Germany in 2016, and the number is rising due to the system of supposedly safe countries of origin. What awaits the deportees back home? The film team visits them in Albania and talks to lawyers, classmates and teachers in Germany.
Bettina Perut, Ivan Osnovikoff, CHL/D 2015, 80 min, spanish/aymara OmU
The Surire salt lake, 4300 metres high in the Andes between Chile and Bolivia. The radio signal only reaches here on good days. It is as brittle as the calluses under the feet of the few people, descendants of the indigenous original population, who still remain. An old couple - he can't hear well, she can't see well. When they go away for a few days, a boy looks after their llamas. His reward: a rusty bike. But he can't ride a bike at all. A ninety-year-old curses her age and gives her dog a daring haircut. The noise of the economy mingles with the whisper of the wind. On the other side of the lake, salt is being mined. A convoy of lorries rolls past the flamingos, endless and massive. A film full of breathtaking long shots and crazy close-ups - about the beauty and loss of a landscape and culture.
The 14th Hamburg Documentary Film Week takes place from 19 to 23 April at Metropolis, B-Movie, Lichtmess and Gängeviertel. The entire programmeyou can find here.
The Documentary Film Week was launched in 2004 and has since enriched Hamburg's cultural landscape with a varied and entertaining film programme. As the only festival in Hamburg and the surrounding area to specialise in documentary film, the film week is just as unique as a local meeting place for those interested in documentaries as it is as a platform for the local film culture. The Documentary Film Week shows small, offbeat and experimental documentaries as well as highlights from the German and international festival scene. An important focus is also on regional productions.
