Notes from Eremocene with Viera Čákanyová (Berlinale Forum, 2023)
[June 06, 2023] Notes from Eremocene by Viera Čákanyová is an experimental documentary that delves into the future possibilities of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. Through a captivating blend of analog footage and 3D scanner images, Čákanyová captures the clash between traditional and digital elements of contemporary society.
This is her third feature, concluding a trilogy that began with her debut work, Frem (2019), followed by White on White (2020). Across all three films, Viera explores the same themes: artificial intelligence, a dystopian future for humanity, analog versus digital, nature versus civilization, and climate change.
In a fun conversation about serious matters, this episode explores Čákanyová's artistic process, which can be solitary at times, and her approach to sound and editing. We also delve into the different perspectives she inhabits in each of her films and the profound questions her films raise about human existence and the future of societies.
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Viera Čákanyová (b. 1980) studied scriptwriting at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and documentary filmmaking at FAMU in Prague. Her early feature documentaries won a number of awards, such as Best First/Second film at Visions du Réel and Best Documentary at German Documentary FF in Kassel. Her visual storytelling can be found in the films GOTTLAND (2014) or SLOVAKIA 2.0 (2014). FREM (2019) and WHITE ON WHITE (2020) are currently her most successful films. Her feature debut FREM had its world premiere at the Ji.hlava IDFF 2019 followed by its international premiere at the Berlinale 2020, and won the Award for Best Debut at the ELBE DOCK festival. The film was screened at more than two dozen important international film festivals around the world. Her subsequent film WHITE ON WHITE won the main prize at the Ji.hlava IDFF in 2020. It also won the GreenDox Award at Dokufest in Kosovo, the Czech Competition at One World in Prague and was selected for the main competitions at the prestigious Sheffield DocFest and ZagrebDox.
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Born in 1990, Aylin a Swiss-Turkish director and producer based in Zurich and a co-producer of Docs in Orbit. Her work as a filmmaker combines documentary and experimental approaches, often revolving around themes of memory, imagination, and landscape. Her short film Spirits and Rocks: An Azorean Myth (Locarno, 2021) was screened in over 50 festivals, including Sundance and Telluride.
She holds a B.A. in Arts from Lausanne University and an M.A. in Documentary Filmmaking from the DocNomads program. Aylin is also a member of the Executive Committee of SWAN (Swiss Women’s Audiovisual Network) and participated in other filmmaking programs such as the Aristoteles Workshop, the Salzburg Summer Academy of Fine Arts, and the Zurich Film Festival Academy.
2023 Berlinale Forum with Cristina Nord
[February 14, 2023] In this conversation, we are joined by Cristina Nord, the Artistic Director of the Berlinale Forum, an independently curated section of the Berlin International Film Festival with a focus on diverse cinematic forms and narrative approaches. Cristina speaks about the rich history of the Forum and what has shaped her curatorial perspective. We also discuss some of the non-fiction films included in this year’s line-up.
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Cristina Nord has been section head of the Berlinale Forum since August 2019. Born in 1968 in Korbach, Germany, she studied general and comparative literature in Berlin and Latin American studies in San José, Costa Rica. After graduating with a Master of Arts, she worked as a journalist and editor. Between 2002 and 2015, she was film editor for the culture section of the German “taz. die tageszeitung” newspaper. In parallel, she taught film criticism at the Freie Universität Berlin, was a member of the selection panel for the German-language documentary film festival “Duisburger Filmwoche”, contributed to the “Filmtip” programme for the German broadcaster WDR and wrote numerous essays, including for catalogues, as well as the book “True Blood” (Diaphanes, Berlin and Zürich 2015). In 2015, she began working at the Goethe Institut and took over as head of programming for the South West European region in Brussels.
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Christina is a researcher, filmmaker, and founding editor of Docs in Orbit, where she leads the curation of content.
Rewind & Play with Alain Gomis (Berlinale Forum, 2022)
[November 23, 2022] Rewind & Play (Berlinale Forum, 2022) follows American jazz pianist Thelonius Monk on a 1969 trip to Paris, where he appeared on the French TV show “Jazz Portrait.” Composed mainly from the recovered rushes of this single event, Alain Gomis unravels complex subjects, including the media’s objectification of Monk’s celebrity and its simultaneous refusal to recognize his full humanity. In the following conversation, we speak with Alain Gomis about his interest in Thelonius Monk and how he handled the challenges of representation in making this film.
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Alain Gomis is a French-Senegalese filmmaker. He studied cinematography at the Sorbonne. After graduating he organized and facilitated video production workshops for immigrant youth in Nanterre. By the age of twenty-six, he had already made three short films: Tourbillons, Tout le monde peut se tromper, and the documentary Caramels et chocolats. In 2001, Gomis directed his first feature film, L’Afrance. Gomis' 2012 film, Tey, was awarded the Etalon de Yenenga at FESPACO in 2012. His films often fall under the subject of young immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa. His 2017 film Félicité won the grand jury prize at the Berlinale and the Étalon d’or again at FESPACO. It was also selected as the Senegalese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, making the December shortlist. Alain Gomis regularly gives production and writing workshops, and, in 2019, he and Aissatou Diop created the Yennenga Center in Dakar to promote independent film production in Senegal and Africa.
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Nnenna Onuoha is a Ghanaian-Nigerian researcher and artist based in Berlin. Her films and videos centre Afrodiasporic voices to explore monumental silences surrounding the histories and afterlives of colonialism across West Africa, Europe, and the US. A second strand of her work focuses on archiving Black experience in the present to chronicle the practice of care and repair for ourselves and each other.
Nnenna is currently a doctoral researcher in Media Anthropology at Harvard University and Global History at the University of Potsdam. She holds a BA in History, Literature, and Anthropology from Harvard College, an MPhil in World History from the University of Cambridge, and an MA in Documentary Filmmaking from DocNomads.
She was a 2021 participant of the Goldrausch Künstlerinnen Projekt and Berlin Program for Artists and a 2021 fellow in the project “Global Memories of German Colonialism” at the University of Hamburg.
Geographies of Solitude with Jacquelyn Mills (Berlinale Forum, 2022)
[May 9. 2022] This week, we explore how to experience a place as sacred through cinema with Jacquelyn Mills, the director of Geographies of Solitude (Berlinale Forum, 2022). The film, composed of 16mm images using eco-friendly hand-processing techniques, takes us on a journey into the rich ecosystem of Sable Island and the preservation work of Zoe Lucas, an environmentalist who has dedicated over 40 years to the conservation of this remote slice of land off the Canadian coast. Jacquelyn captures her encounters with Zoe and the island with care and thoughtful intention, conveying a reverence for that which she films and imbuing it with a collaborative and engaging spirit.
In our conversation with Jacquelyn Mills, she sheds light on her intuitive approach to filmmaking and the various ways she collaborated with her surroundings (including processing the footage with plant emulsion from Sable Island and exposing parts of the film under moonlight and starlight) in the making of Geographies of Solitude.
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Jacquelyn Mills is an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Breton Island, based in Montréal. Her works are immersive and sensorial, often exploring an intimate and lyrical connection to the natural world. Her film In the Waves (2017) premiered at Visions du Réel and was theatrically released at TIFF's Cinemathèque. Jacquelyn has worked as editor, sound designer, and cinematographer for the National Film Board of Canada as well as other internationally acclaimed films.
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Sean Van Wert is a visual artist based in Toronto, Canada, and working across film and theatre arts. He studied visual arts at l’université du Québec à Montréal and holds a Master of Arts in Documentary Filmmaking from the DocNomads, the European film school. He has worked on various projects, including video installation at the Von Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and his short films and screened in several festivals both in Canada and abroad. Sean interests include holobionts, mesmerism, plant therapy and queer pop culture. He is currently in development on a project in southwestern France concerning end-of-life doulas.
2022 Berlinale Recap with Edo Choi from the Museum of the Moving Image
[February 21, 2022] As the 72nd edition of the Berlin International Film Festival winds down, we sat with Edo Choi, film critic and assistant curator at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, to digest several of the films we encountered at the festival including Dry Ground Burning, Europe, and Rewind & Play as well as a few fiction films.
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0:00 - 5:00 Introduction, Edo Choi and the Berlinale Festival Vibe
5:30 Avec amour et acharnement / Both Sides of the Blade / Fire by Claire Denis
12:00 Rimini by Ulrich Seidl
18:00 Dry Ground Burning by Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós
22:50 Europe by Philip Scheffner
30:45 Rewind and Play by Alain Gomis
34:40 See You Friday, Robinson by Mitra Farahani
37:30 A Little Love Package by Gastón Solnicki
45:00 First Look Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image, Program Review
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2022 Berlinale Shorts with Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck.
[February 11, 2022] In preparation for the 72nd edition of the Berlin International Film Festival, we are joined by Anna Henckel Donnersmarck, the curator and head of the Berlinale Shorts, a program dedicated to daring works of the short form. This year’s lineup does not disappoint with its selection of 30 international and world premieres from established filmmakers like Radu Jude, Atsushi Wada, and Sky Hopinka, as well as new, emerging filmmakers with equally strong and aesthetically interesting perspectives. In this conversation, Anna shares the origins of the Berlinale, her approach to curation, and a guided tour of each block of short films with insight into how the program came together. (Berlinale Shorts 2022)
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Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck is the curator and head of Berlinale Shorts, the competition for short films at the Berlinale.
She works with the moving image in various ways. For 20 years, she has been active as a programmer (Filmwinter Stuttgart, Kasseler Dokfest, ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, etc), moderator (Pictoplasma, Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film, etc), jury member (Szpilman Award, REGARD Quebec, Tel Aviv Int. Student Film Festival, Filmfest Dresden, Tehran Int. Short Film Festival, etc) and panel participant (Fajr Film Festival Tehran, Curtas Vila do Conde, etc). From 2007 to 2019, she served as a member of the selection committee for Berlinale Shorts.
Her primary focus is on the short film format.
In addition, she has conceived and realized video installations for exhibitions, stage works, and concerts, for example, for Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Hygiene Museum Dresden, GRIMMWELT Kassel, Humboldt Lab, Bauhaus Archive Berlin, Constanza Macras/DorkyPark, Mathilde Monnier, Schauspiel Köln, The Wooster Group NYC, the Berlin Philharmoniker and opera houses in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Zürich.
She teaches film theory and video practice at various art schools.
Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck was born in Frankfurt/Main in 1973 and grew up in Indonesia, Japan, England, and Bavaria. She studied at Camberwell College of Art and Design in London and received her degree from Film Academy Baden-Württemberg/Ludwigsburg, focussing on animation and documentary filmmaking.
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Christina is a Brooklyn based researcher, filmmaker and founding editor of Docs in Orbit, where she leads the curation of content.