MOTHS AROUND A FLAME

“I went everywhere because I wanted to see everything, embrace everything, stroke everything, down to the tiniest detail.” Brian Tennessee Claflin, who passed away in 2014, was the creator of the legendary PORK party at Ficken3000, a lively and unforgettable presence in Berlin’s underground art and nightlife scenes. Originally produced as part of a one-off performance, Moths Around a Flame uses Marlene Dietrich’s song “Falling in Love Again” as the departure point for a beautiful personal poem about love, longing, and the search for social identity in the darkrooms of Berlin.
(Travis Jeppesen)

D 2012, Brian Tennessee Claflin, 3 min
cinematography: Jason Harrell, sound design: Snax
with: Brian Tennessee Claflin
language: English
guests: Travis Jeppesen and Michael Rade (Brian Tennessee Claflin Foundation)

NO FACE

We are surrounded by commercial images. Overwhelmed by commodified information. Everywhere we look, everything we touch is already marked with economical value. And as we construct our identity out of images and impressions we encounter every day, our selves become more and more commercialized. We are sucked into the economic domain. We become our own advertisement. Things become even more complicated, if our identity is a gay one, an identity constantly needing to rearrange its relation to straight mainstream culture and constantly searching for a centre to form a reassuring subculture. But what if this subculture, this gay self, is being commercialized as well? An experimental film on gay iconographies in a commodified age.
(Daniel Kulle)

Daniel Kulle, D 2015, 6 min
language: English

THE RASPBERRY REICH

Set in Berlin, Bruce LaBruce’s film centres on a group of terrorists who are working on nothing less than a gay revolution. Calling themselves the proponents of “radical chic”, they cite Germany’s Red Army Faction as their role models. Their armed struggle commences with a spectacular kidnapping. Their victim is Patrick, whose father is one of Germany’s richest bankers. However, not everything goes according to plan. (Berlinale Panorama, 2004)
The Raspberry Reich quickly turned into a cult classic and cemented the director’s reputation as the enfant terrible of queer cinema. Mixing political agitation with comedy and hard-core sex scenes, the perversely entertaining film about a gay terror organisation that proclaims the homosexual intifada also lay the ground for Susanne Sachsse’s on-going collaborations with LaBruce in film and theater. Not to be missed!

Bruce LaBruce, D/CND 2004, 90 min
cinematography: James Carman
with: Susanne Sachsse, Daniel Bätscher, Andreas Rupprecht, Dean Monroe
language: English
guests: Jürgen Brüning (producer), Susanne Sachsse (actor)