LA MORTE DI PASOLINI

The last scene of the last film that Pier Paolo Pasolini made (the infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom which was released only after Pasolini was murdered) inspired filmmaker Telémachos Alexiou to do a public re-enactmenr: two young handsome men with machine guns waiting idly while the torture games find their grusome end, only that in La Morte di Pasolini, this dance is an intervention of both the opening of the Pasolini retrospective at Arsenal and the exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau near Potsdamer Platz. Mixed with original statements and stills from the film, this conceptual performance film pays tribute to one of Europe’s greatest filmmakers and manages to queer the institutional canonization of Pasolini at the same time.

Telémachos Alexiou, D 2015, 14 min (world premiere)
cinematography: Tim Schenkl
with: Andrés Silva Vignoli, Telémachos Alexiou
languages: Italian (with English subtitles)
guests: Telémachos Alexiou, Andrés Silva Vignoli (actor), Tim Schenkl (DOP)

CINÉMATON #170

The cinématons of prolific French author, producer and filmmaker Gérard Courant are silent, four-minute long portraits of people on film. Number 170 (of now almost 3000) is no other than a very young, and very charming Peter Kern who Courant shot in Berlin in 1982. Kern looks into the camera, maybe flirts a bit, smiles, then laughs inaudibly, looks into the camera again and smiles again. A beautiful way of rembering director and actor Peter Kern who passed away this year at the age of 66.

Gérard Courant, D 1982, 4 min
cinematography: Gérard Courant
with: Peter Kern
language: no sound
with a message by Gérard Courant

SARAH & SARAH (SARAH UND SARAH)

Berlin in black-and-white: And old demented Nazi actress (fabulous and fearless: Traute Furthner) is wandering around a hotel, mingling with the posh guests at a reception, falling asleep on a couch in the foyer, unnoticed and unseen. Sarah Kulmbacher, who tells a journalist that „Hitler was a good man“ is later brought together with a young boy who has cancer and calls himself Sarah – this leads to an unlikely yet tender liaison between two people that only Peter Kern could bring together. His unconventional and provocative tale of love, death, remembrance, German history, an overworked alcoholic social worker and a ruthless pharmaceutical company is Kern’s penultimate film, completed before he passed away this year. Producer and DOP Peter Roehsler who gave this low-budget extravaganza a majestic look (mirrored in the soundtrack), will be joining the festival to talk about one of the last enfant terribles of German and Austrian cinema.

Peter Kern, A/D 2014, 70 min
cinematography: Peter Roehsler
with: Traute Furthner, Florian Dyma-Hanel, Stephanie Fürstenberg, Margarete Tiesel
language: German (with English subtitles)
guests: Peter Roehsler (DOP/ producer), Benjamin Kalisch (sound design), Katharina Mihm (first assistant director)