Declan Clarke’s cinematic works are precisely timed studies of contemporary history and a German-Irish entanglement, ironically and laconically staged.
Declan Clarke Filmmaker and artist, was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1974. He lives in Berlin and Dublin. His films are shown in galleries and at relevant international festivals, including FIDMarseille , Villa Medici Film Festival, Rome, Punto da Vista IDFF in Navarra, Beldocs, Belgrade, Tromsø Intl. Film Festival, St. Petersburg Intl. Science Film Festival and New York Underground Film Festival.
We Are Not Like Them
Geist Trilogy (Part 1&2)
IE/DE 2013 45 min | 16 mm (digital) | no sound
Four different locations in Europe invite a quiet contemplation of their places as they were at the time of shooting in 2013. The film uses the tropes of the early 20th century documentary film and the mid century espionage film to contextualise these sites, which, in order of appearance, are the former Wallsend and Walker shipyards in Newcastle Upon Tyne; Eisenhüttenstadt, a city on the eastern border of Germany, Nowa Huta, a city on the outskirts of Kraków in Poland, and the Groupe Scolaire L’Octobre – a primary school in the Alfortville district of Paris.
The Most Cruel of All Goddesses
Geist Trilogy (Part 1&2)
IE/DE 2015 60 min | 16 mm (digital) | German, English
Portrait of the life of German philosopher Friedrich Engels as a backdrop to a noir/espionage film that follows an unnamed agent on an unspecified mission. The film reflects upon the history and development of the European left-wing political movement and its significance to the Manchester region, particularly Salford, where the origins of the socio-political foundations of the 21st century were laid. Also filmed in Wuppertal and Munich, including at the Oktoberfest, the film connects the industrial development of the UK and Germany through the political upheaval that the unparalleled change created on both countries and subsequently across the globe.
Group Portrait with Explosives
His Story
IE/DE 2013 42 min | 16 mm (digital) | English
The former country of Czechoslovakia and South Armagh in Northern Ireland. Brno is an industrial city that is renowned for its exceptional and numerous examples of structuralist and brutalist architecture that were produced between 1918 and 1989 with the profits from industrial exports. South Armagh became notorious for it’s violent resistance to the British presence in Northern Ireland. It is now one of the most heavily monitored parts of the world.
Saturn and Beyond
His Story
IE/DE 2021 60 min | 16 mm, 35mm, Dia, DV (digital) | Englisch
The film considers how the development of telecommunications and air travel led ultimately to the exploration of the solar system, and, humankind’s desire to send signals to the further regions of the known universe. Most specifically it looks at our relationship with the planet Saturn, the furthest planet in the solar system visible to the human eye. And what Alzheimer’s disease has to do with it? Or: The recurring obsolescence of each new phase of broadcasting technology.
sunday 08 oct 5:30pm werkstattkino guest: Peider A. Defilla
My films are improvisations, like this one, for example: A hydrogen explosion in the Nevada desert caused the houses in Las Vegas 130 km away to sway. In a nuclear power plant, one person died and another was critically injured. Taking pleasure in my blamelessness, I tear off my suspiciously curtains and throw them out the window because I tell myself that wrapping paper is cheaper and more serious because it is not taken seriously. Now it is certain: For our country, the worst dangers of the global recession have been averted! Two dead in explosion at Tel Aviv airport. There could be another war to keep the historical rhythm. 10 seconds of spot repeated 100 times gives a crystal clear analysis of the state of affairs without ingredients in the modern style, appealing to everyone. We live in a world of snakes and squirrels on sunny southern slopes sparsely overgrown with lots of nut trees and abysses. The existential experience of absurdity as a provocation of human imagination and as reality results in a schizophrenia more unequivocal than Franz Kafka’s judgement. Reality was far surpassed by all representations, no matter how extreme. He threw himself in front of the Viennese Waltz at 17:55 and was killed instantly. Genocide in silence. Warning: no more writing here, writing forbidden. Simply crazy unspeakable, what to do. Peider A. Defilla, 1976
Peider A. Defilla Born 1954 in Zurich, grew up in the Engadine, Matura in Vaduz. Studied music (organ, violin, composition) in Switzerland. Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (painting & object art) and at the University of Munich (philosophy, theatre studies, phonetics and linguistic communication). 1987 founded B.O.A. Videofilmkunst. Participation of his films and compositions among others at Solothurner Filmtage, EXPRMNTL 5, Leipzig Film Festival, Berlin Biennale, musica viva, Munich Documentary Film Festival, Donaueschinger Musiktage
Films of the 70s (selection) et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum 1974 | CO-INCIDENCE, PHANTASMA 1975 | Rauchen und Hantieren mit offenem Licht und Feuer verboten 1977 | Visual structure no. 1 1978 | Test-signale 1980
et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum
1974 | 16mm 18 min | Opening contribution of the Solothurn Film Festival
Essay on a text by Karl Jaspers: “One asks whether the specificity of our order of existence is not the greatest danger, whether in it a multiplication of human beings is possible which narrows the space for each individual to such an extent that finally humanity is spiritually suffocated in the mass, or whether a negative selection is possible which leads to a progressive deterioration and in the end, for biological reasons, leaves only an industrious species of human being which still functions for a while in the technical apparatus. It would be possible for man to perish from the means he creates for his existence.” Karl Jaspers in “The Spiritual Situation of the Times” from 1931.
Hommage à Giovanni Segantini
1975 | 16mm 5 min | silent
Painter, lived from 1858 to 1899, and last worked in his mountain hut above Pontresina in Switzerland, where he died of appendicitis. Today, a helicopter would fly him to hospital and who knows what else he would have painted.
Ulmer Cathedral and Eiffel Tower Paris
1976 | Super8 5 min
Two landmarks: Ulm Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Video studies from Knokke-Heist
1976 | Super8 22 min | silent
The films were realised with the help of an analogue video synthesiser that was made available to me during the EXPRMTL 5 festival. The video synthesiser enabled both alienation of camera images and the creation of completely synthetic shapes and colours that could be moved by means of various modulators. The colour overrides were particularly appealing, producing a colourful spectrum of film sequences. Because the video synthesiser did not offer the possibility of recording, I filmed the video sequences directly from the monitor with the Super8 camera.
Something new more often, or TV structure
1977 | Video 20 min
Nice to show the film on election day, it’s my first video, black and white, consisting of TV footage and accompanying commentary.
Let’s remember the year 2022. The pandemic was barely over, the Berlinale was barely over, spring was barely to dawn when the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine began on 21 February 2022. The countries of the EU and also film schools and festivals created special programmes for the people and filmmaking from Ukraine. An awareness was formed: to draw attention to the problems of the post-Soviet era. In the course of solidarity with Ukraine under the hashtag #StayWithUkraine, panels, country focuses and fundraising campaigns were formed. However, the short-lived nature of our times means that attention is now waning. Special programmes for Ukrainian students have ended, panels are once again dedicated to other topics. UNDERDOX, which showed the Ukraine programme “Babylon’13” curated by Mila Zhluktenko in 2022, does not want to forget the country and the young people growing up in war. In the second year of the Russian war of aggression, we are therefore dedicating our country focus to Ukraine. “Over the Abyss” is a programme of five short films made by young Ukrainian filmmakers in 2020-21. The programme has been developed by Oleksandr Hoisan of the Ivano-Frankivsk International Short Film Festival 4:3. The festival focuses on the niche of the 4:3 format, which has recently become popular among newcomers and young filmmakers. I-FISFF 4:3 was founded in 2021, in the brief respite between Corona and the war. All selected films participated in the national competition of the 2022 festival. Among them is the winner of the first festival edition. “Over the Abyss” thus also tells less about war and national identity than about growing up under extreme conditions, but also about searching and finding youth. The focus is on artistic filmmaking, the desire to tell stories and the special format. Ukraine presents itself here as a young, awakening film nation. saturday 07 oct 17:30 werkstattkino | guest: Oleksandr Hoisan
New City of Friends
This short film in the same time is a video performance that depicts modern Kolomyia, where the cult of Austria-Hungary coexists with the post-Soviet reality: the developer hires a team of builders who, with thrift, brick by brick, dismantle old and uninhabitable real estate. Meanwhile, the artists invite fifteen-year-old Maksym to draw a walking route in Kolomyia: through the guide’s narration, the map of the city is transformed into a multi-layered historical palimpsest, where Soviet names are mixed with modern urban folklore and traditional Western Ukrainian piety, and “dog paths” are manifested by official intonation.
Yarema Malashchuk, Roman Himey UA 2021 | 10 min
Anastasiia Babenko UA 2021 | 17 min
The Diaper Cake
Lena and Vitia, both in their early 20s, are two kids who now have a kid of their own. In the postnatal hospital room, like in limbo, their first team project is to wake their son for a feed. As the new parents repeatedly fail, they deal with the irreversible changes in their lives and with each other. The diaper cake silently sits in the room, like a time bomb.
Leopolis Night
Polia, Solomiia, Mariia play in the local theater. After the spectacle, they meet a guy and walk through the night city together. Polia seems to fall in love with him. In the morning he will leave the city and they will not see each other again.
Nikon Romanchenko UA 2021 | 26 min Award National Competition 2021
Oleksandra Konoplia UA 2021 | 21 min
Well, You Are a Fool Lisa
The main character, Lisa, lives with her mother, an indifferent sister and a silly dog. She sincerely believes that she will be able to fall in love with Vadik, imagining their relationship in the spirit of the 2000s movies. Once, having received an invitation to a party from Vadik, Lisa under the careful guidance of friends decides to achieve her goal and meet the guy of her dreams.
Phase
10-year-old boy Yaryk spends the last days of summer vacation with his mother in the country. Playing in the woods, Yaryk and his friend Ihor see a young woman with a man but perceive their togetherness differently: Ihor believes they make love while Yaryk is sure that the woman is strangled by the man. Yaryk investigates the possible murder while discovering the countryside and his way towards his mother who is in deep grief for her husband killed at war in the east of Ukraine.
Daniel Kötter DE/AM 2023 | 96 min | Armenian, engl. ST | German Premiere
What if a war becomes chronic and invisible? When it retreats into the earth and the epic landscape? A search for traces of the geopolitical fault lines along the new dividing lines between Azerbaijan and Armenia that have emerged since the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020. Animals know no borders, the shepherd says – his flock of sheep becomes a very natural symbol of resistance to the war.
“I go on a journey and take with me… the rib of an elephant, a feather duster, eight butterflies, a rope of fragrant roots… and 150 metres of exposed, undeveloped film stock…” – In 1911, Armand Hutereau was commissioned to send 8000 representative objects from the Congo to the Royal Museum of the Belgian Congo in Brussels. Belgian colonial history as a serious children’s game.
Daniel Kötter DE/CD 2021 | 52 min | German, English, engl. ST
Coltan mining in South Kivu, Congo. The 360° documentary transports you directly to the site of an extractivist manufactory and documents the effects on nature, the workers and, above all, the women, who tell of their lives at the mine from off-screen. The VR film is a gripping and amazing illusion that is hard to resist.
Philip Sotnychenko UA 2023 | 100 min Ukrainian, engl. ST | Fipresci Award Rotterdam
Ukraine has been independent for five years in 1996. At the centre of the film: a video documenting a brutal arrest that demands a criminal reconstruction of the events. A still rare look at the post-Soviet era.
Martha Mechow AT, DE 2023 | 100 min | German, engl. ST
Flippa in search of her sister Furia: rhyming, monologuing, reciting from literature and diaries, she drifts through Italy and various love stories in this bizarre and experimental road movie.
The Ape Man’s tour de force through a dystopian underworld of infernal obscenities and perfidious orgies of violence. Radical low-budget horror in the most beautiful black and white, celebrating silent film and staging the abject in no uncertain terms.
In Jean Vigo’s groundbreaking “L’Atalante” (1934) about a barge on the Seine, there are numerous scenes in which cats play a not insignificant supporting role. The painter Harald V Uccello (UX Artist in Focus 2022) has captured them in 140 drawings. Karl Heil’s short film will be shown at the same time.
Five short films in Academy format by young Ukrainian filmmakers who took part in the national competition of the Western Ukrainian Short Film Festival “4:3” in 2022. The winning film of the first festival edition in 2021 will also be screened.
guest: Oleksandr Hoisan (Ivano-Frankivsk Short Film Festival 4:3)
Jonás Trueba ES 2022 | With Itsaso Arana, Vito Sanz, Francesco Carril, Irene Escolar | 64 min | Spanish, engl. ST | German Premiere
Two thirtysomething couples re-sort their lives – or not. Peter Sloterdijk’s “You Have to Change Your Life”, Bill Callahan’s “Let’s Move to the Country” and Chano Domínguez’s jazzy flamenco accompany them on their escape from the real.
Frédéric Jaeger DE 2022 | With Lisa Marie Janke, Jasper Engelhardt | 17 min | German, engl. ST
Toy boy, boy toy or more boy than toy? Levi and Sarah have a casual love affair that is more, but also less than that. Luckily, there’s the flat-share with the flatmates. With distant echoes of Ira Sachs’ “Passages”.
Werner Herzog BRD 1970 | 96 min | German, engl. ST
The proverbial dwarf uprising on Lanzarote was staged under the impression of the student revolt in 1968/69 and failed grandly. The film stands iconically for the world-famous credo of Werner Herzog’s filmmaking and can be considered the motto of UNDERDOX. „In a way, the revolt of the dwarfs is not a real defeat, because for them it is a really good, memorable day; you can see the joy in their faces.“ (Werner Herzog)
Artemis Shaw, Prashanth Kamalakanthan USA 2023 | 78 min | English OV | Special Jury Award Rotterdam 2023
New York, a VHS camera and the Lockdown. The best ingredients for turning one’s own life into fiction. The film is independent and mumblecore, with the insane touch of not taking itself seriously at all.
“A song for Jean Vigo in three or four colours” is what Karl Heil calls his film, drawn in pencil by Harald V Uccello and occasionally animated. At the centre: the cats of “L’Atalante”, the most important supporting actresses in film history.
Selma Doborac AT, DE 2023 | 130 min | German, engl. ST | Caligari Award
But evil does not exist? Torture, mass extermination and genocide are still real phenomena of a nihilistic practice of war. The film weaves the shoals of extermination lust through fictionalised perpetrator confessions, based on real testimonies, into a dense web of meaning. A challenging film maelstrom and one of the most discussed festival films of the year.
Peider A. Defilla, who came to Munich from Switzerland, interwove experimental film art with politics in the 1970s. He was inspired as much by classical music as by philosophical, political and literary texts. His participation in the legendary Belgian festival EXPRMNTL 5 (Knokke-Heist) brought him international renown. Today, he realises sophisticated TV features on art and politics with his company B.O.A. Videofilmkunst.
Group Portrait with Explosives IE/DE 2014 | 40 min | English OV Saturn and Beyond IE/DE 2021 | 60 min | English OV
In the life of the Irish artist, family history, science and contemporary history are inextricably linked. The IRA, the Irish Museum of Broadcasting and Alzheimer’s can thus become important keywords in an autobiography
Wang Bing CN/FR/LX/NL 2023 | 212 min | Mandarin, OmeU
In the sweatshop spot of Zhili, the studios are lined up like battery cages in multi-storey workhouses. The young seamstresses try to live a little youth in their free time. An intense immersion in fast-fashion turbo-capitalism.
Travis Wilkerson USA/HR 2023 | 62 min | English OV | German Premiere
How the return home from the disastrous Vietnam War turns into a hallucinogenic fever dream about a fragile father-son relationship. “The bigger the fuck-up, the bigger the medal.” (Travis Wilkerson)
James Benning USA 2022 | 65 min | English, German ST
Allensworth, California, was founded in 1908 as the first settlement of African-Americans. As if in a wall calendar, Benning goes through the months with views of settlement houses that still have the structural signature of the early days. Only in August does he depart from the strict composition, with a girl reading an African-American poem. Another milestone in Benning’s very own “Americana”.
Dane Komljen DE/NG 2023 | 25 min | OV with Engl. ST
At the time of the Non-Aligned States, the Lagos Fair was the forward-looking architectonics of a political utopia. Today it rains into the buildings, one finds flowers and weeds, an artificial lake and football fields. The film shows a transhistorical conglomerate of different perspectives – a new space of encounter and cooperation is emerging.
Films by Jean-François Neplaz, Elisa Zurlo, Gee-Jun Jung, Aaron Nikolaus Sievers, Marc Scialom, Bruno Muel, Ouahib Mortada, Lo Thivolle, Raphaëlle Pauper-Borne
Admission: 10€ | ca. 151 min
In the film collective Film Flamme in Marseille, filmmakers, technicians, historians and international guests meet to realise a political-aesthetic vision of filmmaking. The 16mm material is developed in the collective’s own laboratory, and the residents of the working-class neighbourhood of Joliette are the actors of their own lives in the films.
Lois Patiño ES 2023 | 113 min | Lao, Swahili with engl. ST | Special Jury Prize Berlinale
The Buddhist temples of Laos. A young monk crosses the river every day to read to a woman from a guide to the path to the afterlife. When the woman dies, her spirit begins a sensual journey to reincarnation. What follows: a unique, immersive film experience. “Perhaps the most radical film of the Berlinale.” (Philipp Stadelmaier, SZ)
The ultimate short film night is experimental, surprisingly entertaining and definitely perfect in form. Selected “doc & exp” by Gudrun Fürlinger, Narges Kalhor, Lucy Kerr, Jacques Sorrentini Zibjan, Kenji Ouellet, Josef Dabernig, Billy Roisz, Sweatmother, Paula & Andreas and others.
César Vayssié FR 2023 | 131 min | French, engl. ST
An exhilarating poetic-political manifesto inspired by Federico Fellini’s famous 8½ sentence. At the Belvedere Hotel in Cerbère, on the border with Spain, young actors stage a play about desire and fluidity, the collective and art.
At the closing night of the trilateral exchange program “Connecting Futures” between the Festival Beldocs (Belgrade), FIDMarseille and UNDERDOX, the ‘Young People’ present their favourite films and films made during the project.
In the program amongst others: Films by Lucy Kerr, Stephanie Maier (Foto), Krsto Papić, Afsaneh Salari, Mohammadreza Farzad, Gorana Jovanović
guests: The Young People of Connecting Futures, Stephanie Maier
Wang Bing FR/USA/GB 2023 | 60 min | Mandarin, engl. ST
Wang Xilin, 86 years old, is one of China’s most important modern classical composers, who was imprisoned for many years in the Chinese education camps. In the black theatre space he presents himself naked, as a body exposed to the soul. Excerpts from his powerful symphonies accompany his memories of the dehumanisation of the Chinese nation.
