Last week, the Berlinale’s Panorama program rolled out its narrative features. Today, the section adds 18 documentaries to complete its lineup for the 2015 edition running from February 5 through 15. Notes in quotes come from the festival.
Censored Voices (Israel / Germany) by Mor Loushy. European premiere. “Young Israeli soldiers return home after the Six-Day War and immediately talk on tape about their experiences: the country is in a flush of victory. Now the director shows these same men listening to what they once said.”
Cobain: Montage of Heck (Great Britain / USA) by Brett Morgen. International premiere. “An intimate glimpse into the life and work of the founder of the grunge band Nirvana, Kurt Cobain.”
Die Widerständigen „also machen wir das weiter …” (The Resistors “their spirit prevails …”) (Germany) by Ula Stöckl and Katrin Seybold. World premiere. “A statement by Katrin Seybold, who died in 2012, opens her final work: ‘The films I make need to be made. When people are dead, then they’re dead, and all we have left are Gestapo reports, the reports of the perpetrators.’ Die Widerständigen… consists of interviews about the resistance movement against the Nazis. The film was finished by Seybold’s friend and colleague Ula Stöckl, whose legendary 1968 film, Neun Leben hat die Katze (The Cat Has Nine Lives), is screening in this year’s Berlinale Classics.”
Feelings Are Facts: The Life of Yvonne Rainer (USA) by Jack Walsh. World premiere.
Haftanlage 4614 (Prison System 4614) (Germany) by Jan Soldat. World premiere. “Explores the longings and desires revealed by ‘prison fetishists’: these inmates are voluntarily behind bars.”
Je suis Annemarie Schwarzenbach (My Name is Annemarie Schwarzenbach) (France) by Véronique Aubouy.World premiere. Schwarzenbach’s “modern European attitudes, writings on travelling the world, and stunning, highly androgynous look in the 1920s are still fascinating today not only to the queer and gender community.”
Jia Zhang-ke, um homem de Fenyang (Jia Zhang-ke, a Guy from Fenyang) (Brazil) by Walter Salles. European Premiere. “Includes many excerpts from his films that make recent upheavals in Chinese society more tangible.”
Misfits (Denmark / Sweden) by Jannik Splidsboel. World premiere. “Shows how there are several thousand churches in the Bible Belt of the USA but only one gay-lesbian youth centre. For many it is the only safe haven from a socialization based on religious fundamentalism.”
Sume – Mumisitsinerup Nipaa (Sumé – The Sound of a Revolution) (Greenland / Denmark / Norway) by Inuk Silis Høegh. European premiere. “Shows how the rock musicians of this band from Greenland devoted themselves in the mid 1970s to opposing Danish colonisers and brought about the revival of Greenlandic, their native tongue.”
Tell Spring Not to Come This Year (Great Britain) by Saeed Taji Farouky and Michael McEvoy. World premiere. “Addresses the fatal situation in Afghanistan now that all international troops have left the country.”
Une jeunesse allemande (A German Youth) (France / Switzerland / Germany)
by Jean-Gabriel Périot. World premiere. “Using archive material, the film traces without bias or commentary the developments leading up to the “German Autumn” in late 1977. The gradual radicalisation of leaders of the Red Army Faction (RAF) is made palpable in excerpts from, e.g., Holger Mein’s film Freiheit für Teufel (Freedom for Teufel) and Ulrike Meinhof’s Bambule (Rampage). The film examines the expulsion of a large number of undergraduate students from the German Film and Television Academy (dffb) for their radicalism, as well as the independent student workers’ cinema, ROSTA Kino, and the directors’ revolt at the Knokke EXPRMNTL Film Festival in Belgium.”
What Happened, Miss Simone? (USA) by Liz Garbus. International premiere. “Garbus weaves together film documents, interviews and, of course, the music of this inimitable singer to create an atmospheric portrait.”
Previously announced Panorama Dokumente films:
B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin by Jörg A. Hoppe, Klaus Maeck, Heiko Lange, Germany (WP).
Danielův Svět (Daniel’s World) by Veronika Lišková, Czech Republic (IP).
El hombre nuevo (The New Man) by Aldo Garay, Uruguay / Chile (WP).
Fassbinder – Lieben ohne zu fordern (Fassbinder – To Love without Demands) by Christian Braad Thomsen, Denmark (WP).
Iraqi Odyssey by Samir, Switzerland / Germany / Iraq / United Arab Emirates (EP).
The Yes Men Are Revolting by Laura Nix, Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno, USA (EP).
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