»Looking Back to the Present« – Filmprogramm 7

In the organizer's words:

From the feminist beginnings at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin with Helke Sander to the private punk film by the new artistic director Angelika Levi, the program brings together seven short films by ten women who studied or taught at the DFFB.

'Subjektitüde'
BRD 1966, Director: Helke Sander, 5 min, OmeU
An encounter on the open street, the streams of people's thoughts audible to the audience. In her first film, Helke Sander turns the original assignment on the subject of "Boy meets Girl" into a magical miniature.

'Family crypt - a love poem to my mother'
BRD 1983, Director: Maria Lang, 12 min, OmeU
A family portrait in spoken words and observations of everyday tasks: the father and mother, he skins a rabbit, she stirs a dough. In between, photo albums, poetry and fragments of two biographies.

'The Attack'
BRD 1984, Director: Pia Frankenberg, 9 min, OV
A slap out of nowhere is received appreciatively by the victim. The man hit by a woman interprets it as an act of minor anarchy and thinks: That made sense. Both then take to the streets and declare the slap to be art.

'Anziehen'
BRD 1979, Director: Ute Aurand, Bärbel Freund, Monika Vogel, Sibylle Tiedemann, 9 min, OmeU
Four women film each other getting dressed in this four-part film. The occasion was the work with the Bolex camera. The result was a protected space to which only women had access - and in which the female gaze is directed at the female body.

'Silently engrossed in conversation'
BRD 1980, Director: Ute Aurand, 8 min, OmeU
Ute Aurand uses subjective street scenes, mirrored faces, a passing city and naked female bodies under water to create a short filmic poetry - an essay of observational images.

'The Hyena's Breakfast'
BRD 1986, Director: Elfi Mikesch, 23 min, OmeU
Maybe her name is Maria: A woman with blonde curls listens to a caller in her New York apartment and moves between the couch and the kitchen floor deeper and deeper into her surreal fantasies, in which she tries out different roles with relish.

'Ariel'
BRD 1984, Director: Angelika Levi, Lilly Grote, 12 min, OV
The coal stove is fed, just like the carnivorous plant and a ghost was in the room. Sand is vacuumed in the room and at the beginning the rats take over the perspective. The home looks eerie in this experiment on the sickbed between punk and Kafka.

About the film series

Looking Back to the Present
From November 14 to December 19, 2025, we will be transforming our historic hall in the former E-Werk into a venue for film events. Current festival films, historical works and experimental short films will be shown - accompanied by guests such as the musician Sky Deep or the filmmakers Ulrike Ottinger and Julian Radlmaier. The series combines the present and film history and invites you to experience the Kinemathek as a place of exchange in a new way.