Archive

New York Memories

Twenty years ago, the Berlinale’s Panorama section screened Rosa von Praunheim’s ÜBERLEBEN IN NEW YORK - SURVIVAL IN NEW YORK. The film revolved around Claudia, Anna and Uli, who came to New York at the beginning of the eighties; they were all trying gain a foothold in a city that, at the time, was a much tougher place to live in than it is today. Now, twenty years on, Rosa von Praunheim returns to his protagonists in his new film.
Rosa von Praunh...

Niagara

At Niagara Falls, Ray and Polly Cutler meet the Loomis. Rose is an attractive blonde with a penchant for life, her husband George an obviously depressed war veteran with a penchant for jealousy. And with good reason: Rose is actually planning to have her lover throw him off the falls ... The marriage and revenge thriller combines the low-key staging of expressionist shadows from a film noir with the glorious showmanship of a Technicolor productio...

Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt

In the commentary, the word “gay” is uttered 90 times, which was still being used in the context of hate speech in 1971, two years after the abolition of Section 175 of the German criminal code, which criminalized homosexual acts between males. Those affected had not yet reclaimed the word. Delivered in a declamatory tone in voiceover to silent images showing clichéd gay scenes, the commentary provoked those unwilling to hear anything about it a...

Nitrate Kisses

In her first feature, after decades as a pioneer of lesbian cinema, Barbara Hammer weaves striking images of four contemporary gay and lesbian couples with footage of an unearthed, forbidden, and invisible history, searching eroded emulsions and images for lost vestiges of queer culture. Questions of historic representation are examined through addressing the margins, between-the-line readings, and images outside of prescribed textual boundaries...

No Bikini

A look back at a few glorious days in Robin’s childhood that shaped her life. When she was seven, she spent her holidays as a swimming camp. She decided to do without her bikini top – and managed to pass for a boy for several weeks on end.

No Stranger At All

“For two years starting in 2020, this work has been forming along the edges of disquiet and premonition, in fragments and intensities, through wandering and not-staying. It has tried to find language for and ways across the bizarre upheavals of social and political values with the rise of fascism in India and a global pandemic. It has insisted on being amongst the things that keep from falling apart. Filmed in Delhi, these incomplete fictions are...

Nono

Whenever the schoolchildren sing the national anthem eight-year-old Toto is asked to keep quiet. He has a harelip and his garbled voice always makes them all laugh. But this boy from the slums is a battler and not so easily daunted. His mate is a little boy who is hard of hearing; when these two are on the prowl together even the bruiser next door doesn’t bother them. Toto’s mother can’t really look after her son much. She’s got too much on her p...

Normal

Adele Tullis’s formally straightforward but aesthetically convincing documentary examines rigidly defined gender roles and the uncritical submission to the dictates of (hetero-)normativity. Turning her camera’s gaze on everyday actions, rituals and scenes, the director makes some of the situations she records seem disconcerting by juxtaposing sounds and images in a contradictory montage. In long, static shots she depicts girls being made up to l...

North By Current

Three years after the unexplained death of his niece Kalla, artist and filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his Mormon family’s home in the small town in Michigan where his father’s sawmill is located. His sister Jesse, who had found temporary stability as a mother after a difficult youth and addiction problems, is suspected by the authorities of being responsible, along with her partner David, for the death of their daughter Kalla. While Je...

Not Blacking Out, Just Turning The Lights Off

The video examines the role of intimacy in relation to desire and physical proximity.Using images and sounds that are surrogates for the liquidity or porosity of the body, of being inside and outside, it slips between the sensual image and its abstraction.Isla Leaver-Yap

Notes On A Scandal

Barbara Covett is a domineering, nonetheless lonely teacher who has worked for years at a shabby state school in London. Ruling her class with an iron fist, the only creature to whom she feels an attachment is her cat, Portia. Otherwise Barbara lives alone; she has neither friends nor confidante. All the things that make her happy or sad are committed solely, and more or less faithfully, to her diary. Then one day a young art teacher named Sheba ...

Notre corps

A teenager is sitting in the doctor’s consultation room, the camera films her from behind so that she remains anonymous. She tells the doctor how she got pregnant. Her boyfriend had assured her he would take care. Now she has to make a difficult decision. You can feel her anguish in every sentence she utters. And there’s no sign of the boyfriend.
This is one of the the first scenes in Claire Simon’s impressive documentary Notre corps. With a gaze...

Nuits blanches

April 2022 in France. The presidential election is entering its final round and the atmosphere is tense. Solène, a waitress, drifts through the night. She takes drugs, hurts people’s feelings and increasingly loses her grip.

Nunca vas a estar solo

Introverted Juan, manager of a mannequin factory, lives alone with his eighteen-year-old gay son, Pablo. Whilst Pablo blithely studies dance, Juan is hoping that, after twenty-five years at the firm, his boss will consider him for a partnership. When Pablo is badly wounded in a brutal homophobic attack which sees him hospitalised, his father realises just how far they have become estranged. A lack of witnesses and expensive medical bills force J...

O estranho

O estranho, the intrusion, is a place: Guarulhos International Airport near São Paulo. From there, the journey proceeds not so much through the world as through time. Built on Indigenous territory, the airport completely changed the landscape. Some people left, others remained: they now work in the duty-free shop or in baggage handling.
The past reappears in various forms, challenging the protagonists, including Alê. Right there, in the riverbed ...

O noapte in Tokoriki

There’s a party in the Tokoriki nightclub. It’s Geanina’s 18th birthday and the whole village is there. The neon palm is lit up and the DJ is wearing his golden shirt. Alin and his friends ride up in style in the horse-drawn cart and take over the dance floor. But Alin seems to have something on his mind. His eyes sparkle when he sets eyes on Geanina, which doesn’t escape her boyfriend’s attention. Emotions are running high. Will there be an esca...

O Pacote

At a new school Leandro meets the lively Jefferson. They form an instant attachment and soon realise that theirs is no ordinary friendship. But Jefferson has to tell Leandro something and he is clearly struggling to get it out. Leandro enquires further, hoping it’s some kind of a joke. Except Jeff doesn’t look like he’s joking. If they want to be together there's one irreversible thing Leandro must deal with: Jeff is HIV positive. ...

O Pássaro da Noite

In the latest of her series of portraits of legendary underground performers, Marie Losier takes us into the world of Fernando, aka Deborah Krystal, the glittering and poetic performer of the Lisbon club Finalmente. Over the last thirty years, Fernando has been performing every night at Finalmente, dressed in golden gowns. O Pássaro da Noite reveals the many skins of Fernando that lay underneath the layers of his colorful fabrics, and – with the...

Obscuro Barroco

Slowly and elegiacally, the camera glides at first over a forest shrouded in fog, then over a panorama of Rio de Janeiro. An off-screen voice tells us that Rio is a factory of dreams and nightmares, a city of transformations. In her essayistic film Obscuro Barroco Greek director Evangelia Kranioti explores the poetic words of her transgender narrator Luana Muniz, who is herself an icon of Brazil’s queer subculture. Amidst a somnambulistic tide of...

Odem

Lara is Palestinian. She left Ramallah thirteen years ago to begin a new life in London where she married Michael and had a child. She, her husband and her seven-year-old son James lead a pleasant, albeit somewhat dispassionate life in one of the city’s better districts. But there’s nothing that a good slug of vodka won’t help her to cope with. But then, one day, Inam turns up at Lara’s front door. She is a childhood friend from Ramallah. No soon...