Between Credible Fiction and Illusory Document
Film Series from Friday, 10., through Tuesday, February 21
The lines between fact and fiction, reality depiction and staging have long since become blurred. While the problems of "fake news" and "post-factual distortion of facts" are being discussed in the light of current political-social developments, the transitions are also becoming increasingly fluid in cinema.
This problem area is addressed by the programme series "Playing with Reality", which continues in March. The tense relationship between two genres whose approach to truth is fundamentally different will be explored: The documentary film is connected with the claim to depict reality. It is shot at original locations and shows real people.
The feature film, on the other hand, tells its own story, creating a fiction and using a visual language and dramaturgy appropriate to the subject. However, fictionality should not automatically be equated with a loss of documentary credibility. On the other hand, the documentary film can also be understood as a play on staged reality. Selected films demonstrate this reciprocal interpenetration. On show are so-called mockumentaries, staged documentaries that give the fictional narratives the appearance of factual credibility, and documentaries that only reveal themselves as feature films at second glance. Stylistically different examples illustrate that the relationship between fact and fiction is not as simple as it first appears.
Friday, 10. February, 6pm
Saturday, February 11, 8:30pm
F FOR FAKE F for Fake
France/Iran/Germany 1973
R: Orson Welles. D: Oja Kodar, François Reichenbach, Elmyr de Hory
89 min. 35mm. OF
In Orson Welles' film essay, which rivals his masterpiece CITIZEN KANE in terms of innovation, it's all about what's authentic, what's fake, and what's the difference between the two. Truth and lies, art and forgery Welles' ingenious play of ideas opens up completely new perspectives on seemingly firmly defined concepts for the viewer. Through the clever montage of film clips and mock documentaries, he thereby describes the media's ability to manipulate individuals and masses, and the impossibility of distinguishing between reality and illusion.
Sunday, February 12, 8:30 p.m.
THE THIN BLUE LINE The Case of Randall Adams
USA 1988. dir: Errol Morris
d: Randall Adams, David Harris. 103 min. 35mm. OF
In 1976, Robert Wood, a police officer, is shot dead in the USA. There are two suspects: a 16-year-old with a criminal record and 28-year-old Randall Adams, who is eventually convicted of murder. Thanks to his own research, director Errol Morris finds out that five witnesses testified falsely in court and that the police falsified evidence. In his pioneering work of non-fictional film, he lets the viewer participate in this search for knowledge between fact and hypothesis. He structures the factual into an "epistemological thriller that pairs investigative journalism with multi-perspective approaches. From this emerges a web of ambiguity and half-truths.
Wednesday, 15. February, 8:30 p.m.
Friday, February 17, 6 p.m.
ZELIG
USA 1983. dir: Woody Allen
d: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, John Buckwalter, Paul Nevens. 79 min. 35mm. OF
In the 1920s, an enigmatic chameleon confounds the US public: Leonhard Zelig, a man with no self who assumes the identities of other people. In the style of a mockumentary, Woody Allen constructs a fictional personality. Using posed tape and archive recordings, he immerses the viewer in a seemingly authentic life that never existed. While addressing the manipulative power of the medium, Allen smugly points out how quickly a cult of personality can dissolve or even turn into an enemy image.
Thursday, February 16, 8:30 p.m.
THIS AIN'T CALIFORNIA
Germany 2012. dir: Marten Persiel. D: David Nathan. 99 min. DCP
Marten Persiel portrays a teenage clique who discovered their love for a sport on the crumbling asphalt of the GDR that did not fit at all into the program of the workers' and peasants' state: rollerboarding as an expression of subversive power and pure joie de vivre. The use of private archive films suggests documentary authenticity. Only afterwards did it turn out that the punk fairy tale is not a real documentary at all. But the fact that the film lacks a real-life basis in no way diminishes its impact.
Saturday, 18. February, 8:30pm
THE IMPOSTER The Imposter
U.K. 2012. R: Bart Layton
D: Frédéric Bourdin, Nancy Fisher, Carey Gibson, Beverly Dollarhide. 99 min. Blu-ray. OmU
USA, 1994: A 13-year-old boy from San Antonio, Texas, disappears without a trace. Three and a half years later, he turns up in Spain: He has the same tattoos, but somehow looks different and speaks with a strange accent. It's only when investigators start asking questions that this astonishing true story takes an even stranger turn. In the process, suggestion and self-deception create a distortion of different truths, which Layton skillfully uses to craft a showpiece of receptive manipulability. Bart Layton's docu-drama is based on the real-life story of French conman Frédéric Bourdin.
Sunday, February 19, 8:30 p.m.
I'M STILL HERE
USA 2010. dir: Casey Affleck
d: Joaquin Phoenix, Antony Langdon, Carey Perloff. 108 min DCP. OmU
In 2008, Joaquín Phoenix surprisingly announces his retirement from the film business. He said he wanted to reinvent himself as a hip-hop musician. That he was adding another chapter to his film repertoire with this experiment remained obscure for a long time. Hollywood as a human siding? Welcome to Sonata off the glittering set. A seething juggernaut, no question. A thoughtful, very weird piece of fake documentary.
Tuesday, 21. February, 8:30 p.m.
PUNISHMENT PARK Punishment Park
USA 1971. dir: Peter Watkins
d: Patrick Boland, Kent Foreman, Carmen Argenziano. 88 min. 35mm. OF
Things are beginning to boil in the USA. To avoid revolution, political dissenters are interned in camps. Prisoners are given the option of crossing "Punishment Park: an inhospitable strip of desert at the end of which the delinquent is promised amnesty. Far more frightening than Watkins's exceedingly realistically staged mind game, however, is the fact that many of the former visions of horror have long since come to pass in this or similar forms.
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Source: Deutsches Filminstitut