FILMKANTINE UG

Germany 2024, 85 min
by Kristine Nrecaj, Birthe Templin

HOUSE WITH A VOICE tells the story of six Burrneshas who, for different reasons, have decided to take on the social role of men. They have done this to circumvent patriarchal structures, to avoid misogynistic attacks, to support the family economically, to avoid compelled marriage and to be free. Our characters communicate with us intimately as they talk about their lives and bring us closely into their personal journey. They speak about freedom and oppression, about the promise of sacrificing their lives for the sake of their families’ survival. But also about the breaking of gender barriers and the power of the human mind to decide who we want to be. The film turns stereotypes and projections of gender discussions upside down. The Burneshas expand our awareness of human life and its universal conditions but in the end their story shows that the essences of life, which are identified as female, are held as less valuable, even less worth living. And that this remains so, worldwide. [TiDF]

Germany 2019, 43 min
by Kristine Nrecaj, Birthe Templin

Sixty years ago Bedrie was born as a girl in Albania. Today she lives as a man. She is a sworn virgin. The tradition of sworn virgins started 600 years ago: if there were no sons, one of the daughters had to live as a man, to maintain the family. Some women have chosen this path because they wanted to be free. Bedrie couldn't accept the restrictions of a woman's life. One day she gets a call from the young Adele (26) living in Tirana. Adele is searching for her identity, she wants to live self-determined in patriarchal Albania. Adele hopes to get answers and Bedrie is proud to share.A production of the Filmkantine UG on behalf of the ZDF in cooperation with arte, Commissioning Editor Ann-Christin Hornberger201930 Int. Filmfest Emden Norderney

Germany 2018, 30 min
by Ivette Löcker

Anya and Seryozha, eighteen and nineteen years old, have been close friends since school. They live in Mariupol, an industrial city in southeastern Ukraine. Life is serious, but they approach it with humor and lightness. Anya asks whether they should move away together. What is keeping Seryozha in this city close to the war front? The film shows snapshots from the life of young people searching for who they want to be and how they want to live. They move between autonomy and uncertainty, rebellion and melancholy. They are full of imagination and willpower.with Anya Shishman, Serjozha Lisiura, Dima Kolda, Lena Shishman, Anatoli Shishman, Yegor Voloshin and concert recording of DAKH DAUGHTERS, April 27, 2018 at Mariupol

Germany 2015, 104 min
by Tatiana Brandrup

A cineastic journey into the world of Naum Kleiman, one of the most important intellectuals in Russia today. Naum Kleiman, 77, an internationally acclaimed Eisenstein specialist, is the director of the Musey Kino, Moscow’s museum of cinema.Since 1989, the Musey Kino has shown previously banned classics of world cinema and Soviet films.Many saw the Musey Kino as Moscow’s most important intellectual forum. In 2005, the Moscow municipality sold the Musey Kino’s building and it became homeless. In October 2014, the Russian Minister of Culture fired Naum Kleiman as director. In protest, his entire team handed in their resignations. Scenes from iconic movies and interviews with Muscovites of different ages and social backgrounds form a documentary film collage which mirrors Russian reality today.

2014, 80 min
by Hannah Leonie Prinzler

Did you know that 20% of your genes are patented and owned by private corporations? In a creative investigation director Hannah Leonie Prinzler uncovers who profits from patents, and who bears the social consequences. Along her journey she meets British inventor James Dyson and American business gurus in the Silicon Valley. She learns the shocking story of our body’s genes that we don’t own and finds out about the war strategies that patent attorneys apply. She travels to Geneva, the world’s headquarter of patents, and to India, the largest manufacturer of generic, meaning patent free, medicines. She shows what India has come up with to protect its genetic resources and meets Anil Gupta, the ‘Gandhi of Innovation‘. At the end of her trip she has a look at the world’s first open-source car.

Germany 2011, 79 min
by Branwen Okpako

Branwen Okpako’s „The Education of Auma Obama“ is a captivating and intimate portrait of the U.S. president’s older half-sister, who embodies a post-colonial, feminist identity.An academic overachiever, she studied linguistics and contemporary dance in Heidelberg, Germany, before enrolling in film school in Berlin, where she met Nigerian-born director Okpako in the nineties. After living in the United Kingdom for a short period, Auma Obama eventually moved back to Kenya to mentor a young generation of community activists, social workers and other ambitious young men and women who lacked her privileged education and training, but were nonetheless determined to make a positive contribution to their society.Okpako has always been interested in questions of identity, affiliation and belonging. Although she frames her film as a biographical portrait of Obama, she goes much further, providing a layered historical context and discussions of post- colonial African identity from a feminist perspective. Okpako collects testimonies almost exclusively from women, echoing the African tradition of women as chroniclers of oral history. When coupled with these accounts, Okpako’s use of archival footage — filmed during colonization for an entirely different purpose — offers a new reading of history and the present. Obama is also the daughter of a charismatic man who fought for the liberation of his country and participated in the shaping of the first years of independence. She witnessed his hopefulness and rise as well as his disillusionment and demise, coming into adulthood as her country - and continent - fell prey to despotism, corruption and poverty.The Education of Auma Obama is also a film about a generation of politically and socially engaged Africans whose aspirations are informed by their parents’ experiences, and whose ambition to forge a better future for their communities starts from the ground up. Rasha Salti, September 2011 [Programmer's Note – REAL TO REAL / TIFF]With: Auma Obama, Kezia Obama, Marsat Osumba Onyango, Mama Sarah Obama, Elke Brenstein, Gloria Hagberg, Paula Schramm, Lois Wambui Thuo, Njeri Karago, Prof. Wierlacher, Jai Gonzales, Alfons L. Ims, Wanjiru Kinyanjui a.o.

Germany 2011
by Kyoko Miyake

Every night under Hackney skies, mothers from faraway lands create a familiar space for their children by singing them lullabies, the same ones they heard as children. The film enters the intimate space between mother and child, and explores the dilemma she faces in sharing her sense of home with a child who is rooted in another country and culture. Do the lullabies bring them closer together, or accentuate the difference between them?