Films by David Schittek

Germany, Russia 2020, 20 min
by Viktor Brim

Quiet, dark shots of nocturnal fog, of a mine, a dump truck or a wreck, of huge earth craters and new surface contours created by excavation. Raw material extraction, economisation and exploitation of nature are the themes of this visual study. It’s accompanied by an unobtrusive, but threatening and assertive sound that underlines the mystic quality of the images. Post-industrial landscapes become post-apocalyptic. (DOK Leipzig, Borjana Gaković)

Germany 2019, 85 min
by Daniel Abma

A huge construction project will change Germany´s most notorious bottleneck forever - a long-term observation over eight years of people living in Spa town Bad Oeynhausen. A film about Germany, small town society and a huge motorway."The spa town of Bad Oeynhausen: Every day, thousands of trucks roll through the city centre and over the B 61 federal road which connects the A2 and A30 motorways, respectively Warsaw and Amsterdam. When the threat of losing its status as a health resort looms on the horizon, which means losing the inviting title of 'Bad', something has to change: A bypass is to be built.Over a period of eight years, the film documents the gridlocked traffic at this bottleneck, the efforts of the mayor, police, fire brigade and construction companies, the delays in the construction of the northern bypass and above all the reactions of the affected residents. The latter look forward to some quiet and relief – or will soon have the motorway right in front of their door. The long-term documentation focuses less on the large-scale infrastructural measures than on their consequences for the people living by the roadside. Other stories are 'picked up' there with a fine instinct for unusual characters and leaving lots of space for their personalities and quirks. These include the local tradition of counting trucks on the federal road or the construction site as well as taking a walk or jogging on the long unfinished section of the road. (Frederik Lang, Catalogue DOK Leipzig 2019)

Germany 2016, 104 min
by Jakob Schmidt

TO BE A TEACHER tells the emotional story of three young teachers and their first years in school, aperiod called 'Referendariat' in Germany. Here they come to realize that their studies did not preparethem at all for what it means to work in one of the most responsible and important jobs of society.A rare insight into fabricating the most essential resources of modern times: education. A coming ofage story of three young people whose idealism clashes with a harsh reality.With: Ralf Credner, Katja Wolf, Anna Kuhnhenn