Films by Frank Amann

2023, 86 min
by Britt Beyer

Coal mining has shaped Lusatia for generations. In the GDR it was still an important industrial location but, after the fall of communism, companies shut down and livelihoods were destroyed. With the planned phase out of coal, the region is facing another upheaval. Britt Beyer takes a sensitive look at the people who must deal once again with the collapse of existing structures and points of reference. [38 DOK.fest München, Ina Borrmann]

Germany 2022, 39 min
by Andrzej Klamt

Ukrainian photographer Yuri Kosin experienced the outbreak of war in his town of Irpin near Kiev. He documented the events as well as his escape a few weeks later. Now he is returning to his homeland. Yuri Kosin does not know what situation he will encounter in Irpin, but he knows that the world there will never be the same. The area around Kiev is considered safe again. Russian troops have withdrawn from western Ukraine. What they have left behind are places of horror. Butscha is located near Irpin. What images of destruction will Yuri Kosin encounter when he returns home, what will friends and neighbors, other artists tell him? Yuri Kosin, the photographer, will document the horror of war in his homeland with his pictures.The war in Ukraine has also become a war for the interpretative sovereignty of images. Images of war, and especially of war crimes, have had a direct impact on political action. Images become the means of war strategies. Juri Kosin reflects intensively on the possibilities, but also the dangers of the power of images. Director Andrzej Klamt and cameraman Frank Amann accompany the difficult return home of photographer Yuri Kosin, back to Ukraine.

Germany 2020, 88 min
by Andrzej Klamt, Manhal Arroub

The war in Syria seems as impenetrable as a black box - the conflict began almost ten years ago and even today many people in the Western world have the feeling that they don't even understand who is actually fighting against whom. What began with demonstrations for political reforms and became a revolution of the "Arab Spring" has long since become a conflict dominated by foreign powers: Iran and Russia on the side of the Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad, but also Turkey, the USA, the Gulf States and Israel are pursuing their goals in Syria. The war has brought immeasurable suffering, especially to the civilian population. Over 12 million people have become refugees, hundreds of thousands have lost their lives. The film analyses the causes of the war: they lie within Syria in the "Assad system", which in its struggle for survival has turned the country into a battlefield on which regional and international conflicts are fought. By using chemical weapons against the rebelling Syrians, the Assad regime has crossed all red lines and triggered a spiral of unlimited violence. Renowned international experts and actors such as the former US ambassador to Damascus, Robert Ford, the Turkish government advisor İbrahim Kalın, the commander of the armed Syrian opposition Salim Idris or Sam Dagher, author of the highly acclaimed “Assad or we burn the country”, vividly describe the stages of the conflict and make the motives behind this war clear. The Syrian core problem also becomes clear: the totalitarian dictatorship of a family clan. However the conflict in Syria develops, the West will be affected.

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

2016, 79 min
by Frank Amann

„Even with no input, or maybe especially with no input, the brain keeps creating images." Pete Eckert, blind photographerSHOT IN THE DARK is an intimate portrait of three successful artists who have one thing in common: visual impairment as a starting point for their visual explorations.This film poses fundamental questions about seeing and the imagination.Three blind photographers.It is as if through the slow working methods of these blind photographers something about the creation of photographic images and the phenomenon of light becomes visible to me for the first time. It is something performative, dynamic and very filmic.Watching SHOT IN THE DARK will introduce three extraordinary people. These blind artists insist on participating in the world of visuals. At the same time they question this world with their work, in which nothing is taken for granted.Pete Eckert (56) practises a photographic technique he calls "light painting". Because he can no longer see in which "decisive moments" he should trigger the camera, he lights in complete darkness all elements of the image how he imagines and would like to see them. To orient himself in his studio he uses the echo of his voice reflecting from the walls. He is living quite secluded with his Japanese wife Amy in a wooden cabin in a Californian city, and for this film he will create a series which reflects on the precarious togetherness between blind and sighted lovers and partners. What consequences will this work have for his own relationship?For Bruce Hall (59) the sky of his childhood was black. He saw the stars for the first time when he was nine, through the telescope of a school friend. "I think all photographers take pictures in order to see, but for me it's a necessity. I can't see without optical devices, without cameras." He uses a snapshot camera to magnify elements of his surroundings in order to read or recognise them. He can only perceive facial expressions when facilitated, like the expressions of his profoundly autistic twin sons Jack and James (13), who never or barely speak. Like a tragical twist of fate the invalidity of his sons brought to him the long sought subject for his photographical passion and his artistic abilities to life.Sonia Soberats (77) unexpectedly lost her eyesight at the age of 56. Her portrait photography resembles a theatre-stage and still is extremely intimate. She builds minimalistic backdrops from her imagination. Like a visual hunter she moves with flashlights around her models. Sonia Soberats lost her vision after fostering both her children and her husband who died from cancer within a few years. "I went through hell." Existence determines ...the images and imagination too?Inspite - or maybe because of – their medical lack of vision these three photographers have been invited to exhibit not only in the US but also internationally (Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, South Korea and Spain).How and why are these photographers able to advance their work so consistently? How does this intuitive approach to images by these visually impaired photographers differ from mine as a cameraman? Can less be more?

Germany 2012, 52 min
by Mira Thiel, Benjamin Cantu

For years, researchers believed that a cure for AIDS was impossible. But that all changed four years ago when an American, Timothy Ray Brown, became the first patient in the world to be cured of HIV for ever at the Berlin Charité hospital. Internist Gero Hütter succeeded in curing his patient of both HIV and leukaemia, using stem cell treatment. Since then, it appears that victory over the frequently fatal infection is possible in the near future. This documentary tells the story of the sensational treatment and takes the viewer on a journey through the various laboratories that are working around the clock on HIV research. Using complex animations, we present the three, currently most promising research approaches.