Films by Frank Behnke

Germany, Morocco 2018, 71 min
by Jasmin Preiß

Karim: “What should I’ve done? I was in a bad mood, when you picked me up and you said:Come with me, come with me. What could I’ve done? Could I’ve left you alone? Should I’ve been as cold as to say I’d rather be alone?“ Jasmin: “Would that have been better?“ Karim: “Yes, because I’ve been seen things…“ Jasmin: “Ok. Next time I won’t talk to you.“Meeting the artist Karim Aouaj El Kasmi, I’m fascinated. Karim is attempting to find stability and freedom within the restraints of everyday life. As he travels from one place to another, a deeper search, one to achieve balance within himself, is gradually revealed.

2015, 79 min
by Eva C. Heldmann

The film interviews five people who cannot pay their electricity bills. They live below the poverty line without light and heat, in or near large cities. Berlin based artist Laurence Grave acts a composite rôle, representing aspects of the other people. She sees, hears and touches in her forsaken apartment, and feels limited and excluded. At the same time she is extra-sensitive to the passage of light, day and night, through her windows. A long indoor twilight persists between the bright sunlight and the night car lights that both shine onto her walls making 'cinema'. The sounds that creep into the apartment are just alien to her. The interviewed people read their responses for the camera. (This technique relaxes the original interview and also gives the people some interpretative distance from themselves.) They speak of how they lost work, then electricity, then hope, and finally found clever solutions to their precarious situations.In the end the actress rises from her dark world to dizzy heights, flashing with her own electricity, remaking the rules of the game. "Elektra" triumphs! A film about light and darkness, noise and silence, belonging and being excluded, reality and show/chaos.

Germany 2009
by Kristina in der Schmitten

"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans." (John Lennon) The five protagonists - and the director - in "No straight paths“ had several things in common: They went to the same school, graduated together and had many dreams and visions about what they wanted to do with their future. In the meantime, half of life is over and they have realized: Things never turn out the way you expect. An anniversary - 20 years of graduating - gives reason to review how life has played.