Family Portraits

Cohabitations and Cinema

24th International Bremen Film Conference

In 2019, the conference will focus on family portraits emphasizing old and new forms of living together. Since its beginnings, cinema has reflected upon life in communities: classic family constellations, their decomposition and their rebirth are shown as well as shared flats and queer ways of life. Families can also mean communities of work and production, making films and cinema – and connecting film and life as joint practice. In this sense, films and cinema are at the same time fields for experiments, places for reflection and heterotopias (“different spaces”, Foucault 1998), leading out of the tightness of prevailing families into the founding of new communities. The conference invites international experts and filmmakers to reflect upon the relation of cohabitations and cinema.

The romantic couple forms a central topos of  popular cinema  – as of Western culture. It  models and reflects (imaginatively and in reality) a phase of life that leads out of given (family) structures only to establish new families or continue existing ones within new constellations. Against this background individualization and lifestyle changes will be linked to a conflictual finding process of the couple (Illouz 2012). Next to the focus on pairing, cinema has always offered images of families. Families have been represented as historically grown contexts of culture and society, but also as designs or stereotypes of specific ideologies, iconologies or  patterns of thinking. The rich variety evident especially in late filmmaking has contributed to the reflection and discussion of dominant models of  the nuclear family, just as it has questioned accompanying conceptualizations of biological kinship. Alternative, queer and "diasporic" forms of cohabitation and elective affinity in film have accordingly, led to discussions on models of different types of communitarization (u.a. Berghahn 2013).

Supported by the nordmedia – Film- und Mediengesellschaft Niedersachsen/ Bremen mbH
Cooperation partner: CITY 46 / Kommunalkino Bremen e.V. und AG Geschichte Lateinamerikas / FB 8, ZeMKI

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

7 pm: Keynote 1
Weit verstreut doch eng verbunden: Diasporafamilien im zeitgenössischen europäischen Kino
   | Daniela Berghahn (London)
   | In German

8:30 pm: Keynote screening 1
ALMANYA – WELCOME TO GERMANY
   | Almanya – Willkommen in Deutschland, D 2011, dir: Yasemin Şamdereli, 101 Min., German original version
   | Introduction by Daniela Berghahn

Thursday, May 9, 2019

10 am: Panel 1a – PRODUCTION FAMILIES
10 am: „At Least the Money Will Stay in the Family.“ Film- und Familienproduktion bei Chantal Akerman
   | Theodor Frisorger (Köln)
   | In German

10:45 am: Familiennester: Konfigurationen des Familiären als Zugang zu Béla Tarrs Kino
   | Jonathan Klamer (Marburg)
   | In German

11:25–11:40 am: BREAK

11:40 am: Panel 1b – CHILDREN AND FILM
Zwischen Kindheit und Erwachsensein: Fragen zur Zuschauertheorie
   | Bettina Henzler (Bremen)
   | In German

12:25 pm: Children in (A-)Families: Pedro Costa’s O Sangue and Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s La Pivellina
   | Loreta Gandolfi (Cambridge)

2:30 pm: Keynote screening 2
ETWAS TUT WEH
   | BRD 1979, dir: Recha Jungmann, 72 Min., German original
   | Prescreening: FAMILIENGRUFT (BRD 1981/82, dir: Maria Lang, 12 Min., 16mm, German original)
   | Introduction by Annette Brauerhoch

4:30 pm: Keynote 2
Demontagen, Reinszenierungen: Familie, Geschichte und filmische Form
   | Annette Brauerhoch (Paderborn)
   | In German

8 pm: Commented Film Art Programme
Family matter(s)
   | Curated and presented by Elena Zanichelli (Bremen)

Friday, May 10, 2019

10 am: Panel 2 – HOME MOVIES AS ARCHIVE
10 am: Ahnen im Archiv
   | Babylonia Constantinides (München/Zürich)
   | In German

10:45 am: A Question of Affinity: Notizen zum frühen österreichischen Amateurkino
   | Sandra Ladwig (Wien)
   | In German

11:25–11:40 am: BREAK

11:40 am: „Eine Maexie Production“: Ellen Illichs Familienfilme zwischen Erinnerungsproduktion und Selbstvergewisserung
   | Michaela Scharf (Wien)
   | In German

 

2:30 pm: Panel screening 1b
LITTLE GIRL
   | La Pivellina, I/A 2009, dir: Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, 100 Min., 35mm, Original with German subtitles
   | Introduction by Loreta Gandolfi

 

4:30 pm: Archive Project
Ivan and His Brothers – 16mm-Films of the Illich Family (1936–42)
   | Michael Loebenstein / Ingo Zechner (Wien)
   | Guests: Yvonne Illich (Boston), Lindsay Zarwell (Washington), Michaela Scharf (Wien)

 

8:30 pm: Panel screening 2
STORIES WE TELL
   | CDN 2012, dir: Sarah Polley, 108 Min., Original with German subtitles
   | Introduction by Babylonia Constantinides

 

10:30 pm: Panel screening 3
UNDER THE SHADOW
   | UK/KAT/JOR 2016, dir: Babak Anvari, 84 Min., Farsi Original with English subtitles
   | Introduction by Janna Heine

Saturday, May 11, 2019

10 am: Panel 3 – NATIONAL FAMILY CINEMATOGRAFIES
10 am: Familienhorror in Teheran. Haunted House aus iranischer Perspektive
   | Janna Heine (Berlin)
   | In German

10:45 am: Nähe und Ferne des Familien-Bildes in Eine Stadt der Traurigkeit: Die Übertragung traditioneller ostasiatischer Bildkomposition in das moderne Medium des Films
   | Wonho Lee (Berlin)
   | In German

11:25–11:40 am: BREAK

11:40 am: Sozialistische Konversationsgemeinschaften: Tischgespräche als Ausdruck familiären Lebens im DEFA-Gegenwartsfilm der 1970er Jahre
   | Andy Räder (Rostock)
   | In German

12:25 pm: „Ihre wirkliche konkrete Situation, von morgens bis abends und abends bis morgens“. Filmische Sorgegemeinschaften in Sto Spiti und Huba
   | Julian Jochmaring (Potsdam)
   | In German

 

2 pm: Film + Guest
THE IMPOSSIBLE PICTURE
   | Das unmögliche Bild, D/A 2016, dir: Sandra Wollner, 69 Min.
   | Guest: Film maker Sandra Wollner
   | In German

 

6 pm: Panel screening 3
AT HOME
   | Sto spiti, GR/D 2014, dir: Athanasios Karanikolas, 103 Min., Original with German subtitles
   | Introduction by Julian Jochmaring

 

8:30 pm: Silent film + X
THE NORTULL GANG
   | Norrtullsligan, S 1923, dir: Per Lindberg, 86 Min., tinted, silent, English intertitles
   | Live-DJ: RØD (Hamburg/Bremen)

 

10:30 pm: Late night screening
WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
   | NZ 2014, dir: Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, 82 Min., Original with German subtitles

Sunday, May 12, 2019

4 pm: Family screening
MY LIFE AS A COURGETTE
   | Ma vie de courgette, F/CH 2016, dir: Claude Barras, 66 Min., German version
   | Afterwards action&fun!

 

8:30 pm: Screening
A FAMILY AFFAIR
   | NL/DK 2015, dir: Tom Fassaert, with Marianne Hertz, 115 Min., Dutch with English subtitles