Virtual conversation
Heimat is a Space in Time
Virtual conversation with filmmaker Thomas Heise about his film, moderated by Barbara Thériault.
Free to the public upon registration:
The discussion will be in German with English translation.
Conversation with director Thomas Heise about his film Heimat is a Space in Time to mark 30 years of German reunification. This monumental documentary, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Rencontres internationales du documentaire à Montréal in 2019, tells the story of a century of German history through personal letters from the director's family archives. In this way, it illustrates the two world wars, the two German states and the reunification in 1990.
About the film
On-screen, shots of contemporary Germany are intercut with a few archival images. Meanwhile, the filmmaker’s voice reads personal letters by members of his family, spanning more than a century. From world wars to the Shoah to the migrant crisis, the reality of divided Germany and its complicated reunification, Thomas Heise examines his country’s past as a way to understand its present. Private lives and socio-political upheavals become the essential links in an essay of uncommon scope, situating individual lives within the ideological movements of their time. A critical reflection on the resurgence of identity-driven nationalist movements, Heimat is personal and political in equal measure.
About Thomas Heise
Thomas Heise trained as a printer before he started to work as an assistant director at the DEFA Studio for Feature Films in Potsdam-Babelsberg in 1975. Parallel to his work at the studio he completed his secondary education, so that he could study at the Academy of Film & Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg 1978-1983. His first film, the documentary WHY A FILM ABOUT THESE PEOPLE (WOZU DENN ÜBER DIESE LEUTE EINEN FILM) - produced entirely with materials bought on the black market - was banned from public screening. Heise broke off his studies.
Since 1983 he has worked as a free-lance writer and director in the areas of theatre, audio drama and documentary. Until the end of the GDR all his documentary efforts were however either blocked, destroyed or confiscated. Heise found an artistic home at the theatre, where he cooperated closely with author and director Heiner Müller. Between 1987 and 1990 Heise acquired his MA at the Berlin Academy of Fine Art. He was a member of the Berlin Ensemble until 1997, where he acted as contributing director for a number of productions. He was teaching as a Professor for Film and Media Art at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design 2007-2013. Since 2013 he is working as a Professor for Art and Film at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria. Since 2018 he is the director of the Film and Media Arts section at the Academy of Arts Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany.
About Barbara Thériault
Barbara Thériault is full professor at the Département de sociologie and at the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at University of Montreal. She is charge of the “Feuilleton” section of Sociologie et sociétés. She holds a Ph.D. from the Max Weber Center at the University of Erfurt and the Free University in Brussels as well as a habilitation from the European University Viadrina.
She teaches classical German sociology and translates German feuilletons into French (Simmel, Kracauer, Elias, Roth, Tucholsky). At the center of her current researches are two interests: contemporary Germany and sociological writing. Within one concrete project—an ethnography of a German mid-sized town, written in the form of feuilletons—she brings them both together: Die Bodenständigen. Erkundungen über die nüchterne Mitte der Gesellschaft. edition überland, Leipzig
In 2018 she was writer-in-residence in Lviv, Ukraine.
Details
Language: German with English translation
Price: Free, please register.