My Talk with Florence & SKP Komplex

2 German directors premiere docs at Rendezvous with Madness Festival

Wed, 10/10/2018 -
Sun, 10/21/2018
Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario

The Goethe-Institut co-presents German Films @ Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival.

The directors will be present for introductions and Q&As!

MY TALK WITH FLORENCE
directed by Paul Poet | Austria 2015 | 129 minutes | German with English subtitles

As challenging a film as you are likely to see this year (or any year for that matter); this two-hour portrait of an abuse survivor at the hands of a lauded contemporary artist is sadly more timely than ever given recent overdue falls from grace by abusive leaders.

Paul Poet is a Vienna-based filmmaker, musician and journalist, best known for his documentary FOREIGNERS OUT on Christoph Schlingensief’s activist art, which the Goethe-Institut Toronto showed in May 2018. Poet studied philosophy and communications at Vienna University and in the early 2000s curated the innovative web portal Webfreetv.com, on which he hosted the first European online film festival "Internet Film Award".

Canadian Premiere: Friday October 12 | 8:30 PM | Jackman Hall, AGO


SPK KOMPLEX (SPK COMPLEX)
directed by Gerd Kroske | Germany, 2018 | 111 minutes | German with English subtitles

This year’s Mad To Be Normal (our 2017 opening night film; a portrait of anti-psychiatrist R.D. Laing) is a fascinating documentary of a radical anti-therapy group. In 1970, Dr. Wolfgang Huber and a group of patients founded the “Socialist Patient’s Collective” (SPK) in Heidelberg, Germany. Controversial therapy methods, political demands, and a massive interest in the movement from patients deeply distrustful of conventional “custodial psychiatry,” led to run-ins with the University of Heidelberg and local authorities. Their experiment in group therapy ultimately ended in arrests, prison and the revocation of Huber’s license to practice medicine. SPK Complex shares the untold story of events before the German Autumn of student protest and left-wing terror; connecting the dots from Germany’s failure to address its Nazism after WW2 to present day inadequacies of the “modern” psychiatric system.

Gerd Kroske, influenced by his own past in East Germany, often focuses on German history in his films, especially around marginalized groups. He studied Cultural Sciences at Berlin’s Humboldt University as well as Directing at the Academy for Film and Television Konrad Wolf in Potsdam-Babelsberg. From 1987 to 1991, he worked as a writer and dramaturge at the famous East German DEFA documentary studio. Kroske has been making his own films since the autumn of 1989 and runs doc production company realistfilm. His latest film SPK COMPLEX premiered at the Berlinale 2018 to much acclaim.

Canadian Premiere: Thursday October 18 | 6 PM | Jackman Hall AGO

Rendezvous with Madness Film Festival is a signature event of Workman Arts, produced annually in Toronto since 1993. As the first festival of its kind in the world, and currently the largest, it investigates the facts and mythologies surrounding mental illness and addiction as presented by both Canadian and international filmmakers.