Event series
STILLSTAND - A FILM SERIES
Film Series|Haus-Kino at Goethe-Institut Montreal
The Goethe-Institut is dedicating a multifaceted online project to stillness (Stillstand), where this very special state and its subtle poetry are explored in numerous contributions by international artists and authors.
Filmmakers from Germany have also always been fascinated by standstill - the calm before (or after) the storm, the creative pause in life, the special potential of waiting time. What happens when characters "fall out of time," when time seems to stop or move circularly? Is waiting time, in fact, "lost time"? A stoic-radical acceptance of stagnation can also be a solution when one doesn't know how to go on or when everything becomes too much, as in Ulrich Köhler's Bungalow or Jan-Ole Gerster's A Coffee in Berlin (Oh Boy). Standstill appears as a space of possibilities and the promise of a different, queer and free city life in Neubau by Johannes M. Schmitt. Jutta Brückner's film The Hunger Years: In a Land of Plenty (Hungerjahre - In einem reichen Land), about a young woman's coming of age in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, addresses the involuntary stuckness in social conventions, within a rigid society. In Marianne and Juliane (Die bleierne Zeit), Margarete von Trotta addresses the subject from the side of the idealists, those people who - sometimes violently - forced societal change and ultimately failed because of their own goals. In Martina Priessner's powerful documentary The Guardian (Die Wächterin), about a Syrian Orthodox nun in southwestern Turkey, stagnation becomes her protagonist's companion in a harsh environment. With her beautifully filmed experimental documentary Under Snow (Unter Schnee), Ulrike Ottinger goes to Echigo in Japan, where in winter the snow envelops the landscape in a very special, almost poetic silence. Here, the standstill opens a passage into mythical in-between worlds and enables encounters with magical figures.
Between September 2022 and February 2023, every second Wednesday of the month will be a Stillstand film night and we are pleased to be able to present one of these films (always in the original version with French or English subtitles) to you here at the Goethe-Institut (1626 boul. St-Laurent, Montréal, QC, H2X 2T1).
Free of charge. Suggested Donation: 5 $
Films shown so far:
Filmmakers from Germany have also always been fascinated by standstill - the calm before (or after) the storm, the creative pause in life, the special potential of waiting time. What happens when characters "fall out of time," when time seems to stop or move circularly? Is waiting time, in fact, "lost time"? A stoic-radical acceptance of stagnation can also be a solution when one doesn't know how to go on or when everything becomes too much, as in Ulrich Köhler's Bungalow or Jan-Ole Gerster's A Coffee in Berlin (Oh Boy). Standstill appears as a space of possibilities and the promise of a different, queer and free city life in Neubau by Johannes M. Schmitt. Jutta Brückner's film The Hunger Years: In a Land of Plenty (Hungerjahre - In einem reichen Land), about a young woman's coming of age in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, addresses the involuntary stuckness in social conventions, within a rigid society. In Marianne and Juliane (Die bleierne Zeit), Margarete von Trotta addresses the subject from the side of the idealists, those people who - sometimes violently - forced societal change and ultimately failed because of their own goals. In Martina Priessner's powerful documentary The Guardian (Die Wächterin), about a Syrian Orthodox nun in southwestern Turkey, stagnation becomes her protagonist's companion in a harsh environment. With her beautifully filmed experimental documentary Under Snow (Unter Schnee), Ulrike Ottinger goes to Echigo in Japan, where in winter the snow envelops the landscape in a very special, almost poetic silence. Here, the standstill opens a passage into mythical in-between worlds and enables encounters with magical figures.
Between September 2022 and February 2023, every second Wednesday of the month will be a Stillstand film night and we are pleased to be able to present one of these films (always in the original version with French or English subtitles) to you here at the Goethe-Institut (1626 boul. St-Laurent, Montréal, QC, H2X 2T1).
Free of charge. Suggested Donation: 5 $
Films shown so far:
- Relativity. (2019) | Director: Mariko Minoguchi
- Transit (2018) | Director: Christian Petzold
- The Dreamed Path (2016) | Director: Angela Schanelec
- The Endless Night (1963) | Director: Will Tremper