Every Friday and Saturday Night
Film screenings at Goethe-Institut Montreal.
Please refer to our cultural newsletter for exact times.
Address:
1626, boul. Saint-Laurent, Bureau 100
Montreal, QC, Canada H2X 2T1
Documentaries:
IF I THINK OF GERMANY AT NIGHT (Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht)
Director: Romuald Karmakar
Germany 2017, Documentary | 105 min.
With: Ricardo Villalobos, Sonja Moonear, Ata, Move D und Roman Flügel
Romuald Karmakar's documentary is about five pioneers of electronic music who have made it their purpose in life. - Between eloquent reflections of the music makers in interview passages, quietly observed work processes in the DJ home and images of sweating crowds at raves, the selective picture of a music scene in transition slowly and very quietly unfolds. Ata describes the current scene as a huge, densely woven tapestry, the end of which cannot be seen, whose differentiation since the 1990s has led to a complexity that is difficult to grasp. Karmakar does not attempt a complete historical outline, but instead lets his images and the protagonists speak.
SISTERS WITH TRANSISTORS
Director: Lisa Rovner
UK, France, USA 2020 | Documentary | 86 min.
With: Laurie Spiegel, Suzanne Ciani, Wendy Carlos, Maryanne Amacher uvm.
Narrated by Laurie Anderson.
Sisters With Transistors is the remarkable untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today. Theremins, synthesizers and feedback machines abound in this glorious ode to the women who helped shape, not just electronic music but the contemporary soundscape as we know it. - Avant-garde composer Laurie Anderson’s narration accompanies fascinating archival footage to trace the history of the technological experimentation of sound, the deconstruction of its parts and the manipulation into something altogether other. While traversing a range of musical approaches and personalities, from academia to outsider art to television commercials, we meet Clara Rockmore, Bebe Barron, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel and Eliane Radigue, among many other fascinating and enigmatic musical geniuses and their peculiar way of hearing the world.
Never Stop - A Music That Resists (Never Stop – Une musique qui résiste)
Director: Jacqueline Caux
France, Documenhtary | 76 min.
With: Juan Atkins, Carl Graig, Jeff Mills
Never Stop – Une musique qui résiste (Never Stop - A Music That Resists) allows us to uncover a paradoxical story: how the liberating force of the musical movement known as Detroit Techno and the independent labels founded by its pioneers gave rise to a counterculture that echoed around the world. How a creative force based on new ways of thinking, oriented towards the world of technology and electronic communication, made an economic utopia a reality. How the only way out of an unbearable everyday life for these musicians was to develop techniques that allowed them to live out an exuberant creativity and freedom while retaining endearing human qualities. How the attitude and approach that they have exhibited in their labels, which have now existed for thirty years, can still serve as a model to this day. And how, finally, the city of Detroit is coming back to life after many years of decline.
Spielfilme:
Magical Mystery – or: The Return of Karl Schmidt (Magical Mystery oder : Die Rückkehr des Karl Schmidt)
Director: Arne Feldhusen
Germany | 2017 | 111 min.
With: Charly Hübner, Detlev Buck, Marc Hosemann, Annika Meier and Bjarne Mädel
Adaptation of Sven Regener's eponymous novel. Germany in the mid-1990s: Karl Schmidt is released from a psychiatric clinic: The artist, once an avid drug user, had suffered from a nervous breakdown in the night of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Now, he has to get along in a country that has changed completely. In Hamburg he runs into a couple of old friends who claimed fame as techno musicians. They are about to embark on a "Magical Mystery Tour" throughout Germany for which they need a driver who has to remain sober at any chance. So they convince Karl to take a break from his supervised rehab accommodation to join them on their tour. This marks the beginning of a crazy road trip on which the crew try to reconcile the spirit of the hippie movement with the rave lifestyle.
Als wir träumten
Director: Andreas Dresen
Germany, France | 2015 | 113 min.
With: Merlin Rose, Julius Nitschkoff, Marcel Heupermann, Joel Basman, Frederic Haselonm Gerdy Zint and Ruby O. Fee
On the outskirts of Leipzig, 1990s, shortly after the end of the GDR, four friends get enthusiastic about techno music and found their own club. - Rico, Dani, Paul and Mark grow up in the whirl of the reunified country. What was true yesterday is no longer true today. Night becomes day, the street becomes an adventure playground. The boys roam wild and unruly, stealing cars, trying drugs and the new swingers' club. They found their own discotheque, which is soon besieged by bald neo-Nazis. Awakening everywhere, decline everywhere. - What Leipzig author Clemens Meyer wrote down in 2006 in his multiple award-winning debut novel, author Wolfgang Kohlhaase and director Andreas Dresen condense into a cinematic parable about friendship and betrayal, confidence and illusion, brutality and tenderness. They tell the story of a lost youth and at the same time present a game about rebellion and the never-ending utopia of great happiness.
Victoria
Director: Sebastian Schipper
Germany | 2015 | 133 Min.
With: Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Burak Yiğit and Lena Klenke
Victoria, a young Spanish woman, dances through the Berlin scene with abandon. She meets four mates outside a club who introduce themselves as Sonne, Boxer, Blinker and Fuß. They quickly get chatting. Sonne and Victoria take a fancy to each other and slip away from the group at the first opportunity. But their tender flirting is rudely interrupted by the others because, for these pals, the night is far from over. To settle an old debt they have to pull off a dodgy deal. And because one of them is too drunk, they decide that Victoria, of all people, should take over the role of driver. What began as a game suddenly becomes deadly serious.
Working from his own script, actor and director Sebastian Schipper tells the story of a breathless night on the streets of the metropolis. The camera seamlessly intertwines the passing of time and numerous locations, placing the audience right in the centre of the action. Alongside the audacious gang, we gaze out across the city from tower block roofs, saunter along deserted pavements and hide out in secluded courtyards as apparently random events coalesce into a dramatic tour de force.
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