Followed by a discussion with Berlin-based filmmaker Ute Aurand
In 2018, Indonesian film programmer/archivist Lisabona Rahman spent time at the Arsenal Film Archive in Berlin in the Living Archive residency program. Her focus of interest at the time was women filmmakers’ work on film. It was during this search that she met with filmmaker Ute Aurand.
Ute Aurand has been working as a filmmaker since her student times in Berlin from 1979 and as a film programmer since 1990. Her work features people and landscape around her, wherever she goes. The films that she made use colors and compositions like paintings, move like films, keep personal records like diaries and are created in an economy that is very distinctly a practice of celluloid filmmaking.
Besides making films, Ute Aurand also curates film programs, showcasing the works of women filmmakers from all around the world to the cinephile public in Germany. Her programming work shows the diverse ways that film has been used by many women as a sort of notebook to record personal surroundings, later presented in form of a film. The film as a medium has a dimension of physicality, just like a notebook or a diary would, which contains records of the filmmakers’ live and her emotions. Yet differently from a diary (or home movies), these films are made to be shared with the public therefore creating an interesting mix between personal documentation and artistic expression.
In Jakarta, Ute Aurand shows her films and teaches a 16mm filmmaking workshop. Additionally, Lisabona Rahman presents a program of four films by other female filmmakers, conceived during her Living Archive residency. All films are shown in the 16mm film format.
Detel und Jón (1988/1993, 20 min)
Over a period of five years Ute Aurand filmed Detel Aurand and Jón Sigurgeirsson in Berlin and Iceland where they lived.
Sakura, Sakura (2015, 2,5 min)
SAKURA, SAKURA is a two minute film about two Japanese ladies, whom Ute Aurand met in Nara and Roppongi while filming in Japan 2010.
Four Diamonds (2016, 4,5 min)
Two memories from a longer visit to New England in Autumn 2012: A group of elderly ladies playing bridge followed by the stormy ocean at Cape Cod in Winter while listening to Etienne Grenier's music practice.
Der Schmetterling im Winter (Engl. version) (2006, 29 min)
”Ute Aurand films Maria Lang in her daily activity as she cares for her mother. The presence of the filmmaker is visible in the camera movements and in the editing rhythm. Admiration and discretion are sensed. We enter into the intimacy of mother and daughter through the eyes of a friend. The silent images create an occasion for attentive observation and balanced awareness. “ Robert Beavers, 2005
Zu Hause (1998, 2,5 min)
Zu Hause (At Home) is the final sequence in TERZEN, playing with the filmmakers shadow and the Bolex camera while filming in her kitchen.
Lisa (2017, 4,5 min)
A new short film portrait, which, as is often the case in Ute Aurand’s work, was filmed over the years and in different locations, here Germany and Japan. “Filming portraits allows me to emphasize private gestures and moments beyond narration and documentation,” she says.
Ute Aurand, born in Frankfurt/Main, West Germany in 1957 and raised in Berlin, studied at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) from 1979 to 1985. Alongside her own film work she has been curating film programs since 1990 – the monthly “Filmarbeiterinnen-Abend” (1990-1996) and the series “Sie zum Beispiel” (1995–96). She is co-founder of the group “Filmsamstag” (1997–2007) as well as of the series “Großes Kino, kleines Kino,” experimental films for children, Arsenal. She has taught at the Universities of the Arts in Hamburg and Bremen as well as at the HGKZ in Zurich. In 2015 she initiated a Bolex workshop. Her films have been seen at international film festivals.
Lisabona Rahman has been working as film programmer since 2006. She took up a specialization in film preservation and curatorial studies from the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) in 2013, as well as film restoration technique from the L’immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna, Italy. Lisabona currently is based in Jakarta and works as a freelance consultant on film restoration and archival film programming.
The program “Film is Her Notebook” was conceived by Lisabona Rahman and Ute Aurand and is presented by Lab Labalaba and Goethe-Institut, supported by Rubanah Underground Hub, Kinosaurus and the Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art (Berlin).
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