Various cinematic genres and movements over the years have laid claim to truth in cinema — the
actualités of the Lumière brothers, Kino-Pravda espoused by Dziga Vertov, the “ethnofiction” anthropological films of Jean Rouch, and the “ecstatic truth” of Werner Herzog’s documentaries are but a few examples. Although the documentary is still a viable cinematic genre, many filmmakers have now expanded the range of their practice to create works that cross between art and anthropology, documentary and fiction, education and entertainment, and galleries and movie theaters.
Serious Games: Documentary Art between Fact and Fiction explores a cross section of documentary practice by German filmmakers and artists focusing on the subject of war and conflict. Blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, these works also demonstrate the fluidity of exhibition practice between the black box of the cinema and the white cube of the gallery. Presented in association with the National Gallery of Art, with special thanks to Zach Feldman for organizing the program.
Again / Noch Einmal
Germany, 2018, 40 min., Director: Mario Pfeifer
Discussion follows with Mario Pfeifer, Lutz Koepnick (Vanderbilt University), and Nora M. Alter (Temple University), moderated by Zach Feldman (Vanderbilt University
Originally screened in the 2018 Berlin Biennale as a two-channel installation video,
Again / Noch Einmal by artist Mario Pfeifer probes the actions of a group of men who forcibly restrain an Iraqi refugee following a confrontation in a grocery store in Germany. Divided between those who saw the event as an act of civil courage and others who viewed it as racially motivated vigilantism, extralegal jurors — facilitated by two familiar German crime TV actors, Dennenesch Zoudé and Mark Waschke — grapple with the reenacted scenario. Playing with the medium of pulpy German
Krimis (crime dramas), often based on real-life events, Pfeifer engages the audience to consider why individuals arrive at differing narratives from identical facts.
Mario Pfeifer was born in 1981 in Dresden, GDR. His work explores representational structures and conventions in the medium of film, in locations ranging from Mumbai to California to the Western Sahara. Conceiving each project out of a specific cultural situation, he researches social-political backgrounds and weaves further cross-cultural art historical, filmic, and political references into a richly layered practice, ranging from film and video installations to photographs and text installations. Often, Pfeifer collaborates on publications that reconsider these projects, offering research materials and critical investigations by writers and thinkers of related fields, concerning issues suggested in his projects for a wider social-political discussion. After his studies in Leipzig (HGB) and Berlin (UDK), Pfeifer graduated from Willem de Rooij’s class at Städelschule Frankfurt in 2008. He was a Fulbright fellow in Los Angeles (California Institute of the Arts) in 2008/09. Further grants and projects have led him to Bangkok, Mumbai, Marrakech, Beirut, Tierra del Fuego, Santiago de Chile, and New York City. In 2018, he participated in the 10th Berlin Biennale. Pfeifer lives in Berlin.
More information on seating is available on the website of the National Gallery of Art Film Programs (see link at right).
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