– Queer transformations in experimental cinema –

Shortfilm program + Intro-Performance: Dear Diary

Program by Miri Ian Gossing & Felix Bartke

This program of six short films delves into the processes of growing up from a queer

perspective, combining moments of departure, transformation, and self-invention in

experimental film forms. Between diary entries, self-help videos, daydreams, and

performance art, the films by Sadie Benning, Jennifer Reeder, Vika Kirchenbauer, Ale

Bachlechner, Stefan Ramirez-Perez, and TJ Cuthand explore personal ecstasies and pains

in transit.

Intertwinings of bodies, desires, and affiliations open up a space in which queer

becoming can be experienced as an ever evolving, lifelong movement.

COMING OF AGE, AGE, AGE… (DEUTSCH)

– Queere Transformationen im experimentellen Kino –

Kurzfilmprogramm + Intro-Performance: Dear Diary

Kuratiert von Miri Ian Gossing & Felix Bartke

Dieses Programm aus sechs Kurzfilmen befasst sich mit den Prozessen des

Erwachsenwerdens aus queerer Perspektive und verbindet Momente des Aufbruchs, der

Transformation und der Selbsterfindung in experimentellen Filmformen. Zwischen

Tagebucheinträgen, Selbsthilfevideos, Tagträumen und Performancekunst erkunden die

Filme von Sadie Benning, Jennifer Reeder, Vika Kirchenbauer, Ale Bachlechner, Stefan

Ramirez-Perez und TJ Cuthand persönliche Ekstasen und Schmerzen im Wandel.

Die Verflechtungen von Körpern, Begierden und Zugehörigkeiten eröffnen einen Raum, in

dem queeres Werden als eine sich ständig weiterentwickelnde, lebenslange Bewegung

erlebt werden kann.

FILMS in Order:

1. LESSONS IN BABY DYKE THEORY – TJ Cuthand , 3min, 1995 / CAN (engl.)

In 1995 when Thirza Cuthand was 16 and she felt like the only lesbian at her Saskatoon

high school. This turned out to be untrue, but the lack of visibility in her high school

coupled with the lack of representation of Queer teenagers in the 90’s made her make her

first video, a comedic short about teenage lesbian loneliness and trying to bribe

classmates to come out with the promise of candy.

2. BLOOD BELOW THE SKIN – Jennifer Reeder , 33 Min , 2015 / USA (engl. with English

subtitles)

Jennifer Reeder’s film chronicles a week in the lives of three teenagers who are preparing

for the most important night of their lives – the Prom Night. While one of them sells

underwear worn by her mother to a teacher, the other two fall unexpectedly in love with

one another. Intimate moments, a feeling of comfort, alone and as a pair in the bedroom.

The music blasting out of the record player creates a synchronicity between the girls.

CN: Blood

3. JOLLIES – Sadie Benning , 11min, 1991 / USA (engl.)

Benning gives a chronology of her crushes and kisses, tracing the development of her

nascent sexuality. Addressing the camera with an air of seduction and romance, giving

the viewer a sense of her anxiety and special delight as she came to realize her lesbian

identity.

4. STICK IT – Stefan Ramirez Perez, 5min, 2015 / GER (no dialogue)

STICK IT combines television footage of women’s gymnastics with recordings of the artist

attempting the same routines. Merging with the young gymnasts of the 1996 Olympics in

Atlanta into one composite character, he enters an ambivalent position between envy,

identification, rejection and critique of these highly controlled bodies and their restricted

performative roles. The video follows the preparation and execution of a floor routine,

suspending the marginal moment right before the action, encapsulating ambition, the

pressure to succeed and the looming possibility of failure.

5. LIKE RATS LEAVING SINKING SHIP – Vika Kirchenbauer, 24min, 2012 / GER,

(English with engl. subtitles)

Content Notes: Transphobie/Psychologische gutachten/Diagnostik

»Rats are glorious deserters and we must admire them. Rats don’t want to be captains

trying to keep the cause afloat. But swim on open water.«

Partly based on psychiatric assessments that diagnosed the artist herself with »Gender

Identity Disorder«, the film Like Rats Leaving a Sinking Ship attempts to stratify the

levels of narration, fact, chronology and history in such a way that they begin to start

wavering. An intimate piece that combines personal subjectivity with the clinical

objectivity of medical reports, challenging the very notion of these categories.

6. SATURN RETURN – Ale Bachlechner, 14min, 2014 / GER (engl with German subtitles)

»What did I do so far? Any remarkable achievements or prospects? What can I expect

from life? From myself? And the people I’m with?«

Two women give advise on how to navigate the existential crisis at the end of your

twenties, that is brought upon you by a specific cosmic constellation. After 29,5 years

Saturn returns to the position it had on the day you were born, completing one cycle

around the sun. Typically that phase is accompanied by drastic changes in people’s lives,

uncertainty and fundamental re-evaluation.