• Sat 13 04 2019 •
CAFÉ KOSMOS Re-enactments of reality in regional family films

With JOHANNA-YASIRRA KLUHS and BETTY SCHIEL

18:00

Venue: domicil, Hansastraße 7-11, 44137 Dortmund
In german language



Everything can be different! In the 70s, the Fiedler family makes a silent film in which their party cellar becomes a space station. In the film, they move beyond gravity and the orders of everyday life. The private Super 8 camera becomes a medium to test and expand the restructuring of role models and life plans slowly making its way into German everyday life.

In 2018, Interkultur Ruhr began to collect historical family films from the Ruhr area as part of the project Schmelztiegel Ruhrgebiet – Alltag schreibt Geschichte (The Ruhr melting pot – everyday narratives). Almost 1000 cine films from private collections were submitted by residents of the Ruhr area in response to a public appeal. Though most amateur films have a man behind the camera, the image and plot are often dominated by the female protagonists. Later on, the camera is repeatedly taken over by women, and there is also a real change in role models and body images. In the German post-war period, amateur film offered ever larger sections of the population the opportunity to stage themselves and view themselves from the outside. Filming here is more than just the extended arm of memory. It appears as a performative offer for self-alienation. The line between documentation and staging becomes blurred. There is a desire in rewriting, but also in the self-affirmation of already known images in order to sound out the potential for social change. The Super 8 programme ##Café Kosmos## by JOHANNA-YASIRRA KLUHS and BETTY SCHIEL follows these dynamics with individual film clips. The selected films oscillate between derailment and normalization, thus providing a concrete occasion to examine the conditions of emancipation in a conservative society.

A cooperation of IFFF Dortmund|Köln, Interkultur Ruhr, Stiftung Ruhr Museum and Akademie der Künste der Welt
Thanks for crucial support goes to the Forum Geschichtskultur an Ruhr und Emscher e. V. (Historical Culture Forum at the Ruhr and Emscher), the LWL-Medienzentrum für Westfalen (LWL Media Centre for Westfalia), the LVR-Zentrum für Medien und Bildung (LVR Media and Education Centre) and the Ruhr Tourismus GmbH (Ruhr Tourism GmbH).