• Sat 31 10 – Sun 15 11 2020 / 2:15 – 6:30 pm •
Re-framing the Timeline
curated by MADHUSREE DUTTA
The films in this section re-open the old chests, upset the order of things and then re-write the well-known history of labor. The new chronologies create a concave mirror that can be used to inspect the contemporary world order.
Showtimes: Fri–Sun, 14:15–16:15 + 16:45–18:30
Venue: Academyspace, Herwarthstr. 3, 50672 Cologne
Free Admission | seats in the cinema room are limited to 3 *
LE FANTÔME DE L’OPÉRATRICE / THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERATORS
2006 | 66’ | Documentary, Found Footage | Canada
Director: Caroline Martel
Language: French with English Subtitles
This wry and delightful found-footage film reveals a little-known chapter in labor history: the story of female telephone operators’ central place in the development of global communications. With an eye for the quirky and humorous, Caroline Martel assembles a dazzling array of clips – more than one hundred remarkable, rarely seen industrial, advertising and scientific management films produced in North America between 1903 and 1989 by Bell and Western Electric – and transforms them into a dreamlike montage documentary.
As the first agents of globalization, this invisible army of women offered a way for companies to feminize and glamorize what was a highly stressful, underpaid and difficult job. As the work of operators has been eclipsed by the advent of automated systems, this artful piece of labor history also offers an insightful comment on women’s work, industrialization and communications technology.
Script: Caroline Martel
Editing: Annie Jean
Music: René Lussier, Suzanne Binet-Audet
Award: Best experimental film, Brooklyn Underground film festival
SCHICHT / SHIFT
2015 | 30’ | Documentary | Germany
Director: Alexandra Gerbaulet
Language: German with English Subtitles
The film unfolds the portrait of the filmmaker's family – brought to life by records from private archives – and embarks on a dizzying trip through the shrinking industrial city of Salzgitter, Germany. A city that is a cyborg with an iron skeleton and a heart beating 1000 meters deep under layers of soil and concrete. A film between analysis and imagination, composed of the punk of the filmmaker's youth, accompanied by the roar of the steel mill and the noise of the highway that get interrupted by the cutting silence of abandoned mines.
Script: Alexandra Gerbaulet
Camera: Alexandra Gerbaulet, Smina Bluth
Editing: Philip Scheffner
Narrator: Susanne Sachsse
Producer: Merle Kröger
Awards: First Prize German Competition, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen | First Film Award, FID Marseille | German Film Critics Award | Best Documentary Film, Moscow International Experimental Film Festival | Best Short Film, L’Alternativa Festival de Cinema Independent de Barcelona
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