These films celebrate the alternative film culture in Berlin that emerged in the 1980s. Ranging from the joyous OH! The Four Seasons (1988) featuring a series of improvised performances with Ulrike Pfeiffer in Berlin, Paris, Moscow and London to Bärbel and Charly (1995) a portrait of fellow filmmakers ranging from a re-enactment of Singing in the Rain to the excitement of putting on screenings at Berlin’s Babylon cinema in Kreuzberg. Aurand’s first film Deeply Absorbed in Silent Conversation 1980 presents an introspective portrait of the artist in Berlin, and marks the beginning of her evolving visual style while Detel + Jón (1988-93) is a playful portrait showing life in the city and in Iceland filled with happiness and love. The text by Jonas Mekas that he reads at the start of OH! The Four Seasons (1988) sums up the exuberant and inventive nature of these films “Improvisation is, I repeat, the highest form of concentration, of awareness, of intuitive knowledge, when the imagination begins to dismiss the pre-arranged, the contrived mental structures, and goes directly to the depths of the matter.”
Programme
Bärbel and Charly
Ute Aurand, Germany, 1994 16mm, colour/black & white, sound, 35 min
With Bärbel Freund and Karl Heil
Deeply Absorbed in Silent Conversation / Schweigend ins Gespräch vertieft
Ute Aurand, Germany 1980, 16mm, colour/black & white, sound, 8 min
Detel + Jón
Ute Aurand, Germany 1988/93, 16mm, colour/black & white, sound, 23 min
With Detel Aurand and Jón Sigurgeirsson
OH! The Four Seasons / OH! die vier Jahreszeiten
Ute Aurand and Ulrike Pfeiffer, Germany 1988, 16mm, colour, sound, 20 min
Tate Film is supported by Maja Hoffmann / LUMA Foundation