Whose Voice is This?

Dana Iskakova, Saodat Ismailova
Kazakhstan / Uzbekistan
10'

WHOSE VOICE IS THIS? explores the soundscapes of the collection of Central Asian films in the Arsenal archive. By examining dubbed voices, background effects, and original soundtracks, the work traces Soviet ideology’s influence on films from the 1960s to the 1990s, capturing its gradual erosion and the impact of Perestroika.

Shifting perspectives from the visual to the aural, this film is a result of research into the Central Asian holdings of Arsenal’s archive. It explores the evolution of sound, speech, and music in local cinema from the 1960s to the 1990s. By listening to characters’ concerns through dubbed voices in addition to soundscapes and soundtracks, we can trace the impact of Soviet ideology, its gradual weakening, and the rise of Perestroika’s freedom. Although the archive, with 45 films from Central Asia, cannot represent all of the region’s political and social shifts, it does offer a valuable basis for analyzing how evolving sound reflects broader transformations over three decades. (Arsenal Berlin)

Whose Voice is This?

Friday, September 26, 18:00

Cinema Elvire Popesco
Cumpără bilet

Eastern Elegies - Reflections of a Bygone Era

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Whose Voice is This?

Dana Iskakova, Saodat Ismailova | Duration 10'

WHOSE VOICE IS THIS? explores the soundscapes of the collection of Central Asian films in the Arsenal archive. By examining dubbed voices, background effects, and original soundtracks, the work traces Soviet ideology’s influence on films from the 1960s to the 1990s, capturing its gradual erosion and the impact of Perestroika.

Grandmamauntsistercat

Zuza Banasińska | Duration 23'

Created from materials garnered from the Polish Educational Archive, GRANDMAMAUNTSISTERCAT tells the story of a matriarchal family through the eyes of a child grappling with the reproduction of ideological and representational systems.

Afraid Doesn’t Exist

Anna Zett | Duration 31'

A defunct police state is experienced both as a source of nebulous horror, and as a site of political and poetic self-empowerment. Anna Zett combines film and sound material from the Berlin archives of the GDR opposition with poetry and music from the time, showing the charged period of transition in Germany between 1986 and 1990.

Endarchiv

Anna Zett | Duration 18'

Endarchiv examines the symbolic process of disposal and forgetting while raising the question how to take care of the emotional and performative remains of the GDR and its oppositional movements. The film maker Anna Zett is seen spray painting short questions and statements onto large mounds of pebble gravel, where every step leads to a rockslide. The action is interspersed with found footage filmed by Klaus Freymuth, showing artists and demonstrators painting and writing onto the East side of the Berlin Wall shortly after the border was opened in November 1989.

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