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Afraid Doesn’t Exist

Anna Zett
Germany
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.

A German police state of the past is the setting for the pulsating short film thriller AFRAID DOESN’T EXIST. In it, Anna Zett collages video and audio material from the Berlin Archive of the GDR Opposition, partially taking the perspective of a sensitive child. Based on her own intimate involvement, the artist traces a successful, yet mostly unknown act of resistance at the very end of the GDR, while at the same time opening up an associative space for connecting with experiences of violence that are otherwise difficult to access today. Vocally highly condensed voices from a 1986 East Berlin poetry reading support the voiceless narrator – “an adult child” – in the reconstruction of her own emotional world, as does the multi-layered musical score. From footage of the environmental library to private videos and journalistic material, the film leads to the second occupation of the Stasi headquarters in Berlin-Lichtenberg in September 1990, where it settles into a very different mood. (Berlinale Forum Expanded)

Friday, September 26, 18:00

Cinema Elvire Popesco
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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.

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