Nuclear Landscapes: Two Films on Climate Justice

10 mai | 19h00

Nuclear Landscapes: Two Films on Climate Justice / Nuklearlandschaften: zwei Filme über Klimagerechtigkeit

Subsequent discussion in English withdocumentary filmmaker Alex Gerbaulet and climate theory researcher Noa Levin. / Nach der Vorführung wird es eine anschließende Diskussion auf Englisch mit der Regisseurin Alexandra Gerbaulet und der Forscherin Noa Levin geben

1. Film: Atomkraftwerk Zwentendorf
Von: Hope Tucker
17 Minuten, Originalversion (ENG), 2018 (Austria/USA)

Synopsis:
Forty years ago, in what was only the second referendum ever to be held in their country, Austrians voted against opening a nuclear power plant that had already been built. In 2013, after catastrophic flooding across Europe, the filmmaker visited Atomkraftwerk Zwentendorf, the mothballed nuclear power plant that would have been powered by the same reactor as Fukushima. As the only nuclear power plant in the world to be built and never opened, Atomkraftwerk Zwentendorf is a monument to the power of public protest and the potential of a democratic vote.

Director's biography:
Hope Tucker transforms what we know as a daily form of narrative through THE OBITUARY PROJECT, a compendium of moving image that gives new life to the antiquated documentary practice of salvage ethnography. She has animated cyanotypes of downwinders and instructions for making fishing nets by hand; photographed shuttered bread factories and contested monuments; recorded mobile phone footage of the last public phone booths of Finland; and written the text of a video out of paper clips, a Norwegian symbol of solidarity and nonviolent resistance. Works from the project have screened in festivals including 25fps, Zagreb; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück; Images Festival, Toronto; International Film Festival, Rotterdam; Kasseler Documentary Festival; New York Film Festival; Punto de Vista, Pamplona.

2. Film: Sonne Unter Tage / Sun Under Ground
Von: Mareike Bernien, Alex Gerbaulet
39 Minuten, Originalversion (DE) mit englischen Untertiteln, 2022 (Germany)

Synopsis:
A gravel path on the edge of a village. Between fields, across to a fence. Drawn into the map of former uranium mining areas in Saxony and Thuringia. From 1946 to 1990, the Soviet corporation SAG Wismut mined uranium there for the USSR's nuclear weapons program. Above ground, socialism shines towards the future, below, the ancient rocks radiate through the torn up earth. The GDR environmental movement throws a spotlight on the way. Night. Darkness. A group of people, a flashlight, a shovel. X-ray film is buried in the gravel. The ground exposes the film, leaving a trail of its invisible rays. The film SUN UNDER GROUND follows this trace horizontally through today's landscapes, marked by mining and redevelopment, and vertically through the ground as an archive. Deep drilling through space and time traces the sedimented narratives that surround the element of uranium materially, metaphorically, and geopolitically. How does it haunt the landscape? How does it connect with the ghost of socialism? What stories and biographies surround its excavation sites? How does it radiate into its recording media? How can the spectrum of the visible be shifted to bring its invisible radiation into the image, to make it audible or palpable?

Directors' short biography:
Mareike Bernien is a Berlin based artist, filmmaker and teacher in the field of filmic research and critical archival practices. Since 2018 she has been part of the production platform pong film. 2020-21 she was a fellow in the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme/gkfd. With a media-archaeological approach, her artistic works question ideological certainties of representation, their material-technological preconditions and historical continuities. Her current films include: DEPTH OF FIELD (2017) and SUNUNDER GROUND(2022) both co-directed with Alex Gerbaulet.

Alex Gerbaulet is a Berlin based artist, filmmaker and producer. Since 2014 she has been part of the production platform pong film. 2020-21 she was a fellow in the Berlin Artistic Research GrantProgramme/gkfd. In her artistic work she explores, among other things, the imageability of reality and memory. Her films move between video art, essay and documentary film, between activist impetus and fictionalizing reflection. Her recent films include: THE SLEEPER (2018), as well as DEPTH OF FIELD (2017) and SUN UNDER GROUND (2022) both co-directed with Mareike Bernien.

Ort:
Sputnik Kino
Höfe am Südstern
Hasenheide 54 oder Körtestraße 15-17
10967 Berlin Kreuzberg
3. Hof, 5. Stock

Tickets: https://www.sputnik-kino.com/program/events

Contact

Lucie Lamy
lamy  ( at )  cmb.hu-berlin.de