Film, 13 Min, English and Bosnian
(Berlinale 2018)
„Today is 11th June 1993. The war has been going on for a very long time. I've tried everything to get out, to save myself, nothing worked. The only thing left is to make this videotape that I will give to my son, he to his, and so on, until a time machine is invented and someone watching this will come and get me out of this.“
Today is 11th June 1993 was developed on the basis of intensive investigations in the Library Hamdija Kresevljakovic Video Archive in Sarajevo, a private collection of amateur videos in which the residents of Sarajevo document their lives during the siege. In this collection Thieme found a short science-fiction film in which a group of young people uses black humor to imagine fleeing the enclosed city by means of a time machine. Using simultaneous translation Thieme again formulates the call from the past to the present. How will we react to it?
(Berlinale / Forum Expanded)
In collaboration with / Nihad Kresevljakovic & the Library Hamdija Kresevljakovic Video Arhiv, Sarajevo; Performance / Grace Sungeun Kim; Camera & Color Correction / Till Beckmann; Sound Editor / Christian Obermaier; Re-recording Mixer / Jochen Jezussek; Dramaturgic Advisor / Christine A. Maier; Artistic Assistance / Ina Arnautalic; Translation / Ulvija Tanovic
Videoclip Sarajevo 1993 / Emir Jelkic, Elma Jerlagic Muhic, Fatima Jerlagic, Faruk Jerlagic, Hamdija Kresevljakovic, Nihad Kresevljakovic, Sead Kresevljakovic
Video Loop, 4 Min, with English subtitles
THE GDR NEVER EXISTED / SALUTE. A young woman in a phantasy dirndl stands in front of the rebuilt Prussian Berlin Palace. From 1976 to 2006 location of the Palace of the Republic, seat of the People's Chamber of the German Democratic Republic.
The Humboldt Forum is scheduled to open here soon, "Center of Research of non-European cultures" (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation). Much of the planned exhibits, colonial looted art.
It is German Unity Day 2015. The young woman speaks the first part of the pioneer salute of the GDR Young Pioneers: „Get ready for peace and socialism!".
Will the second part of the salute „I am always ready" be the answer?
Text / Gruß der Jungpioniere der Freien Deutschen Jugend der DDR; Performance / Tanja Krone; Camera / Christine A. Maier; Sound / Juliane Zelwies; 1st AC / Sabine Panossian; Sound Design / Manuela Schininá; Color Correction / Alex Beyer
Film, 15Min, with English subtitles
RESORT. At a holiday resort, in the elegance of bygone days, the camera follows its only guest, an actress, through a day’s schedule filled with an idle time that is determined by others: a casting session for a film project; a grotesque screen test. Even the instructions given by the female director don’t seem to reveal any comprehensible aim. A film in a delightfully uncertain state of expectancy – like a wanderer: forever searching, yet never quite arriving.
(diagonale, Graz)
Performance / Kathrin Resetarits; Camera / Sandra Merseburger; Sound / Markus Ruff; Re-Mixing / Christian Obermaier; Color Correction / Till Beckmann
Film, 30Min, without dialogue
WHAT REMAINS is about the empty spaces left behind in the wake of war and violence. The film is composed of long static wide shots of places and landscapes in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ordinary banality and beauty of the sites shown form a contrast to the fact that atrocities were committed during the Bosnian War from 1992 until 1995 at all of these places.
„What remains“ is a filmic memorial beyond the ordinary limits of representation and understanding. The places in the film are present for their own sake. They do not explain themselves to us. They throw back the answers we ask of them.
(Berlinale, Forum Expanded)
Produced by / Sabine Derflinger & Andrea Figl, gegenfilm, Wien Jasmila Zbanic & Christine A. Maier, deblokada, Sarajevo; Camera / Eldar Emric; DIT / Rainer Fritz; Line producer / Amira Lekic; 1st AC / Adnan Brankovic; Color Correction / Stefan Ciupek; Sound Editor & Rerecording Mixer / Christian Obermaier, Jochen Jezussek, Lars Ginzel
Video Loop, 12 Min, with English subtitles
ICH KENN / I KNOW / EU CONHEÇO deconstructs playfully the field of the mother tongue. Words and terms are recited stoically in a mantra-like manner and varied in simultaneous translations and endless repetitions.
The motivation that leads to the switch from one language to another is so brutal as diffuse and occurs as a mechanical alarming sound from the off. The video performance shows in a one-take the final stage of a process that lasted several hours.
Text / Kathrin Resetarits, Performance / Elsa Aleluia, Camera / Christine A. Maier
Film, 61Min
THE PLACE WE LEFT. Sarajevo in a slow pan: The city feels serene, almost majestic. Then suddenly the horrors of the military siege of 1992 flare up before our eyes. Thieme foregoes conventional TV images and instead opts for narrative ones.
It is a story of six people who were forced to flee Sarajevo during this time, set against her visual conception. What does it mean to be forced to start your life all over again? Do you harbour guilt if you flee to save your own life?
(diagonale, Graz)
with / Zlata Filipovic, Amira Lekic, Edin Forto, Jasmina Gavrankapetanovic Drazen Juka, Lejla Hodzic; Camera: Clarissa Thieme, Eldar Emric; produced by: Kristina Konrad & Amira Lekic
Video Loop, 5 Min
THE CENTRE is a dreamlike reflection on current architecture and its impacts in the new centre of Berlin. The film connects one of the main construction sites at Berlin Alexanderplatz with Kurt Tucholsky’s poem „Ein Haus—Untendurch“ (A House – From Below) 1928, a poem that describes the violent political scenery in Germany in the 1920's with a slow pan.
voice / Kathrin Resetarits; camera / Sandra Merseburger; text / Kurt Tucholsky
