Tower
Keith Maitland, USA 2016
August 1, 1966. Just another Monday. A lone sniper climbs the Clock Tower on the University of Texas campus grounds. Pregnant 18-year-old freshman Claire Wilson will be his first target. Her boyfriend and unborn child, his first victims. And 96 minutes after the first shot rings out, when the gunman is finally silenced, 16 will be dead, 3 dozen wounded, and an entire nation left in shock. On the 50th anniversary of America’s first mass school shooting, director Keith Maitland transports us back to the August heat of 1966 and into the crosshairs of a sniper’s lens. Focusing solely on witnesses' accounts, and using animated memories of survivors interwoven with archival footage, he delivers an action-packed and gut-wrenching experience. In this thrilling moment-to-moment reenactment, the untold stories of 7 survivors caught in the crossfire are brought to life and given a voice – a voice that could not be more relevant in times when mass public shootings have become tragically commonplace. Hailed by critics as one of the most important documentaries of the past decade. Keith Maitland is a graduate of the University of Texas. His 7th-grade teacher was one of the survivors of that Monday.
Faggots
Dominik Krawiecki & Patrycja Płanik, Poland 2021
The mysterious virus »Exit 884« has decimated the human population, sparing only the lives of homosexual men, for reasons unknown to science. Earth’s last surviving woman, Maria Magdalena Wysocka, commonly known as Pink Mama, activist of the Rainbow Over Nations movement and acclaimed LGBT warrior, has passed away. Her death marks the beginning of a new era: The Era of Faggots. The farewell party at the former gay club »Malibu«, is orchestrated by Erna, who used to clean Her Ladyship Pink Mama's house. From dusk till dawn Pink Mama’s friends celebrate and honor her life at a table laid out with vodka, herring, pickles, and russian salad. They reminisce about the not always »good old days«, discuss the present and try to envision a new future. However, there is a deadly secret hidden behind all the mourning, a secret, that they would rather forget. The nightmare returns.
Hey BunnyBarnaby Metschurat & Lavina Wilson, Germany 2016Lewis Carroll chose a white rabbit to tempt Alice into journeying into adulthood. And that's why these cuddly creatures in »Hey Bunny« are harbingers of failure for a team of scientists, tasked with revealing the secret behind the so-called feel-good hormone. Barnaby Metschurat and Lavinia Wilson's wonderfully loopy directorial debut tells the story of misanthropic ex-hacker Anton, who is suspected of sabotaging a laboratory. And when a dozen overly happy rabbits break out and find their freedom, chaos once again rules, screwball style. A delightfully outlandish group of people now tries to find happiness and rabbits. One is reminded of Howard Hawks' »Bringing Up Baby«, whose creator declared, after the commercial failure of his film, that it was a mistake to make a movie without a single sane person in it. It’s a good thing that there are filmmakers like Metschurat and Wilson, who simply ignore the advice of old masters. Without trespasses like this, cinema would be boring as hell.
Don’t Tell Me You Can’t Sing
Sabine Timoteo, Switzerland 2017
In her directorial debut, Sabine Timoteo tears down all walls and limitations known to classic narrative cinema. Like in Herk Harvey's underground classic »Carnival of Souls«, her heroine Claire sleepwalks through her own life or what she perceives it to be. She cannot connect to anybody, familiar people around her vanish, they are redacted, revised. It’s like others would not see her anymore or maybe she does not see them? Her job as a kindergarten teacher, her kids, her husband – everything around her gets lost in ambivalence. The impulse in her to find another side keeps growing. »How do you explain something you don’t understand yourself?«, she asks herself. Then she sets out to find Clara. She travels alone, goes into the night, meets people, communicates, she observes, she feels. »Don’t Tell Me You Can’t Sing«, one of them says to her. In the end, she finds Clara – and she sings. This story about death and rebirth was developed by Sabine Timoteo and Doro Müggler. A wild piece of underground cinema, created in the overwhelming urge to simply let things happen. What was a way towards death in »Carnival of Souls«, here becomes a path from lethargy back to life.
A Glimpse of HappinessRaffaël Enault, France 2021The paths of two opposites cross and transform the trajectory of each others’ destinies in this wickedly subversive delightful debut. Ben is a shy, depressed and suicidal young man who struggles to find happiness in his life. Jean-Pierre is a charismatic erudite and retired butcher who, since a recent diagnosis with cancer, has become a selective serial killer known as »The Butcher of Minorities«. Ben has failed at 17 suicide attempts. Jean-Pierre has succeeded at 108 murders. Upon his return home from the hospital after his most recent failure to end his life, Ben comes face to face with the infamous killer who has targeted him as a homosexual. As Jean-Pierre proudly sharpens his butcher’s tools in front of his next assured victim, Ben is euphoric as death is finally near. Or is it? Ben is not gay, as Jean-Pierre had assumed. And that’s a deal breaker for the philosophical slaughterer. But Ben is convinced the butcher is his last hope, and begs to at least let him join along as his apprentice on a killing spree driven by paradoxical moral concepts. Written and lensed by Raffaël Enault, laughter and drama coexist seamlessly in this masterful black comedy about the absurdity of racism.
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