Christian Kochmann

Cem Kaya’s dense documentary essay celebrates 60 years of Turkish music in Germany. An alternative post-war history that is at the same time a musical Who’s Who – from Yüksel Özkasap to Derdiyoklar and Muhabbet.

Oray speaks in a quarrel with his wife Burcu three times 'talaq', the islamic formula for repudiation. The imam informs him about the consequences: he has to divorce his wife. Now Oray is in a dilemma: Should he stay with Burcu or with the community?

Interviews with seamen’s widows form the basis for a loose narration between the poles of distant love, fake luxury and colonial artifacts. Shot on 36-hour ferry cruises between Rotterdam and Hull, and Kiel and Oslo the film as a souvenir itself draws a connection between the ship as the largest arsenal of imagination and the nautic space of the cinema.

One Hour Real explores the coulisses and facades of a contemporary free-time phenomenon, real-life escape games. These games originally emerged in Japan, and their popularity among players in Europe has recently snowballed. In its unbiased observation of the automated mechanisms used in escape rooms, the film raises questions about surveillance, the human yearning to play, and the relation between imprisonment and desire.

Ocean Hill Drive examines a rare phenomenon, the so-called ‚shadowflicker’, that occurs in a suburban area on the outskirts of Boston. As a result of an erroneously installed wind turbine, the flicker effect, which brings to mind structuralist experimental cinema, appears instead in documentary images showing the landscape and architecture of a Massachusetts coast town. The film focuses on the visual quality of the pulsating shadows that intrude the suburban domestic sphere and disrupt the social and psychological equilibrium of the community. Documentary images are complemented with a female voiceover, which is based on multiple interviews that were transcripted and assembled into a single narration. The film slowly uncovers fragmentary memories from the time when the flicker began. An atmosphere of suspense and intangible fear is generated throughout the film, while the actual source of the flickering lights remains unknown.

Desert Miracles is a cinematic exploration of a commercialized architecture of desire. Across 22 different tableaus the film meditates upon the interiors of Nevada’s wedding chapels, considering how the excessive scenery opens up to constitute a cultural organisation of “Love”. A woman’s’ voice is heard reading out an ambiguous letter to an unknown lover in which she finds herself troubled by the challenges of modern relationships, unable to negotiate a balance between self-fulfilment and optimization. The text is based on anonymous posts by different women in various internet wedding forums. One fictional female character is composed out of many assembled perspectives on desire, relationships and social expectation.

Four Muslim friends meet in the forest to pray together and to talk in peace. The harmony gets broken by the coming out of Seydi and the circle gets in an endless spiral of contention; about Islam, sin and belief, forgiveness and punishment. Because Seydi wants the just punishment for his sin, so he is sinless before Allah.