Director
A filmic encounter with Brazil, which Aurand visited for the first time in September 2022 for screenings of her films and Margaret Tait’s in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Aurand’s 16mm films are portraits of people and place, often prompted by the discovery and experience of travel. As George Clark has written, the journey is a cornerstone of Aurand’s filmmaking: "“Her work builds out from fragments, detours, refrains and returns; her camera picks up discarded gestures and suspends them in time. Films are always moving, always fleeting, Aurand’s work reminds us. These qualities are as fundamental to lived experience as they are to the cinema. Throughout Ute Aurand’s work we encounter a world animated by her mobile and dynamic camera, following, chasing, leading and dissecting space."
Beavers’ starting point for this film was a question about how the places where he has lived influences how he sees. Beavers return to one or two locations in Berlin that he had filmed for Diminished Frame in 1970.
Director
A short portrait of the filmmaker Renate Sami.
Sound Designer
A collection of brief moments, filmed between 1999 and 2018 on journeys, at home, with friends and alone. They are private gestures that attract my attention, spontaneously filmed beyond narration or documentary: Anton in his apartment in Lichtenberg, Lilian and Nanouk 10 days old, Jón’s 94th birthday, Sofia dancing, James and Robert transport the 16mm projector, snow at Cape Cod, Detel in her atelier, Franz and Sabrina get married, a trip to Detroit, a stormy sea in black-and-white, Alma and Ernie at the Brandenburger Gate. We see the same people at various ages, as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman… sometimes hear someone speaking, hear music, or silence. Somewhere in the middle of the film there is a handwritten sentence that appears upside down before it gets turned around: “A child asleep in its own life”.
Sound
A collection of brief moments, filmed between 1999 and 2018 on journeys, at home, with friends and alone. They are private gestures that attract my attention, spontaneously filmed beyond narration or documentary: Anton in his apartment in Lichtenberg, Lilian and Nanouk 10 days old, Jón’s 94th birthday, Sofia dancing, James and Robert transport the 16mm projector, snow at Cape Cod, Detel in her atelier, Franz and Sabrina get married, a trip to Detroit, a stormy sea in black-and-white, Alma and Ernie at the Brandenburger Gate. We see the same people at various ages, as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman… sometimes hear someone speaking, hear music, or silence. Somewhere in the middle of the film there is a handwritten sentence that appears upside down before it gets turned around: “A child asleep in its own life”.
Editor
A collection of brief moments, filmed between 1999 and 2018 on journeys, at home, with friends and alone. They are private gestures that attract my attention, spontaneously filmed beyond narration or documentary: Anton in his apartment in Lichtenberg, Lilian and Nanouk 10 days old, Jón’s 94th birthday, Sofia dancing, James and Robert transport the 16mm projector, snow at Cape Cod, Detel in her atelier, Franz and Sabrina get married, a trip to Detroit, a stormy sea in black-and-white, Alma and Ernie at the Brandenburger Gate. We see the same people at various ages, as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman… sometimes hear someone speaking, hear music, or silence. Somewhere in the middle of the film there is a handwritten sentence that appears upside down before it gets turned around: “A child asleep in its own life”.
Cinematography
A collection of brief moments, filmed between 1999 and 2018 on journeys, at home, with friends and alone. They are private gestures that attract my attention, spontaneously filmed beyond narration or documentary: Anton in his apartment in Lichtenberg, Lilian and Nanouk 10 days old, Jón’s 94th birthday, Sofia dancing, James and Robert transport the 16mm projector, snow at Cape Cod, Detel in her atelier, Franz and Sabrina get married, a trip to Detroit, a stormy sea in black-and-white, Alma and Ernie at the Brandenburger Gate. We see the same people at various ages, as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman… sometimes hear someone speaking, hear music, or silence. Somewhere in the middle of the film there is a handwritten sentence that appears upside down before it gets turned around: “A child asleep in its own life”.
Producer
A collection of brief moments, filmed between 1999 and 2018 on journeys, at home, with friends and alone. They are private gestures that attract my attention, spontaneously filmed beyond narration or documentary: Anton in his apartment in Lichtenberg, Lilian and Nanouk 10 days old, Jón’s 94th birthday, Sofia dancing, James and Robert transport the 16mm projector, snow at Cape Cod, Detel in her atelier, Franz and Sabrina get married, a trip to Detroit, a stormy sea in black-and-white, Alma and Ernie at the Brandenburger Gate. We see the same people at various ages, as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman… sometimes hear someone speaking, hear music, or silence. Somewhere in the middle of the film there is a handwritten sentence that appears upside down before it gets turned around: “A child asleep in its own life”.
Director
A collection of brief moments, filmed between 1999 and 2018 on journeys, at home, with friends and alone. They are private gestures that attract my attention, spontaneously filmed beyond narration or documentary: Anton in his apartment in Lichtenberg, Lilian and Nanouk 10 days old, Jón’s 94th birthday, Sofia dancing, James and Robert transport the 16mm projector, snow at Cape Cod, Detel in her atelier, Franz and Sabrina get married, a trip to Detroit, a stormy sea in black-and-white, Alma and Ernie at the Brandenburger Gate. We see the same people at various ages, as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman… sometimes hear someone speaking, hear music, or silence. Somewhere in the middle of the film there is a handwritten sentence that appears upside down before it gets turned around: “A child asleep in its own life”.
Director
In Aurand’s signature diaristic form, roses in bloom, farm animals, Orkney landscapes, and scenes of the late filmmaker Margaret Tait having tea are rendered through expressive Bolex movements as well as the director’s active camera, and punctuated by abstract swaths of saturated and shifting colors. The film is an homage to Tait, whom Aurand visited in Orkney.
herself
Director
A new short film portrait that, as often in Ute Aurands work, was filmed over several years and in different places, in this case Germany and Japan. "Filming portraits allows me to emphasize private gestures and moments, and thus to transcend the narrative or documenting." (UA)
Director
For Dreaming the Dark: hands that see, eyes that touch, Ana Vaz invited artists and filmmakers whose work trust cinema’s capacity to transform relationships between the body and the camera to propose works that will engage with both perception and embodiment. Could cinema be an art of embodiment? By what rituals and actions could vision become tactile?
Director
Two memories from a longer visit to New England in Autumn 2012: a group of elderly ladies playing bridge followed by the stormy ocean at Cape Cod in Winter while listening to Etienne Grenier's music practice.
Director
2 minute film about two Japanese ladies.
Director
My friend of many years, Philipp v. Lucke, celebrated his 60th birthday by inviting his family and friends to join him in a forest near Görlitz. This was also in memory of his father's childhood and the family's connection to the place. It was a very hot July day.
Director
Director
Director
Portrait of Canadian artist Susan Turcot in 1993 and 2011.
Director
Maria Lang is my very close filmmaker friend who lives in the southern german countryside. We see her gardening and visiting an exhibition of female impressionist painters.
Director
Paulina Buda is my godchild, and I have filmed her since she was very young. Paulina is now 15 years old. Franz von Lucke is my godchild, and I have filmed him since he was very young. Franz is now 26 years old. Maria Lang is my very close filmmaker friend who lives in the southern german countryside. We see her gardening and visiting an exhibition of female impressionist painters.
Director
Paulina Buda is my godchild, and I have filmed her since she was very young. Filming portraits allows me to emphasize private gestures and moments beyond narration and documentation.
Director
"Franz von Lucke is my godchild, and I have filmed him since he was very young. Franz is now 26 years old." U.A.
Director
Young Pines grew out of three trips to Japan between May 2009 and November 2010. Invited to Japan for a series of film screenings, I began filming in Yokohama, Tokyo, and Kanazawa. Even in the big cities, I experienced how strongly the Japanese feel connected to nature and how they tend to see no contradiction between culture and nature. I found this stimulating and in harmony with some of my own impulses. I wanted to return and film more in other seasons. In Spring 2010 I visited Kamakura, Kyoto, and Nara, in November I went Northeast and filmed in Matsushima, Tono, Miyako in Atsumi, Yamadera, and Nikko. All of my film images have been filmed before the disaster of the Tsunami and Fukushima, but the final editing was done in the following months.
Director
Ute Aurand’s Hanging upside down in the Branches is a gentle, generous and unsparing portrait of the filmmaker’s parents, whose passing is marked by remembrance and the loving recording of them - Andréa Picard
Director
The film follows the construction of the new expansion of Zurich's Museum Rietberg, from the groundbreaking in May 2004 through to the opening in February 2007.
Director
A triptych of three short silent films. A Walk through the winter of Engadin and Bergell, scenes in the park of the Rietberg Museum in Zurich with its collection of Asian, African and Indian art, and an ice-skater on a sunny day in Zuoz, a village in the Engadin.
Director
"Here it is very nice at the Moment" is a triptych. In the first part, "Maria und die Welt", Ute Aurand films Maria Lang in 1995, who moves to the countryside to take care of her mother. The second part, "Familiengruft - ein Liebesgedicht an meine Mutter" was produced by Maria Lang in 1981. It tells about what we most often keep quiet - prohibitions, barriers but also love. Twenty-two years later, Ute Aurand films Maria's daily care of her mother, now ninety-six years old: edited in 2006 by the two filmmakers, "Der Schmetterling im Winter", composes the last element of the triptych.
Director
Ute Aurand films Maria Lang in her daily activity as she cares for her mother. The presence of the filmmaker is visible in the camera movements and in the editing rhythm. Admiration and discretion are sensed. We enter into the intimacy of mother and daughter through the eyes of a friend. The silent images create an occasion for attentive observation and balanced awareness.
Director
"India" developed out of my three journeys to Pune in 2001, 2002 and 2004. I arrived in a forgein country, and felt surprisingly familiar in the foreign. There in the streets, walking among the people, surrounded by their movements, their gestures, by the colors, the light, the beauty. Small things awakened my attention, sometimes only a short glimpse, a hand movement, the color of a sari, a temple hidden in a courtyard. It was like a long hot bath that I took there in Pune's streets - something unique and very beautiful.
Director
"Glimpses of my life. Friends, snow, two tulips, skaters on the frozen lake of my childhood, balloons in the morning sun, my godchild Paulina running up and down the hill, Ulrike’s 50th birthday on the Baltic Sea, my desk in November 2003." - Ute Aurand
Director
“Fadenspiele 2“ (Toying with String 2) is an animation made with the painter, my sister, Detel Aurand. We filmed inside the studio and outdoors in the forest and fields. From various elements like paper, wood, plastic and fabric come images that continuously change their form. We see one image evolving out of the other, becoming something new.
Director
Short film featuring images of flowers.
Director
For a year at monthly intervals, Ute Aurand and Bärbel Freund filmed In the Garden, a lovely portrait of a Potsdam-Bornim garden designed in 1910 by gardener and philosopher Karl Foerster. An extraordinary variety of flora, natural lighting effects, textures and colors unfold in this gentle, expertly edited film, which forms a bridge between the natural world and the individual soul.
Director
Filmed every day during the final four weeks of the Berlin Film Museum’s construction.
Director
"Toying with string" is painting transformed into film. Color, threads, stones, various natural elements give birth to images constantly changing in form. This metamorphosis is made visible – we see one thing arising from another and giving birth to something new.
“Toying with string is by two sisters, one is a painter, the other a filmmaker. A new quality develops from the knowledge each one brings. The film is lively and leaves a free and happy feeling”
Director
“In the day after seeing Terzen, there was a surprising sense of the film that developed for me. The rhythms were still present and helped to unify a multitude of impressions. This lead me to reconsider the general tone of the film because, as I reached beyond its quick pace and rhythmic lightness and beyond the everyday content, I realized that its Heiterkeit grows out of a serenity or courage in facing mortality. This is the surprising sense of the film, its inner music. (…) Early in the film I recall a chair held in the strong afternoon sunlight. Even though you show it from many angles, it has a potent stillness. This strikes me as a good example of how you embody an active sense of seeing in your filming, and you reflect back to us the paradox that it is in movement that we create stillness. The eye, constantly moving yet creating stillness." — Robert Beavers
Director
ZU HAUSE (At Home) ist the final sequence in TERZEN, playing with the filmmakers shadow and the Bolex camera while filming in her kitchen.
Director
I asked 10 friends, filmmakers and non-filmmakers, to make a film about the Seasons - a child, an 80year old, a painter, two artists and filmmaker friends, I also made one.
Director
A walk, a moment at the beach... And the Japanese filmmaker Utako Koguchi behind the heard piano.
Director
A film about my friend Maria Lang. The light falls on a few details, chance selections, out of which a place is composed, the place where Maria lives with her mother. A landscape, a village, a kitchen, 25 her room.
Director
A portrait of the filmmakers Bärbel Freund and Karl Heil like a song in its changing verses, the locations were chosen according to mood and season: in spring, in snow, in Venice, in the flat, alone and together.
Director
The two 11year old friends, Franz and Pablo, run with angel-wings, stand under giant leaves and improvise on their trompet and piano.
Director
A film structured around Detel Aurand and Jon Sigurgeiersson.
Director
Jón in Akureyri is the second part of Detel + Jón. I filmed Jón Sigrurgeiersson walking through the streets of his childhood, meeting his filmmaker brother and telling childhood stories.
Director
We hear the actor Alexander Moissi reading the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson (recorded in 1927), while seeing the face of a young woman standing outdoors against a distant hilly summer landscape.
Director
Director
Aurand and Pfeiffer filmed each other at four famous sites in Europe: walking in a summer dress through the snow in front of the Reichstag in Berlin, spinning a young boy again and again through the air in Red Square in Moscow, climbing on a hot day into the waterfall at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, and, as two angels in London, walking through the night of the City. The film begins with a text about improvisation by Jonas Mekas read by himself.
Director
A stylized costume play filmed on the Externsteine, the Reichstag in Berlin and in a noctural rose garden.
Director
Paul Celan reads Paul Celan. The words which we hear are seen on the screen - the optical sound negative became the visible image.
Writer
An imaginary journey on a ship. We turned the building of the Film Academy into a ship. Claire and Solange from a Jean Genet piece, a polish woman with her Madonna, screaming sailors are a few of the passengers on this artifical journey.
Director
An imaginary journey on a ship. We turned the building of the Film Academy into a ship. Claire and Solange from a Jean Genet piece, a polish woman with her Madonna, screaming sailors are a few of the passengers on this artifical journey.
Writer
Experimental film about a train ride. The carriage window becomes a screen, the landscape a mood, the mood a landscape.
Director
Experimental film about a train ride. The carriage window becomes a screen, the landscape a mood, the mood a landscape.
Writer
Experimental film featuring a female protagonist.
Director
Experimental film featuring a female protagonist.
