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The Theme Nights

Friday, October 20, 8 p.m.
Planet Moldova?

A "Planet Moldova" night will also be staged in Hamburg. Here we will begin with a reading of texts from the "relations" book "Leap into the City." Two of these texts are by the young Moldovan authors Nicoleta Esinencu and Alexandru Vakulovski. Their snarling texts attack the habits and prejudices of their compatriots and tell of social disturbance and destruction. These readings of literary texts will then be complemented by a more sober reading. Irm Hermann tackles the facts of the country’s past and present. Finally, Pavel Brăila’s performance ”Reflections in White” will join into the reading, providing what appears to be a response. A dancer nosily tears lengths of paper into tatters: tabula rasa instead of data. After a break, music will take the stage. The performance "Musicbox" provides the back-drop and concept: in front of a cardboard model of a pop band and synced to pop samples, Pavel Brăila boxes his way through a universe of copies, until the band ”Zdob şi Zdub” sweeps him from the stage. The Moldovan superstars are adept at enthralling both the fans of wild, genre-mixed music as well as the lovers of Prix d’ Eurovision (most recently with their hit "Grandma Beats the Drum"). A side that undoes any superficial categorization is revealed in Moldova once again.


Saturday, October 21, 8 p.m.
Fetish Europe or What Holds Us Together at Heart

Despite the euphoric or deprecating discussions about Europe, despite the organizations and institutions responsible for shaping official politics, Europe appears to remain a notion difficult to grasp, or a surrogate. But what holds Europe together, beyond the bureaucracy? The theme night in the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg will begin with Luchezar Boyadjiev and his narrated visual presentation "Billboard Heaven – Sofia and the Images of the West." The artist will present images from his archive on Sofia, which not only document the changes made to the city’s visual surfaces, but also exaggerate them through manipulative interventions. Boyadjiev’s artistic works reveal a city in which – under the partly self-imposed diktat to rapidly assimilate into the capitalist West – anything is possible.

A discussion round under the motto: "and then at once you’re the West!" will pick up what Luchezar Boyadjiev presents with artistic means: the entwinement between radical social change and the inflationary staging of surrogates. The author and journalist Mathias Greffrath, who will moderate proceedings, will be joined by Javor Gardev, who will present excerpts from his work "Visual Police," along with the Bulgarian cultural theorist Ivaylo Ditchev, and the Ukrainian art historian Konstantin Akinsha. Both Ditchev, who commutes between Sofia and Paris, and Akinsha, who today lives in Budapest, have accompanied the transformation processes in eastern European countries over a number of years in their essayistic texts.

The final word on the theme of Europe belongs to the young editors of "Titanic" and their reading performance "titanic goes east europe – east europe goes titanic." Even "Titanic" magazine, an institution amongst satirists in Germany, has an opinion on Europe – well, at least that’s what they claim.

 

The Film Matinee

Sunday, October 22, 11 a.m.
Strategies of Survival

In the Abaton cinema in Hamburg we shall present outstanding and award-winning films from the Sarajevo Film Festival in the presence of the directors as well as Faruk Lončarević from Bosnia-Herzegovina, who wan the Special Jury Award of the Sarajevo Film Festival with his film „Mum’n’Dad / Mama I Tata“. Feature films by the Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó and the Romanian Christi Puiu will be screened in Hamburg. Mundruczó’s "Johanna"(2005, 83 min) is a curious mixed genre work, fusing a Joan of Arc drama with horror, in which all dialogues are sung. After an accident Johanna, a drug-addict, has her life saved in a hospital. Using her own body, she herself turns into a miracle worker. Puiu’s "Moartea domnului Lazarescu" (Death of Mr Lazarescu 2005, 150 min) uses a documentary style to tell the story of the 63-year old Mr. Lazarescu’s search for a hospital, during which his condition continually worsens. In this odyssey through the Romanian health system, Puiu delivers intimate insights into disintegrating family structures and other social networks, describing the resultant isolation of the individual.

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