CRITICAL READING THROUGH MOVIES

18.06.2019

Ich war zuhause, aber (I Was at Home, But) [2019]

Director: Angela Schanelec

Runtime: 105 min

A 13-year-old boy disappeared without trace for a week. The film begins with his reappearance in the school yard, dirty and changed. What he was looking for – an extreme closeness to nature or death, triggered by the recent loss of his father – his mother and teachers can only guess. The boy’s behavior invalidates what they have taken for granted until now.

21.06.2019

19:30 Segunda Vez (Second Time Around) [2018]

Director: Dora Garcia

Runtime: 94 min

Dora García intertwines politics, psychoanalysis and performance into Segunda Vez (Second Time Around). This staged documentary orbits the figure of Oscar Masotta-a pivotal theorist in the Argentinian avant-garde from the 1950s to the 1970s, whilst not being a biopic about him. Masotta’s ideas on Lacanian psychoanalysis, politics and art (happenings and dematerialized art) changed the artistic landscape of that 1960s Buenos Aires preceding the dictatorship and with it the end of the avant-garde. The title, Segunda Vez, originates from a homonymous story written by a contemporary of Masotta’s, Julio Cortázar, which recounts the climate of psychosis and uncertainty caused by the trauma of disappearances in Argentina.