Events

Berlin/NY film series -- Die allseitig reduzierte Persönlichkeit

Berlin/NY film series -- Die allseitig reduzierte Persönlichkeit

11 January 2008, 6:30pm Tafel Hall
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place between Bleecker + w 3rd
FREE

Part of the Berlin/NY film series curated by Beth Stryker + Prem Krishnamurthy

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About die allseitig reduzierte Persönlichkeit
(The All-Round Reduced Personality)
1977, West Germany, black and white, 98 minutes
Director: Helke Sander
German with English subtitles

Filmed in the divided Berlin of the 70s, The All- Round Reduced Personality tells the story of Edda, a single mother and photographer, against a backdrop of everyday political and economic realities. She joins a women’s photography group that has received a grant to photograph West Berlin from a female point of view. Challenging the group and the grant-giving authorities with her photographic intervention, Edda reveals the similarities between life in East and West Berlin. Her work leads the group to question the nature of the current political situation in relation to their own lives. Mixing fiction and documentary techniques, the film presents a portrait of a woman and a city struggling with questions of identity.

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About the Berlin/NY film room

January 4 – 29, 2008, South Gallery
The Berlin-New York Dialogues Film Room presents a cinematic exchange between the two cities, exhibiting works by New York artists who have engaged with the Berlin cityscape through the medium of film over the last four decades. Despite the temporal separation of the films on display, they share a common attention to the incongruities that persist in Berlin—in the city’s absences, memories, and border zones. The artists exhibited in the Film Room neither record Berlin through traditional documentary means nor attempt to unravel the mythologies built up around the city. Instead they offer idiosyncratic and experimental takes on Berlin, through the lens of New York.

Includes films by Gordon Matta-Clark, Ken Kobland, Jack Waters, and Matthew Buckingham.