Geographies of Solitude by Jacquelyn Mills
Eleven highly diverse docs are selected for a 2022 Berlinale Forum main programme designed to demonstrate the pull of precisely observed matter. “However much the pandemic may have paralysed life in our societies, filmmakers worldwide have lost none of their inventiveness and artistic desire. The works…are a dazzling demonstration of this,” says the festival.
Many recurring motifs stand out, write the Forum programmers, such as the various attempts to overcome cinema’s intrinsic anthropocentricism. In Raul Domingues‘ Terra que marca (Striking Land), the camera scours the ground, taking in furrows, water channels or seedlings. This may be no rural idyll, but such precise observation of matter exerts a hypnotic pull.
Much the same applies to Geographies of Solitude. Jacquelyn Mills, an experimental filmmaker from Canada, travelled to Sable Island, a thin strip of land in the Atlantic, to accompany the work of Zoe Lucas, who has been cataloguing the island’s flora and fauna for decades on a voluntary basis. Mills’ 16mm images focus on wild horses, waves, freshwater ponds and bizarrely distorted clumps of plastic. Sometimes she buries unexposed film material beneath living roots and edits the resultant footage into the film. In this way, the island’s specific topography enters into a sort of co-authorship with the director.
Attempts to find appropriate contemporary forms of political cinema form another motif in the programme, write section organisers. The essay films Camuflaje (Camouflage) by Jonathan Perel from Argentina and El veterano (The Veteran) by Jeronimo Rodriguez from Chile explore political fault lines from their countries’ pasts that still carry latent significance in the present. This forges links to other selections, such as Nuclear Family by Erin and Travis Wilkerson, which grapples with the atomic bomb and the residues of the Cold War.
One of the many things that Zheng Lu Xinyuan, a young director from China, films in her personal essay film Jet Lag is her trip from Vienna to China. The hazmat suits on the aeroplane and the layers of tape sealing off each room in the quarantine hotel conjure up images of crime scenes or medical thrillers, although once she does gymnastics on the bed, the mood immediately shifts, says the festival.
Programmers underline how director Constantin Wulff was caught unaware by the start of the pandemic while shooting Für die Vielen – Die Arbeiterkammer Wien (For the Many – The Vienna Chamber of Labour). His documentary records the goings-on at the Wiener Arbeiterkammer, an institution born from social democracy that offers legal support for employees – until he ends up setting his sights on how the institution itself functions as an employer.
Another documentary to examine the consequences of Covid-19 is Scala by Ananta Thitanat, programmers continue. In her feature-length debut, the Thai director watches how a magnificent 1960s cinema is taken apart piece by piece. The walls remain in place, but everything else is removed. Thitanat films the end of an era that has been brought forward by the pandemic, thus throwing up the question of where the future of cinema lies.
Elsewhere, in Forum Special, the section programmers take a look at theior own history. Alice Agneskirchner’s film portrait Komm mit mir in das Cinema – Die Gregors (Come With Me to the Cinema – The Gregors) is dedicated to Ulrich und Erika Gregor. With film excerpts, archive footage, re-enacted scenes and interviews, the Berlin director examines the biographies and considerable impact of the two legendary film curators without whom Forum would not exist.
The main programme also encompasses documentary-tinged fictions, such as Mato seco em chamas (Dry Ground Burning) by Adirley Queirós and Joana Pimenta or Cette maison (This House) by Miryam Charles and archival explorations like Alain Gomis’ Rewind and Play.
Documentaries in the Berlinale 2022 Forum Main Programme
Camuflaje (Camouflage) by Jonathan Perel (Argentina)
with Felix Bruzzone, Margarita Molfino, Iris Avellaneda
World premiere
Für die Vielen – Die Arbeiterkammer Wien (For the Many – The Vienna Chamber of Labour) by Constantin Wulff (Austria)
World premiere
Geographies of Solitude by Jacquelyn Mills (Canada)
World premiere
Jet Lag by Zheng Lu Xinyuan (Switzerland/Austria)
with Lin Yucang, Lin Wenqing, Lu Coco
World premiere
Mis dos voces (My Two Voices) by Lina Rodriguez (Canada)
with Ana Garay Kostic, Marinela Piedrahita, Claudia Montoya
World premiere
Nuclear Family by Erin Wilkerson, Travis Wilkerson (USA/Singapore)
with Travis Wilkerson, Erin Wilkerson, Matilda Wilkerson
European premiere
Rewind and Play by Alain Gomis (Germany/France)
World premiere
Scala by Ananta Thitanat (Thailand)
with Pongpop Inheen, Saman Watcharasirirot, Nakorn Nuannngein
World premiere / debut film
Super Natural by Jorge Jácome (Portugal)
with Alexis Fernandes, Bárbara Matos, Celestine Ngantonga Ndzana
World premiere / debut film
Terra que marca (Striking Land) by Raul Domingues (Portugal)
with Maria Alice Sousa, Manual Jesus Duro, Joaquim Sousa
World premiere
The United States of America by James Benning (USA)
World premiere
