Thomas Heise: Materials of Time

Das Haus – 1984

The House - 1984

Germany 1984 56’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

Thomas Heise realizes a documentary about the offices activities of East Berlin town council , which is located in the Alexanderplatz. The film’s rhythm is created by the succession of weekdays. Red tape ideology is exposed as the tool that prevents meeting the citizens’ needs by means of a precise and pitiless language. “No other document exists, coming from the GDR, that shows the relationship between citizens and town officials. Unfortunately, prints of this film no longer exist”.

Tuesday - November 3rd, Spazio Uno, 10:30 AM
Eisenzeit

The Iron Age

Germany 1992 87’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

Thomas Heise wanted to realise a movie in Eisenhüttenstadt already in 1981. This was the former Stalinstadt created in 1950. According to the film director’s original project, he would follow the life of Anka, Karsten, Frank, and Tilo, who were still children at that time. They stood for the second generation born in the town which was advertised as the ‘first socialist city on German soil’. This project had never been realized. Ten years after when everything has changed, Heise though decides to see what is still (r)ex(s)isting in “a history of the GDR” (as he thought the project should be).

Photo: © defa-spektrum

Thursday, November 5th, Spazio Uno, 10:30 AM
Im Glück (Neger)

Lucky (Niggers)

Germany 2006 90’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

This film recollects Heise’s experience in 1990 when he staged a play by Heiner Müller, "Anatomie Titus Fall of Rome". Sven Behrendt is one of the young actors, whom the director follows from 1999 through 2005. The word Neger in the title refers to the statement “Ich bin ein Neger” (I am a nigger) by Heiner Müller, thus meaning the marginal position of the intellectual. Heise revives its controversial scope and applies it to his protagonists.

Wednesday, November 4th, Spazio Uno, 5:30 PM
Imbiss Spezial

Snack Bar Special

Germany 1989 27’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

Set in a cafeteria located in an underground station, the film captures the customers in an unreal condition of wait while the preparation for the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the GDR foundation are in full swing. “My brother who was working as a cook in the Berlin-Lichtenberg station. His relationships would open all doors for me. It would be easier to talk with his pizzeria colleagues also about other things, about life, for instance.” The «wendefilm» par excellence.

Tuesday Nomember 3rd, Spazio Uno, 10:30 AM
Kinder. Wie die Zeit Vergeht

Children. As Time Flies

Germany 2008 86’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

Final episode in the Halle-Neustadt trilogy. Jeannette Gleffe, Heinz and Ingrid’s daughter, now has a daughter herself, Annabelle. She works as a bus driver. Her elder son Tommy gives her problems. Her second son Paul, instead, is a hard-working boy and obtains good grades at school. Chris, Tommy’s friend, was forced to give up meeting his skinhead friends. By means of a mere punctuation mark, the full stop after the word «Children» in the title, Heise reverses a common phrase like «Children, as time flies» and creates a reflection upon time.

Monday November 2nd, Spazio Uno, 10:30 AM
Material

Material

Germany 1988 164’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

Never used stock film has been edited together. The film begins with children laughing and playing in a landscape of ruins in the centre of Halle, early 1990’s. Other situations follow: Heiner Mǖller’s "Germania Tod In Berlin” staged by Fritz Marquardt has staged in 1998; squatters evacuation in Mainzer Strasse ; more than a million people’s demostrations in Alexanderplatz. Testimonies of a not too faraway reality. German history. “Form is given by matter.”

Friday November 6th, Spazio Uno, 9:30 PM
Mein Bruder - We'll Meet Again

My Brother - We'll Meet Again

Germany 2000 60’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

Thomas reaches his brother who lives in the Pyrenees with his ex-wife, who is actually staying with his old-time friend, Micha. At the time of the GDR, under the cover name of Marcel Black, Micha used to inform Stasi about the Heise brothers. After five bypass operations, the brother drinks and smokes as if nothing had changed for him. He is well anchored in the present, but exposes the inevitable presence of a history which, even though officially over, continues to produce more images relentlessly.

Sunday November 1st, Spazio Uno, 5:30 PM
Neustadt (Stau – der Stand der Dinge)

Neustadt (New Town): The State of Things

Germany 2000 87’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

Second chapter in the Halle-Neustadt trilogy. When you put together two kinds of poverty, not only the financial one but also the intellectual meaning, then you can see how a movement towards the right is inevitably developed. I had already been in Halle and there was the problem of this marginal, extreme-right group which at that time had been defined skinhead. In the meanwhile, those same issues, that same way of thinking have moved towards the centre, and are now dwelling there with great ease.”

Sunday November 1st, Spazio Uno, 5:30 PM
Stau – Jetzt Geht's Los

Jammed: Let's get Moving

Germany 1992 83’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

The first episode of the trilogy dedicated to Halle-Neustadt, an industrial city out of commission where GDR citizens were once lured into by higher salaries. The movie caused a stir for its approach to the skinheads issue. On the track of the neo-nazi youth in Neustadt, Heise meets the family of one the boys: his father Heinz Gleffe, a worker at the Leuna refinery, and his mother Ingrid. That’s the beginning of one of the most audacious German film.

Wednesday November 4th, Spazio Uno, 10:30 AM
Vaterland

Fatherland

Germany 2002 100’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

"Vaterland" is a key work in Thomas Heise’s filmography. In the beginning a voice over reads the letters his father Wolfgang and his brother sent their family from a labour camp. When they were 19 they had been sentenced to a labour camp for so-called «jüdische Mischlinge», Jewish half-breed. The camp was located in Straguth, in the surroundings of Zerbst, State of Saxony-Anhalt. At the time of the shooting the village counted about 290 inhabitants. Maybe the most «Fordian» movie by Thomas Heise.

Tuesday November 3rd, Spazio Uno, 9:45 PM
Volkspolizei – 1985

The People's Police – 1985

Germany 1985 58’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

May 1st,1985, Volkspolizei District 14 in East Berlin. Heise is recording the work of those who guarantee socialist order. It is not just an ordinary police station, it’s the station lying right beside the wall. Heise portrays a political system by collecting facts and figures and describing the rules of patrolling and searching. “This movie was blocked after its completion as well. It was reconstructed on beta digital and broadcast on TV only in 2001”.

Thursday November 5th, Spazio Uno, 5:30 PM
Wozu denn über diese leute einen Film

Why to Make a Film about People like Them?

Germany 1980 30’

Directed by: Thomas Heise

We are in Prenzlauer Berg, East Berlin. Two boys, one girl, and an elderly lady of Polish origin divorced from her husband. The kids Berndt and Norbert have had problems with the law, even though they wanted to be policemen when they were kids. The former sneaked into a department store, whereas the latter stole a motorbike aided by a friend. Their story allows the film director to stage a human, social and political difference which was not envisaged by the dogmatism of socialist realism.

Tuesday November 3rd, Spazio Uno, 10:30 AM