Katharina Knust

The act of seeing wars is a construction. This is where it starts. Hotel Machine is a reflection on the production of representations of conflicts. Hotel Machine is the story of a hotel that remembers.

A young girl is cured of her epilepsy just as summer vacation is about to begin. During her last days with her classmates, she’ll come to experience life in a new way. Arranged as a series of elliptical tableaux, this haunting narrative from Luise Donschen (Casanova Gene) captures a simultaneous sense of discovery and disorientation as it proceeds from the confines of the classroom to a wider world of adolescent anxieties.

Last Year in Utopia documents an experimental set-up: a staged group media experiment, isolated from the outside world, is reconstructed on the site where the original events unfolded. The boundaries between autonomy and heteronomy dissolve in new role assignments as the film makes the power structure behind the artificially created utopia visible.

Filmmakers talk about their experiences - about success, failure and social participation. Who is seen, and who can show themselves?