The short film program Erde ohne Boden [Earth without Soil] points to the world-changing forces of both human agency and “geopower”: the earth forces that represent the pre-political conditions of territorialization and help determine social reproduction, according to geographer Kathryn Yusoff. Until now, only “biological” subjects have been given importance in Western-style anthropocentric thought and action. But the Earth has long been striking back in the form of climate change. Two of the films in Erde ohne Boden focus on the production of raw materials in the GDR; they provide a preview of the festival exhibition in Wiederstedt, where they will be shown in the Inspektorhaus. Sonne Unter Tage [Sun Under Ground] by Mareike Bernien and Alex Gerbaulet follows the radioactive traces of uranium mining in the Ore Mountains operated by SAG Wismut: the soil as an archive of technical and social utopias. The natural formation of diamonds, which takes place under extreme pressure and temperature conditions in the Earth’s mantle, can be simulated, as Andreas Bunte’s Künstliche Diamanten [Synthetic Diamonds] meticulously documents. This invention was intended to make the GDR more economically independent. In Adina Camhy’s Crater, too, a geological phenomenon – various terrestrial and extraterrestrial craters – forms the starting point for an artistic reflection on past moments of violence and the impossibility of capturing the world without gaps. Whether ever higher or ever lower, Stéphanie Lagarde’s Minimal Sway While Starting My Way Up describes the impetus of architectural expansion as an expression of our relationship to the environment, from the perspective of an intelligent elevator plagued by self-doubt.

Followed by an audience discussion with Mareike Bernien, Andreas Bunte and Alex Gerbaulet, moderated by Florian Wüst.

North Calotte is the name given in Scandinavia to the harsh, barren, but also fascinating landscape at the very edge of Europe: the border region of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. This is where the once nomadic Sámi people settled with their herds of reindeer. Peter Nestler’s Die Nordkalotte [The North Calotte] is a documentary about the history, traditions, and understanding of nature of the Sámi. Over centuries, they have learned to adapt their needs to the climatic conditions of the Arctic Circle. Today, the Sámi are a minority in their own country, with many working in modern professions and living in cities, while the natural resources of the region are increasingly being lost. Dams have been built to generate electricity, forests cleared without hesitation, and huge excavators rummage through the earth for ore and nickel, turning everything upside down. Nestler criticizes industrial society that is covering the most remote regions with large-scale projects and is sacrificing the ecological balance for the sake of profit. But that’s not all: when the Chernobyl reactor burst in April 1986, its nuclear toxic loads also reached the far north. As in many of his films, Nestler also uncovers traces of the Second World War here. He tells the story of a successful escape from the Germans. At the end, Die Nordkalotte once again takes us back to the way the Sámi deal with nature, which is not aimed at subjugating it but at achieving a spiritual harmony between humans and creation.

Followed by an audience discussion with Tobias Holzlehner (MLU Halle-Wittenberg) and Judith Miggelbrink (TU Dresden), moderated by Florian Wüst.

The Geisel Valley south of Halle is now a lake landscape created by the flooding of several redundant open-cast mining holes. The lignite of the Geisel Valley was located close to the surface. This meant that comparatively little overburden had to be moved, which favored the almost complete decarburization of the deposit by 1993. In the GDR, the term “Umkohlung” was used when villages were dredged and people resettled to make way for open-pit lignite mining. In his first DEFA documentary Umkohlung, made in 1965, Thomas Kuschel gives a voice to those affected and paints an extraordinarily critical picture of the consequences of a fossil fuel energy policy that continues to destroy nature and culture today. The program Schnitt ins Land [Cut into the Land] links Kuschel’s film with the portrait of rural working and family conditions in current films by Marian Mayland and Alexandra Tatar. Mayland explores the extent to which the 1980s brought about end-of-life feelings on both a personal and societal level in a conversation with her parents and brother, set in the domestic surroundings of the former, badly running market garden of her parents in a small West German town next to a military training ground. The monotony of industrialized landscapes is not only the result of evisceration but also of large-scale agricultural use, the profitability of which is often achieved on the backs of precariously paid harvest workers from Eastern Europe. The Romanian artist Alexandra Tatar exposed herself to this experience together with her mother in an Austrian wine-growing region: Mâna care taie [Cutting Hand] testifies to the deep imbalance of European integration.

Followed by an audience discussion with Marian Mayland and Alexandra Tatar, moderated by Florian Wüst.

In 1545, a silver vein was discovered in the Bolivian highland, in a mountain that became the source of European wealth. Under its shadow, the city of Potosí was founded, which rapidly grew into the world’s richest city. Today, the shine of the heyday is long gone. Since the discovery of the lode of silver, however, not too much has changed in terms of working conditions. Around 15.000 miners are still digging themselves through the mountain in order to scratch the last silver reserves off the rock face. Armin Thalhammer’s debut film offers an impressive insight into the hard daily routines of Cerro Rico’s miners. Dust, headlights and hollow hammering generate a unique and bizarre scenery at one of the most dangerous workplaces.