I saw not a film. Which is not to say that is wasn't interesting. Well-known director Romuald Karmakar showed one and a half hours of one-shot archival footage (taped by German television) of nearly a dozen academics, thinkers, artists presenting talks at last December's conference at Haus der Kulturen der Welt on "Angriff auf die Demokratie - Eine Intervention" ("Attack on Democracy - An Intervention"). All you see is the fairly static perspective of changing speakers at a lecturn. While one can't help but wonder a) why this "montage" as Karmakar calls it was chosen for the film festival (other than for obvious political reasons) and b) whether it might better be presented as an interactive online project or a book, the "film" strangely works on some medial level -- if only because one has no choice but to actually listen. Karmakar was quoted in the press as saying that he consciously didn't edit to leave audiences exposed to all arguments brought forth by the illustrious group. And the barrage of highly critical thought --journalist Nils Minkmar gleefully describing the politician as a design product; author Ingo Schulze flatly declaring a state of post-democracy; another arts journalist advising to question the governance of rating agencies and pretty much every other agency-- does leave one with a feeling of a congregation of a critical mass of dissent and protest, a sort of intellectual Occupy event.
Six minutes of it actually were film in the usual sense of the word: Karmakar, himself part of the conference, delivered a short doc as a metaphor on patterns in stock exchange movements. The film shows a herd of goats on a meadow.
by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto
