Here you may see the results of the Doc.Lab, a two-weeks learning trajectory about how to make movies in a very short time:
Letters to an Unknown City
Nathan Rubene dos Santos
Doc.Lab
Idyllic first impressions aside, the German-Polish border at Frankfurt (Oder)- Słubice bears the visceral scars of world war, reconstruction under the strictures of Marxist urban planning, as well as the psychic trauma of a city divided by the headstrong consolidation of two nation-states, firm cultural-linguistic lines drawn at once permeable borders.
Rather than consider the present alluvial landscape either a disfigurement of a prior ‘golden age’ or a reincarnation proper for the (post)modern age, my film lets the archival material dialogue with contemporary footage to let Frankfurt and Słubice speak for themselves. Through the voices of two lovers estranged by political dealing and time itself, the cities’ are distilled into living, breathing archetypes of the twentieth century — its nostalgia, misrememberings, and expectant hopes — experienced from two sides of the same murky river. It is Walter Ruttman’s panegyric of Berlin turned on its head with the help of Brakhage, Resnais, and all those in between who tinkered with dreams on the silver screen.
WE DID TOO
Video essay, 5 min
Oleksandra Kalinichenko, Daria Borovyk
Doc.Lab
Every city has its own rhythm. Coming to a new place one may feel alienated and unsynchronised.
Through a reflective experimental essay we are exploring these feelings and our personal journey of finding harmony with the city rhythms.
Oder
Video essay, 5 min
Yurii Boiko
Doc.Lab
Oder has been poisoned.
When, why?
Can we tell what was before the poisoning? Or what‘s next? Can we reverse the time? Is it really linear or always circular?
Is there a time flow outside the frame and measure and, if yes, how does it feel to encounter it? To feel it, to touch it, to be it?
The One With The Fire
Film, 5 min
Viktoriia Grivina
Doc.Lab
In Frankfurt-an-Oder a Ukrainian detective is trying to get to the roots of an old mystery – the fire that started in the local St. Mary‘s Church on April 25, 1945.
Searching for clues the main character faces a series of misunderstandings and reaches a surprising realization in the end.
Quest for Home
Film, 2.44 min
Tatia Johnson
Doc.Lab
What is home?
Is it a place? Is it a feeling?
Is it where you‘re born?
Or where you live now?
Inspired by her sons, Tatia Johnson explores these questions in her short film: quest for home.
animals.mushrooms.feelings.
a video dictionary
Video essay, 5 min
Nicoleta Jantoan
Doc.Lab
What if you‘d found out that people resemble other creatures more than you think? What if certain species can teach us more about ourselves than we could‘ve imagined?
In this short documentary, I aimed to discover the little inhabitants of Frankfurt (Oder), the lessons they can teach us, and the uncanny similarities between humans and animals. In the end, aren‘t we all a sum of everything nature has provided for us?
A Visual Ethnography across the Border
Film, 5 min
Rebecca Cuozzo
Doc.Lab
сирени / sirens
Film, 12 min
Bogdan Bondarchuk
Doc.Lab
Між реальністю і тишею
In between of reality and quitness
emptiness
Film, 1,5 min
Svitlana Konoplyovа
Doc.Lab
Dedicated to the pit in the place of the statue and the empty courtyards
The film was shot during the Viadrinicum summer school in Frankfurt -Oder. Frankfurt-Oder is a medieval city destroyed by fire in 1945, and then rebuilt according to socialist principles. I saw a familiar post-socialist emptiness and tried to figure out what it meant, what a local relationship with a lost identity.
Viadrinicum 