Phantoms of july

sehnsucht in sangerhausen
Julian Radlmaier
2025
90 min.
Tyskland
DCP
tysk tale / engelske undertekster

Spøgelser driver gennem Julian Radlmaiers Phantoms of July, en luftig og formbevidst fortælling om den uendelige længsel efter noget andet og noget mere – sat i en tysk mineby fuld af brogede karakterer. Efter visningen byder Goethe-Institut Dänemark på et glas vin i Cinematekets Asta Bar.

I det østlige Tyskland, i det pensionistturist-tiltrækkende Harzen-område, ligger Sangerhausen. Byen er både hjemsted for verdens største rosenhave og en gigantisk menneskeskabt pyramide af jord og sten, der tårner over byen og minder om tidligere tiders heftige minedrift.

I denne kulisse af grus og blomster har den tyske filmskaber Julian Radlmaier sat sin tredje spillefilm, Phantoms of July. En komisk fabel om konsekvenserne af neoliberal kapitalisme: racisme, slukkede drømme, ensomhed og manglende midler til kirsebær.

Filmen er delt i fire kapitler, der strækker sig fra 1800-tallet til i dag, og som på luftig vis lader fortiden ramle sammen med nutiden, mens den følger i hælene på en broget skare af ensomme arbejdere og migranter: En tysk kvinde med to jobs og et knust hjerte. En iransk kvinde med en knust arm, der forsøger at klare den som rejse-influencer. En 1800-tals tjenestekvinde, der bliver knust af normerne, da hun forsøger at følge sit hjerte, mens revolutionen raser i Frankrig.

Rundt om dem strejfer en endnu mere broget flok, der tæller alt fra en persisk gadefejer, der har studeret film under Abbas Kiarostami, en koreansk tourguide med dårlig nakke, en stensluger, nudist-hikere og, ja, sågar poeten Novalis.

Novalis’ blå blomst er i Phantoms of July en blålig sten, men blaue blumes uendelige søgen og længsel efter et andet, udefineret sted, er den samme. Mens de går rundt i byens sommervarme og småracistiske atmosfære, drømmer de om noget mere og savner noget andet, end det de har, og det, Sangerhausen kan tilbyde dem.

Spøgelser, håb, drømme og fantomer driver gennem filmen, der er Julian Radlmaier’s første siden den kommunistiske vampyrkomedie Bloodsucksers fra 2021. Formen er let og undersøgende med panoreringer og pludselige zooms i den østtyske bys fotogeniske omgivelser. En form, om hvilken Radlmaier selv har sagt:

”Jeg er besat af spørgsmålet om form i film, den måde hvorpå den kan skærpe vores sanser, der ellers er blevet bedøvet af så mange stereotypiske billeder. Sammen med fotografen Faraz Fesharaki prøvede vi at finde på overraskende løsninger til manuskriptet, men også at lade os blive overrasket over, hvad end vi opdagede, mens vi filmede. Derfor er filmen en blanding af nøje planlagte visuelle koreografier og tilfældige billeder, som vi filmede uden at vide, hvor de ville ende henne i klipningen. Et formelt nøgleelement, vi ønskede at undersøge var zoomens spøgelsesagtige og længselsfulde bevægelse, mens et andet var panoreringens poetiske lethed.”

Præsenteres i samarbejde med Goethe-Institut Dänemark og Cinemateket.
Kopi: Bendita Film Sales.

19. oktober
16.45
Cinemateket
(Gothersgade 55, 1123 København)

Køb billet

INTERVIEW WITH KELLY REICHARDT
Scott Roxborough, 2025

What was the origin of this story, the idea to do a heist movie?
I’ve just always been interested in heists. I like to dig around and read about them when they come up —they’re fun to read about. And I read an article on the 50th anniversary of the art heist in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1972. The article was about these teenagers who got caught up in an art heist at the Worcester Art Museum. That piqued my interest. So it was just a little seed for how to start telling this story.

Did your family background have anything to do with it? Your father was a detective.
No, not at all. My dad was a crime scene detective, my mom was an undercover narcotics agent, and my stepfather was an FBI agent. But it wasn’t really about that. I mean, while making the film, because it was set in the 1970s, a ton of things came back to me from being a kid then — being in the car all the time, that sort of thing. But there’s no biographical element in it.

You said it was the 50th anniversary of this particular heist, but were there any specific heists that you based the story of the film on?
No, but the Worcester heist was a jumping-off point for sure. Those were snatch-and-grabs like this before security cameras and other measures were put in. Museums had roundabouts in front of them, so robbers could just drive up, retirees were the security guards. Before the Gardner Museum [heist of 1990], there were a lot of these kinds of robberies. At the Worcester Museum, they took a Rembrandt and four huge paintings. That was a little bit of a stepping-off point. I liked the idea of it being in New England, so we set it in Framingham, which is close to Worcester. I wanted it to be smaller, not like masterpieces being taken. It became about painting by Arthur Dove. That was fun to dive into.

Was the idea that stealing Arthur Dove paintings, instead of Rembrants makes the whole thing slightly less grand or ambitious?
Yeah, it lowers the stakes. I felt it was better for the size of my film, really, and for the ambitions of this character. I felt like it was easier to get my arms around than having it be paintings everyone knows, like Degas or Rembrandt. I went through a lot of different stages of what it would be, but I kept coming back to Dove. I was a little bit worried, to be honest, because Dove paintings are quite small, and on their own they’re not majestic necessarily. One could dismiss them or find them unremarkable. He wasn’t very popular in the ’70s. But Tony Gasparro, the production designer, and I came to believe that if you set them in a room with multiple ones and gave them the prestige of a museum setting, that would carry it. We found one visual of a Dove show from the ’70s and riffed off that.

For the 70s setting, what is it about that era that resonates now?
Well, I liked the idea of taking a sort of classic character — James Mooney [played by John O’Connor] is kind of like a man-boy, and a father and a husband — who makes a big career move and tries to execute it to the best of his ability, then gets stomped on and doesn’t know how to recover from it. That’s sort of within the conventions of heist thinking — we think of [French director Jean-Pierre] Melville or something. But then there’s an undertone of a character who feels detached from what’s happening in the country. He’s too old to be drafted, he’s a middle-class kid with a judge father, and he has two kids. He’s not worried about being drafted, so he’s not tuned in.

The idea that keeps reappearing in the films I’ve made is this question about the individual versus the person in a community, or in a society, or as a citizen of the world. Can you really remain separate from what’s going on around you? Or does the drag of it catch up with you? Are we just all more connected than that?

Can you keep yourself separate from the politics around you, which is a particularly important question for artists.
Yeah. A lot of people say, “Well, I’m just not political.” And I think: Do you have a bank account? You’re political. Not to be political is a very privileged position. If you can go through life and not worry that someone’s going to knock on your door and take you to a prison in El Salvador, then lucky you.

Uddrag fra “Kelly Reichardt on ‘The Mastermind,’ Josh O’Connor and What the ’70s Have to Teach Us Today“, The Hollywood Reporter, 2025.

Kommende visningernovember

With hasan in gaza

Ma’ Hasan Fi Ghazza
Kamal Aljafari
2025
106 min.
DCP
Palæstina, Tyskland, Frankrig, Qatar
arabisk tale / engelske undertekster

“I went to Gaza twenty-four years ago searching for a friend, without an address.” Kamal Aljafaris With Hasan in Gaza er en filmisk refleksion over minder og tab, og den fanger et Gaza fra fortiden og liv, der måske aldrig vil blive fundet igen.

With Hasan in Gaza havde verdenspremiere i hovedkonkurrencen på dette års Locarno filmfestival, men den er lige så gammel. som den er ny: Den består af optagelser fra tre nyligt genopdagede MiniDV-videobånd, som instruktør Kamal Aljafari havde medbragt til Gaza i 2001. Han var rejst dertil for at finde en ven, han havde siddet i fængsel med i 1989, og havde den lokale guide Hasan Elboubou ved sin side på rejsen.

Filmen er grundlæggende en road movie, der bevæger sig fra det nordlige Gaza til det sydlige i en søgen efter en ven, hvis skæbne er ukendt. Med kameraet i hånden passerer Aljafari og Elboubou legende børn ved havet, ruiner, mennesker i samtaler, mens Israels angreb fylder nætterne.

Aljafaris behandling af dette hjemmevideo-materiale er minimal. Han har ikke tilføjet en essayistisk fortællerstemme, der reflekterer over alt det, der er gået tabt siden 2001. Han har heller ikke tilføjet nyt billedmateriale. Han har blot indføjet enkelte tekststykker, som indrammer filmen, samt et diskret soundtrack, der blander nykomponeret musik med populære sange fra regionen. Ellers lader Aljafari råmaterialet være filmen og stoler på, at det kan reflektere for sig selv. Dokumenter fra dengang, set med øjne fra i dag.

With Hasan in Gaza er en filmisk refleksion over minder og tab, og den fanger et Gaza fra fortiden og liv, der måske aldrig vil blive fundet igen. Kamal Aljafari anvender filmmediet til at undersøge, hvordan billedernes figurative materialitet kan blive en abstraktion og et spøgelse, og kobler denne undersøgelse til et område, der er lige så virkeligt og konkret, som det er abstrakt og fantasmagorisk: Palæstina.

Selv har Kamal Aljfari udtalt om filmen: “En hyldest til Gaza og dets befolkning, til alt det, der blev udslettet, og som kom tilbage til mig i dette presserende øjeblik af palæstinensisk eksistens eller ikke-eksistens. Det er en film om katastrofen og den poesi, der modstår.”
Al overskud fra denne visning doneres til Thousand Madleens. Kamal Aljafari har også doneret sit honorar til selvsamme organisation.

Præsenteres i Empire. Tak til Flavia Mazzarino og Kamal Aljafari.
Kopi: Aljafari Productions.

4. november
19.00
Empire bio
(Guldbergsgade 29F, 2200 København)

Køb billet

INTERVIEW WITH KELLY REICHARDT
Scott Roxborough, 2025

What was the origin of this story, the idea to do a heist movie?
I’ve just always been interested in heists. I like to dig around and read about them when they come up —they’re fun to read about. And I read an article on the 50th anniversary of the art heist in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1972. The article was about these teenagers who got caught up in an art heist at the Worcester Art Museum. That piqued my interest. So it was just a little seed for how to start telling this story.

Did your family background have anything to do with it? Your father was a detective.
No, not at all. My dad was a crime scene detective, my mom was an undercover narcotics agent, and my stepfather was an FBI agent. But it wasn’t really about that. I mean, while making the film, because it was set in the 1970s, a ton of things came back to me from being a kid then — being in the car all the time, that sort of thing. But there’s no biographical element in it.

You said it was the 50th anniversary of this particular heist, but were there any specific heists that you based the story of the film on?
No, but the Worcester heist was a jumping-off point for sure. Those were snatch-and-grabs like this before security cameras and other measures were put in. Museums had roundabouts in front of them, so robbers could just drive up, retirees were the security guards. Before the Gardner Museum [heist of 1990], there were a lot of these kinds of robberies. At the Worcester Museum, they took a Rembrandt and four huge paintings. That was a little bit of a stepping-off point. I liked the idea of it being in New England, so we set it in Framingham, which is close to Worcester. I wanted it to be smaller, not like masterpieces being taken. It became about painting by Arthur Dove. That was fun to dive into.

Was the idea that stealing Arthur Dove paintings, instead of Rembrants makes the whole thing slightly less grand or ambitious?
Yeah, it lowers the stakes. I felt it was better for the size of my film, really, and for the ambitions of this character. I felt like it was easier to get my arms around than having it be paintings everyone knows, like Degas or Rembrandt. I went through a lot of different stages of what it would be, but I kept coming back to Dove. I was a little bit worried, to be honest, because Dove paintings are quite small, and on their own they’re not majestic necessarily. One could dismiss them or find them unremarkable. He wasn’t very popular in the ’70s. But Tony Gasparro, the production designer, and I came to believe that if you set them in a room with multiple ones and gave them the prestige of a museum setting, that would carry it. We found one visual of a Dove show from the ’70s and riffed off that.

For the 70s setting, what is it about that era that resonates now?
Well, I liked the idea of taking a sort of classic character — James Mooney [played by John O’Connor] is kind of like a man-boy, and a father and a husband — who makes a big career move and tries to execute it to the best of his ability, then gets stomped on and doesn’t know how to recover from it. That’s sort of within the conventions of heist thinking — we think of [French director Jean-Pierre] Melville or something. But then there’s an undertone of a character who feels detached from what’s happening in the country. He’s too old to be drafted, he’s a middle-class kid with a judge father, and he has two kids. He’s not worried about being drafted, so he’s not tuned in.

The idea that keeps reappearing in the films I’ve made is this question about the individual versus the person in a community, or in a society, or as a citizen of the world. Can you really remain separate from what’s going on around you? Or does the drag of it catch up with you? Are we just all more connected than that?

Can you keep yourself separate from the politics around you, which is a particularly important question for artists.
Yeah. A lot of people say, “Well, I’m just not political.” And I think: Do you have a bank account? You’re political. Not to be political is a very privileged position. If you can go through life and not worry that someone’s going to knock on your door and take you to a prison in El Salvador, then lucky you.

Uddrag fra “Kelly Reichardt on ‘The Mastermind,’ Josh O’Connor and What the ’70s Have to Teach Us Today“, The Hollywood Reporter, 2025.

The girls

gehenu Lamai
Sumitra peries
1978
110 min.
Sri lanka
DCP
singalesisk tale / engelske undertekster

Sumitra Peries’ klassiker fra 1978 er et filmisk væv af kroppe, flora og ritualer. To søstres liv sammenflettes med Sri Lankas historie i detaljerige, ornamenterede billeder – nu genfødt i en smuk nyrestaureret udgave.

Et sted i det landlige Sri Lanka står en ung pige og hænger vasketøj på en tørresnor. Hun er omgærdet af træer, og kun det øverste af hendes hoved er synligt. Hendes øjne er rettet mod et forbipasserende optog tilegnet en nyankommen tjenestemand. En dreng fra optoget ser tilbage på hende. Freeze-frame.

Sådan indledes Sumitra Peries’ debutfilm The Girls. Ordløst og med kameraet rettet på halv-skjulte kroppe, nysgerrige blikke, flora og politiske ritualer. Fra denne enkle montage udspringer en utrolig film om den evigt pligtopfyldende Kusum og hendes sorgløse søster, Soma. Kusum forelsker sig i overklassedrengen Nimal, mens Soma drømmer om at blive landets skønhedsdronning. Men i mødet med den første forelskelse og i udlevelsen af den første livsdrøm, må de to søstre også erfare de normer og patriarkalske strukturer, der betinger deres liv og muligheder.

The Girls er en film, som gror. Den er noget organisk. Den lever, og den ånder. På et strukturelt plan er hver scene som et styrkevæv, der tillader filmen at vokse sig større og stærkere, så fortællingen om Kusum og Soma samtidig forgrener sig til en skildring af Sri Lankas postkoloniale tilstand. På et æstetisk plan står Peries’ kamera sjældent stille. Det panorerer, zoomer ind og ud og kredser konstant om de to søstre; vikler dem ind i usynlige tråde og binder dem til deres hverdagslige omgivelser.

Landets frodige plantevækst er dertil hele tiden i færd med at gro billedet til: Igen og igen fylder Peries billedet med et virvar af grene, blade og buske, som skjuler karaktererne fra det ellers søgende kamera. En fantastisk barok mise en scène, der ikke kun har rod i srilankanske traditioner, men også vækker mindelser om film af Josef von Sternberg og William A. Wellman – to filmskabere, der med fuldt overlæg udjævnede dybden i deres billeder ved hjælp af frontale kameraindstillinger og sammenklumpede kulisser samt skjulte deres skuespillere bag træer, klæder og nipsting.

I The Girls forærer Peries os hverken dramaet eller de to søstres indre følelsesliv. Selv kameraet er forment adgang. I stedet er det det ornamenterede billede, der er dramaet. Og det er vores opgave at lade blikket grave rundt, derinde, i buskadset.

Sumitra Peries (1935-2023) var sammen med sin mand, Lester James Peries, blandt Sri Lankas mest markante filmskabere. The Girls blev en stor succes, både i hjemlandet og internationalt. I 2018 påbegyndte den indiske nonprofit organisation The Film Heritage Foundation arbejdet med at få filmen restaureret – en proces, som Sumitra Peries selv var involveret i frem til hendes død i 2023. Den restaurerede udgave, som havde premiere på filmfestivalen i Cannes i maj 2025, giver en ekstra klarhed til Peries’ detaljerige billeder og følsomme lydside.

Præsenteres i samarbejde med Cinemateket.
Kopi: The Film Heritage Foundation.

[Læs mere...]

22. november 16.30
Cinemateket
(Gothersgade 55, 1123 København)

Køb billet

Tusind sole

Phantoms of july

Spøgelser driver gennem Julian Radlmaiers Phantoms of July, en luftig og formbevidst fortælling om den uendelige længsel efter noget andet og noget mere – sat i en tysk mineby fuld af brogede karakterer. Efter visningen byder Goethe-Institut Dänemark på et glas vin i Cinematekets Asta Bar.

With hasan in gaza

“I went to Gaza twenty-four years ago searching for a friend, without an address.” Kamal Aljafaris With Hasan in Gaza er en filmisk refleksion over minder og tab, og den fanger et Gaza fra fortiden og liv, der måske aldrig vil blive fundet igen.

The girls

Sumitra Peries’ klassiker fra 1978 er et filmisk væv af kroppe, flora og ritualer. To søstres liv sammenflettes med Sri Lankas historie i detaljerige, ornamenterede billeder – nu genfødt i en smuk nyrestaureret udgave.