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This screening takes place at the Downtown Independent, 251 S. Main Street, Los Angeles.
Los Angeles premieres!
Casanova Gene (Germany, 2018)
Casanovagen
Luise Donschen’s ravishing, eclectic feature debut veers radically from fiction to observational documentary to single-subject interview to landscape and back again. Exploring desire in a singular fashion, Donschen presents an investigation into the mating habits of finches; a portrait of a dominatrix, her clients, and her hypnotherapist; a conversation with John Malkovich, in the midst of an onstage role as Casanova; woozy, enigmatic, alluringly staged scenes in a bar; the goings-ons of a monastery; and assorted other phenomena, all richly captured on 16mm by cinematographer Helena Wittmann. An invigorating hybrid whatsit, Casanova Gene is a funny and seductive look at seduction, organized according to the ineffable logic of desire itself.
DCP, color, in English and German with English subtitles, 67 min. Director: Luise Donschen.
Victory Day (Germany, 2018)
Den’ Pobedy
The latest from the versatile Sergei Loznitsa (My Joy, Maidan) documents the annual gathering at the Soviet Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park, a commemoration of the Red Army’s victory over the Nazis in World War II. Victory Day captures the final preparations before immersing us in a choreographed spectacle marked by unfettered kitsch, pride, shame, reflection, and celebration—a curious form of Russian patriotism away from Russia itself. With his typically patient, incisive eye, Loznitsa homes in on the contradictions and ecstatic strangeness of the ways history is used to forge a sense of community, yielding a complex work at once funny and profound.
DCP, color, in German and English with English subtitles, 94 min. Director: Sergei Loznitsa.
