Film & gesprek | Lonely Oaks
With an introduction on environmental film making and performativity of climate activism by Katrin Sieg
| Veranstaltung des Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam |
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| Datum: | Dienstag 19 November 2024 um 19:00 Uhr |
| Ort: | Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, Herengracht 470, Amsterdam |
| Information: | Duitstalige film met Engelse ondertiteling. Introductie en gesprek in het Engels. Aanmelden via Eventbrite |
| Zugang: | Gratis |
© W-filmIn het Goethe-Institut Amsterdam vertonen wij deze avond de documentaire 'Lonely Oaks' (in het Duits 'Vergiss Meyn Nicht') die jonge demonstranten in het Hambacher bos volgt. In 2018 overleed filmmaker Steffen Meyn door een val tijdens de protesten in het Hambacher bos. Deze film combineert de beelden die hij schoot met interviews met milieuactivisten en stelt de vraag hoe ver activisme moet gaan. Met een inleiding door germanist Katrin Sieg over de impact van milieufilms en (klimaatactivistische) performances.
De voertaal is Engels.
In 2018, Steffen Meyn died from a fall during the protests in the German Hambacher Forest. The film "Lonely Oaks" (German title "Vergiss Meyn Nicht") combines the footage he shot on a 360-degree helmet camera with interviews with environmentalists and asks how far activism must go. Before the film, Katrin Sieg (Professor of German, Georgetown University) will give an introduction, discussing how German environmental films, TV shows, and performances help us to understand the reality of climate change and mobilize public action. She’ll talk about how these media show the long-term effects of climate change, connect local events to distant places, and reveal the hidden impacts on our bodies.
From Rachel Carson’s "Silent Spring" (1962) and Roland Emmerich’s blockbuster "The Day after Tomorrow" (2004) to the literary oeuvres of Barbara Kingsolver, T.C. Boyle, and Kim Stanley Robinson, fiction and cinema has mastered the balance to shake up audiences with dystopian tales and inspire them with hope for a more sustainable future. In the last few years we have seen many theater and film festivals on the topic of climate change sprout up all over Germany and give dramatic form to the issue of global warming and the quest for decarbonization. At the same time, climate activism has become more performative, generating public attention through traffic blockades and museum interventions. What do climate actions and environemntal filmmaking have in common, besides the urgent call for a more sustainable future? And how do they impact how we look at the global crisis we are facing?
The introduction will be held in English and the documentary will be shown in German with English subtitles.
About the speaker
Katrin Sieg is Professor of German jointly affiliated with the BMW Center for German and European Studies and the German department. She holds a Ph.D. in Drama from the University of Washington, Seattle, and taught at UC San Diego and Indiana University, Bloomington, before joining Georgetown University in 2002. Her research focuses on German and European culture, postcolonial and critical race studies, and feminist studies. As the author of three scholarly monographs on German and European theater, performance, and cinema, she has received several awards and grants, among them a Humboldt Fellowship, and two awards for her second book, "Ethnic Drag: Performing Race, Nation, Sexuality in West Germany" (2002). Her fourth book, "Decolonizing German and European History at the Museum", was published in 2021. Sieg has organized a number of symposia, film series, and conferences on topics relating to contemporary German and European culture, including "Queer European Cinema"; "Shadows and Sojourners: Images of Jews and Antifascism in East German Cinema," “Performing Race in the Transatlantic World,” and "Decolonizing the Museum: Transnational Comparisons”.
Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam in cooperation with Goethe-Institut Amsterdam