Military Drill for Student Soldiers, Shinto Matsuri

Digitised in 2025, two 16mm films from Taiwan's Japanese colonial period are presented together. The first captures a national mobilisation rally in Taichung and the fervour surrounding a troops' send-off. The second observes a Shinto festival procession, student soldiers drilling with rifles, and female students forming rice balls for wartime logistics.

Leaving for the Front Line, Spiritual Mobilization

Digitised in 2025, two 16mm films from Taiwan's Japanese colonial period are presented together. The first captures a national mobilisation rally in Taichung and the fervour surrounding a troops' send-off. The second observes a Shinto festival procession, student soldiers drilling with rifles, and female students forming rice balls for wartime logistics.

Chang Gyeong

Changgyeonggung Palace is a space where the zoo, amusement park, and ancient palace overlap. Remembered as a childhood fantasy with a sense of unease, it becomes a layered image of animal suffering and everyday landscapes shaped by war and liberation. Rhythmic sound over superimposed images reveals fractures between past and present, fantasy and trauma.

Apollo

Apollo reflects the filmmaker's interest in the material, medium, and apparatus of cinema. Sound is generated directly from the image via the optical soundtrack: in some passages, a 35mm still camera was used to expose the soundtrack area, while in others the film emulsion was physically scratched away. The film was created as Nishikawa Tomonari's senior thesis project at Binghamton University, under the supervision of Julie Murray.

Partition

Partition fuses archival footage from the British occupation of Palestine with oral histories recorded in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Through story, voice and song, the film reclaims Palestinian presence, unsettling colonial archives and reflecting on what bodies remember — and what empires forget.

Wittstock, Wittstock

A new kind of normality has taken hold in Wittstock, which the filmmaker has captured for us for the one last time. The big factory is no longer there. As for the three women workers, Elsbeth goes to retraining courses, always on the hunt for a job; Renate has now been working for five years as a chambermaid in a small hotel; Edith, who used to be so rebellious, has moved to Heilbronn for work and become very tranquil.

Modern Times in Wittstock

Although the director had planned to end the Wittstock documentary series at Life in Wittstock, he continued the project to capture the changes taking place in East Germany after the German reunification. This sixth instalment returns to the town shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The three women workers experience various forms of instability and upheaval when the factory is liquidated; Edith leaves and start a new life in Württemberg.

Life in Wittstock

In 1974, the filmmaker began his 23-year journey of filming the women workers in a newly built textile factory in the town of Wittstock, East Germany. Life in Wittstock is the fifth instalment in the series; by then, nearly 3,000 women were working in the factory. In this film, three of the workers talk about the changes in the town, their promotions at work, and the choices and compromises they have made in their lives over the years.

March Brandenburg, Inc.

The final instalment of March Brandenburg trilogy moves away from the town of Zehdenick in order to focus on the rural areas north of Berlin. Made in the period between the currency union in East Germany and the official reunification in October 1990, the film shows how drastically the lives of the residents have changed, as crippling unemployment has taken the place of hard work.

March Brandenburg Heath, March Brandenburg Sand

The second instalment of March Brandenburg trilogy captures the conversations taking place in Zehdenick during the weeks leading up to the first free elections in spring 1990. Including previously censored footage of March Brandenburg Bricks, this film reflects the hopes and concerns of the business community, working class women, and young people during 'Die Wende', the period of political change in East Germany.

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