SPK COMPLEX at German Documentary Showcase, NY

German Film Office* and Anthology Film Archives present the

German Documentary Showcase. (online February 17-March 2.2021)

The German Film Office and Anthology Film Archives present a series attesting to the rich body of non-fiction films that have been produced in Germany in recent years. By no means a definitive survey, the selection nevertheless illustrates the thematic diversity, aesthetic innovation, and passionate socio-political engagement of contemporary German documentary cinema.

Film Program:
Ulrike Ottinger, Paris Calligrammes (2020, 129 min.)
Carmen Losmann, Oeconomia (2020, 89 min.)
Amel Alzakout & Khaled Abdulwahed, Purple Sea (2020, 67 min.)
Clarissa Thieme, Was bleibt | Šta ostaje | What remains / Re-visited (2020, 70 min.)
Karim Aïnouz, Central Airport THF (2018, 100 min.)
Karen Winther, Exit: Leaving Extremism Behind (2018, 85 min.)
Gerd Kroske, SPK Complex (2018, 111 min.)
Sergei Loznitsa, Victory Day (2018, 94 min.)

Info here https://www.goethe.de/prj/gfo/de/kal/ver.cfm?event_id=22106863&

The series will be streaming from February 17-March 2, with many of the films available to watch free-of-charge! online-Anmeldung here  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/german-documentary-showcase-tickets-139692368635

„The selection demonstrates a wide range of documentary techniques – from the relatively straightforward but historically and culturally revelatory approach of Gerd Kroske’s SPK Complex,which deploys interviews and archival materials to uncover a little-known dimension of postwar German politics, or Karen Winther’s Exit, which delves into the experiences of former right-wing extremists struggling to free themselves from these ideologies, to the more observational style of Karim Aïnouz’s Central Airport THF (a portrait of the transformation of Berlin’s former Tempelhof Airport into a temporary facility for Middle Eastern refugees) and Sergei Loznitsa’s Victory Day (which documents the celebration of the Soviet victory over the Nazis that takes place each year at Berlin’s Treptower Park Soviet War Memorial). Clarissa Thieme’s Was bleibt | Šta ostaje | What remains / Re-visited takes a more experimental form, visiting the sites of war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, displaying blow-ups of frames from Thieme’s earlier, 2010 film made in the same locations, and inviting interactions with passersby.
We’re particularly pleased to present three brand-new films in the series. Carmen Losmann’s Oeconomia represents a breathtakingly ambitious and vitally important attempt to understand and visualize the nearly impenetrable workings of the shadowy capitalist financial system that dominates the global economy in the 21st century. Purple Sea, by Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed, is a formally rigorous yet emotionally expansive first-person account of a 2015 shipwreck off the coast of Turkey that resulted in the death of dozens of Middle-Eastern migrants. And Paris Caligrammes – which we’ll be showcasing for a special three-day online sneak preview – is the remarkable new film by the great Ulrike Ottinger (Freak Orlando; Madame X: An Absolute Ruler; Joan of Arc of Mongolia). An account of the formative period she spent in Paris in the 1960s, it is at once a deeply personal autobiographical essay and a cultural history of uncommon depth, detail, and vividness.“

Information about the Documentarys here https://www.goethe.de/prj/gfo/en/kal/ver.cfm?event_id=22106863

  • The German Film Office is an initiative of the Goethe-Institut and German Films. Based in New York, we collaborate with local partners to bring the best of contemporary and repertory films from Germany to US audiences.

„SPK KOMPLEX“ im Stream von SALZGEBER-Club

zeigt SPK KOMPLEX ab 4. Februar 2021 im Stream. (Kauf+ Ausleihe)

1970 gründete der Arzt Wolfgang Huber in Heidelberg das „Sozialistische Patientenkollektiv“, kurz SPK. Die Gruppe kritisierte die damalige Behandlung von psychisch Kranken als „Verwahr-Psychiatrie“ und verknüpfte innovative Therapiemethoden mit politischen Forderungen. Doch dann wurden Gerüchte über latente Verbindungen zwischen dem SPK und der RAF laut. Was daran stimmte, dass erzählt der Film.
Ab 4. Februar  gibt es Gerd Kroskes vielschichtiges Porträt als Stream. (Ausleihe+ Kauf)
hier gehts zum  Stream: „SPK Komplex“ im Salzgeber Club.

TV Premiere, April 26. 2020 rbb-television

Sunday, 04.26.2020
22:45 – 00:35 pm at rbb Fernsehen

„SPK Complex“ a  film by Gerd Kroske | rbb Fernsehen

In 1970, Dr. Wolfgang Huber and a group of patients founded the anti-psychiatric “Socialist Patient’s Collective” in Heidelberg. Controversial therapy methods, political demands, and a massive interest in the movement from patients deeply distrustful of conventional “custodial psychiatry,” led to run-ins with the University of Heidelberg and local authorities. The conflict quickly escalated and resulted in the radicalization of the SPK. Their experiment in group therapy ultimately ended in arrests, prison, and the revocation of Huber’s license to practice medicine.

From a historical perspective, the SPK court cases seem to anticipate the Stammheim trials, with the exclusion of defense attorneys, the total non-compliance of the defendants, and harsh penalties for both Huber and his wife. The severity of the sentences handed down appears hardly proportional to the actual deeds of the accused. The allegation of having supported the RAF, and thus of being complicit in their terrorism, still clings to the SPK and overlies what the movement was originally about: the rights of psychiatric patients, resistance, and self-empowerment—issues that are still relevant today.

SPK COMPLEX focuses on the untold story of events before the “German Autumn” and their consequences up to the present day. A story of insanity, public perception, and (un)avoidable violence.   

Retrospective: Gerd Kroske Images of Germany

„Gerd Kroske –Images of Germany“ at Austrian Filmmuseum, Vienna

January 22 to February 13, 2020

Opening January 22th at 8:30 pm with „SPK COMPLEX“

Author and director Gerd Kroske’s clever and unconventional films make him a central voice of contemporary German documentary film. Committed to consistent artistic independence, over the past 30 years Kroske has produced an impressive body of work dealing with the heritage of both the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany. Kroske’s oeuvre can be read like a chronicle of recent East and West German history, resolutely taking stories of the marginalized as its starting point and reading these as symptomatic of the bigger picture. (Constantin Wulff)
 
Gerd Kroske will be our guest at the Filmmuseum on January 22, 23 and 25.The retrospective is organized in cooperation with the German Federal Archives, the German Cinematheque, and Navigator Film.

SPK COMPLEX at globaLE

SPK COMPLEX , Screening at the  globaLE* Thu Sep 12 2019 at 08:00 pm to 11:00 pm at „Schaubühne Lindenfels“, Leipzig, Germany
BRD / 2018 / 111 min / D: Gerd Kroske / german version / After screening Q and A with Gerd Kroske. Free entry

About: *globaLE – The globalization-critical film festival in Leipzig – an initiative of attac Leipzig.

You may also like the following events from GlobaLE Leipzig:

Cineastische Keimzelle: SPK Komplex

Am 22.Mai um 19:30 Uhr findet im SÜDPOL HAMBURG, Süderstr. 112, der Filmabend „Cineastische Keimzelle: SPK Komplex“ statt.

Info des Veranstalters: „Beste Voraussetzungen für einen feinen Abend.
Es kommt nämlich Gerd Kroske und bringt seinen Film, den SPK Komplex. Dieser ist eine vielschichtige dokumentarische Arbeit, deren Dreh- und Wendepunkt eine völligst in Vergessenheit geratene Gruppierung ist, die zu Beginn der 70er Jahre Psychatrie um 180 Grad andersrum denken wollte – SPK steht für das Sozialistische Patienten Kollektiv. In allerkürzester Kürze war ihr Ansatz der, nicht die Patient.innen als die Kranke zu denken, sondern das System. Dazu hatten sie auch allen Grund – ein Grund, an dem man sich heute noch aus Psychiatrischer Sicht die Zähne ausbeißen kann – aber uns soll es um den anderen wichtigen Teil der Arbeit gehen, der wohl auch Auslöser des aktiv betriebenen Vergessens dieser Gruppe gewesen sein mag, dass nämlich SPK und RAF sich aus staatlicher Sicht (zu) nahestanden. Obwohl der Anteil derer, die aus dem SPK in der RAF aufgingen marginal war, lässt sich rückblickend ein Muster ableiten, das sich am ehesten mit der Ei-und-Henne-Metapher aufdeuten ließe.“

Gäste: Gerd Kroske, Karl-Heinz Dellwo und weitere

Mehr zum Abend unter:

https://de-de.facebook.com/events/820432685001888/

www.suedpol.org

„SPK KOMPLEX“ im Filmmuseum München

„Wie in den vergangenen Jahren haben wir drei Filmkritiker*innen – in diesem Jahr wieder Margret Köhler aus München sowie Bert Rebhandl und Ralf Schenk aus Berlin – gebeten, ihre persönlichen Bestenlisten der deutschen Filme des Jahres 2018 zu erstellen.“ am Sonntag, 31.März läuft im FILMMUSEUM MÜNCHEN: „SPK KOMPLEX“.

Kurator Bert Rebhandl schrieb für das Programmheft: 

„Das »Sozialistische Patientenkollektiv« wurde 1970 in Heidelberg gegründet. Der Arzt Wolfgang Huber zog damit eine Konsequenz aus 1968: Damals wurde alles politisch, also auch die (psychische) Gesundheit. Inspiriert durch italienische Vorbilder, suchten die Mitglieder des SPKs nach Behandlungsmethoden zwischen Therapie und Gesellschaftsveränderung. Querverbindungen zur außerparlamentarischen Opposition und schließlich zum Linksterrorismus lagen nahe. Gerd Kroske rekonstruiert mit Interviews und mit dem spärlichen Archivmaterial von damals ein bedeutendes Kapitel aus der Geschichte der revolutionären deutschen Linken nach 1968, und öffnet Reflexionshorizonte bis in die Gegenwart.“ (Bert Rebhandl)

Mehr Informationen hier: 

SPK KOMPLEX at workshop, Whitney Humanities Center

„1968 and the Languages and Legacies of Liberation“(Humanity/Humanities Workshop at Whitney Humanities Center, Yale)

February 28th – March 03th 2019

If emancipation was the great word of the nineteenth century, leberation was the great word of the latter half of the twentieth century, an particulary of 1968. This seminar will take the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the upheavals of 1968 to reconsider the  meaning of the moment of „liberation“. We will explore the middle and  longterm effects of the 1968 moment, considering the ways in wich emancipatory impulses and projects were transformed, abbreviated, co-opted or extended globally in worker`s and students´ movement, feminist and quer activism and theory, Black revolutionary socialism, and the „long´68“ across a range of artistic practices.

with: Moira Fradinger. Yale University, New Haven, CT, John MacKay. Yale University, New Haven, CT, Rüdiger Campe. Yale University, New Haven, CT, Pedro Monaville. New York University, Abu Dhabi Campus, United ArabEmirates / Mariano Mestman. National University of Buenos Aires, Argentina./ Lessie Jo Frazier. Indiana University, Bloomington, Michigan./ Deborah Cohen. University of Missouri- St. Louis, Missouri./ Eugenia Allier Montañ. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico DF./  Mary Phillips. Lehman College, CUNY, New York./  Zachary Scarlett. Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana./ Samantha Christiansen, UCCS University of Colorado, Colorado Springs./ Timothy Brown. Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts/ Patricia Melzer. Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania./ Gerd Kroske. director; Berlin, Germany/

more information here: