Christine Cynn: Shooting Ourselves

The Real of Reality | International Conference on Philosophy and
Film


Wed, 02.11.2016 – Sun, 06.11.2016
ZKM_Media Theater, ZKM_Lecture Hall, ZKM_Media Lounge, ZKM_Cube


Thirteen lives affected by the global arms trade converge in a
warehouse in Berlin. From around the world, they have come to
dramatize and record their personal stories for “Situation
Rooms,” a show by Berlin-based theatre legends, “Rimini
Protokoll.”


Director Christine Cynn continues the exploration of performance
and violence begun in “The Act of Killing” (which she
co-directed), juxtaposing dramatic re-enactments with unscripted
moments of private reflection and backstage conversation between
the protagonists, from heated exchanges on “collateral damage” to
banter about diplomatic picnics at Osama Bin Laden’s abandoned
compound.


Each protagonist acts out their story, filming from their own
perspective with a handheld device, creating an uncanny
environment where everyone is filming all the time. The set is
both real and surreal, a maze of factories, battlefields, and
boardrooms, where each room simulates a real place in the life of
each protagonist. Step through one door and you’re in a street
demonstration in Homs, Syria. The next door leads you to a
cubicle in San Diego where a drone operator drops bombs on
villagers in Waziristan, Pakistan. Go past the Russian engineer
in the Iranian nuclear lab and turn left to witness a nine-year
old boy in a classroom in Democratic Republic of Congo being
kidnapped to train as a child soldier. “Shooting Ourselves”
captures the idiosyncratic atmosphere behind the scenes of this
futuristic production, where total strangers from across the
globe—and the political spectrum—submit themselves to a
theatrical world order where all perspectives are equal.


International Conference on Philosophy and Film
Photography and film in particular paved the way for complex
philosophical questions regarding the nature of reality and its
mechanical reproduction. What does film reproduce and how can we
grasp this element, which has the transactive ability to form
reality although originating in reality? This shaping takes palce
through a complex interaction of image, action and narration and
tends to permeate reality completely. It is an inconspicuous
process that already affects our everyday life profoundly and is
based on a revolution of the real. What does film show? Do we
have access to reality that is not based on images or narrations?
And what can film and its analysis contribute to philosophical
debates on the real?
These are questions we are asking to engage in a dialogue between
philosophy and film. For five days, one hundred and fifty
philosophers, media scholars and filmmakers will connect
philosophical theory with cinematic practice and open up new
ideas and concepts. To accompany the program, there will be film
screenings of documentaries of the invited filmmakers.
The participation at the conference is also possible without the
presentation of a paper.
The conference will be held in English.