Program 11:
Saturday, December 06, 2025
4:00 PM
Goethe Institut, Boston
Admission: FREE with RSVP

Goethe Institut Boston
170 Beacon St, Boston

Hugs & Kisses
- Marc Richter
10:48, Digital, Color, 2025, Germany

Ecstasie - Lily Baldwin
13', Digital, color, 2025, Germany

Sandia - Mélissa Faivre
7:52, Digital, Color, 2024

Evening Rounds (Avondronde)
- Laura Heinig
6', Digital, color, 2025, Germany & Netherlands

Trace of a Silent Tear - alive duo
15, Digital, Color, 2024, Germany & Finland

i.a. (inter alia)
- Sidney Mandros
21', Digital, color, 2025, Germany

Total: 75:00

Hugs & Kisses
- Marc Richter
10:48, Digital, Color, 2025, Germany

A film about men. And hugs. And kisses. A new film by Marc Richter aka Neue Deutsche Kunst who's been working tirelessly on arcane new films since winning the MuVi-Award at renowned Shortfilmfestival Oberhausen, turning so-called artificial intelligence on its head.
Richter's video works are highly influenced by the writings of feminist writer Angela Carter (specifically "The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman") hallucinating a world of human snails and snail-like humans, human mushrooms and mushrooms with human skin, hermaphrodites and men without genitals…..chimeric protagonists performing useless, pointless, sisyphean tasks.

Under the Neue Deutsche Kunst alias Marc Richter (also known for his musical project Black To Comm) is testing the boundaries of AI software by overloading it with surreal and confusing tasks and information (all within a visual framework of his own making). The AI is trying to make sense of these almost poetic texts by hallucinating lysergic artworks and films.
Richter's visual works are as much influenced by German folklore and fairytales as well as actionist performance, psychedelic art and the writings of Angela Carter and JG Ballard. In 2024 he has won the MuVi Award at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

Ecstasie - Lily Baldwin
13', Digital, color, 2025, Germany

A portrait of queer ecstasy that challenges the notion of a neutral body. Through an intimate dialogue between artist Liz Rosenfeld and director Lily Baldwin, Ecstasie explores the privilege and responsibility of physical presence and consensual intimacy, prompting viewers to reconsider the power dynamics inherent in our role as observers.
Executive producer Sam Feder (Disclosure) encapsulates the film as "an important and aesthetically beautiful film that captures a queer body in ways we rarely see.”

Lily Baldwin is a Peabody Award-nominated artist, filmmaker, and dancer whose interdisciplinary practice hunts for truth that’s only found in the body. Through disciplined experimentation that investigates the peripheries of social life, Baldwin’s oeuvre is a diverse collection of genre mashups and hybrid forms that invite viewers to trust in the unknown. Baldwin’s psychological thriller SWALLOWED garnered acclaim from The New York Times for its “visceral power similar to Cronenberg’s.” Her upcoming feature documentary CHRONICLE OF HIP details her journey with a rare illness and societal neglect of women's pain. Baldwin’s works have screened at the Sundance, Venice, SXSW, and Berlinale festivals among others, and exhibited at institutions such as Carnegie Hall, the Victoria and Albert Museum, MoMA Fort Worth, and Detroit Institute of the Arts. In the field of performance, she’s collaborated with luminaries such as Misty Copeland, David Byrne, and Trisha Brown.

Sandia - Mélissa Faivre
7:52, Digital, Color, 2024

Sandia is an exploration of the multiple facets of the Sandia mountain range located in New Mexico. It reveals the mountain’s cold and hostile peaks and slopes in contrast to the warm and arid desert at its base. Aesthetically, the digital image is altered and mystified by techniques reappropriated from the tradition of experimental films, such as frame by frame printing, painting, collage and scratching.

Mélissa Faivre, born 1989 in France, is an experimental video artist based in Berlin. Her rhythmic and mesmerizing work seeks to provoke questions on the nature of perception. The images she creates present blended and distorted realities that test the temporal and spatial coordinates foundational to the perceptive experience.

Evening Rounds(Avondronde)
- Laura Heinig

6', Digital, color, 2025, Germany & Netherlands

A woman walks through the hallways of a seemingly abandoned nursing home. A place where she once worked, but never wanted to live. She finds an old care robot, left in an empty room. What is it like to no longer be needed? And who will take care of them?

Laura Heinig (* 1988 in Wiesbaden) is a filmmaker based at the border between Germany and the Netherlands. Her recent work I FEEL YOUR SILENCE has been shown at film film festivals Europe-wide. At SHORTS Offenburg it won the award for “Best Documentary”. Laura’s view is shaped by her study background in Cultural Studies and Anthropology, which she studied in Frankfurt (Oder), Santiago de Chile and the Netherlands. And of course the people she met during those studies, human rights activism and in cultural collectives. Since 2019, she is part of the documentary directing class at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.

Trace of a Silent Tear - alive duo
15, Digital, Color, 2024, Germany & Finland

Structured as a string of returns before parting, the film explores Karelian ritual culture, transitional states, and farewell rites. Created during a residency in a small Finnish town shortly after the filmmakers left Russia in 2022, it reflects on displacement, silence, and invisibility. Shot on 16mm film over 12 days, it captures 24 seconds of footage and 360 landscape photos each day. Inspired by the book Eternal Sorrow on Karelian lamentation traditions, the artists asked each other questions from ancient texts. Their answers remained unspoken, concealed behind the camera.

alive duo is a collaborative artistic partnership of Alena Starostina and Ivan Nikolaev, focusing on performative and visual art. We were both born in Saint Petersburg. In 2007, we graduated from the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts with a Master’s degree. In 2010, we co-founded the performative collective “theatre post”, which, over the next ten years, became one of the leading representatives of experimental theater in Russia. We worked on plays by contemporary playwrights and also created our own original productions. A significant milestone in our artistic development was our work with pieces by John Cage, Alvin Lucier, and Belarusian playwright Pavel Pryazhko. We have participated in numerous regional and international festivals, including Golden Mask, Territory, NET, Theatre Confrontations, TEART, Yes Yes Yes, Chaos, Karussell, Teatrtogo, and The Access Point. In 2022, we emigrated to Germany, where we founded “aliveduo”, now based in Dresden, and continued to develop our artistic practice.

i.a. (inter alia) - Sidney Mandros & GC M. Sandoval

21', Digital, color, 2025, Germany

Emilia Galotti is found the day after being predatorily followed. Claudia and Orsina gather with her. The three women must write a letter whose purpose remains unclear. Their conversation circles uncertainly, interrupted only by the changing light. What has happened refuses to be told. Their wills collide as they struggle with the uncertain purpose of their gathering, recognizing that words alone might not clarify their intentions. Between strategy and refusal, there is only passage. Freely adapted from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Emilia Galotti.

Sidney Mandros (b. 1998, Wyoming) is a filmmaker and cinematographer. Her work moves between observation and construction, shaping time, image, and sound with care. Influenced by the vast, layered histories of American landscapes, she treats the natural world as an active presence rather than a setting. She studied filmmaking at Catalyst Institute in Berlin, refining a language of rhythm, silence, and presence. Her films engage with the sensing of time and space, where the planet and the impersonal reside. In 2024, she co-founded LAC Films with GC M. Sandoval.

GC M. Sandoval (b. 1991, Peru) is a filmmaker and colorist based in Berlin. They studied Communications at the University of Lima, where they worked in environmental history, semiotics, and digital media. After having lived and worked in London, Los Angeles and Berlin, they left a PhD in Film and Digital Media to focus on filmmaking. Working in digital film, they approach their work as distillation, where structure and duration shape what remains. In 2024, they co-founded LAC Films with Sidney Mandros.