Self Erasure II — Fine Editing and Completion

Personal Film, Archives and Situational Practices — Critical Feedback, Discussion, Debate, Seminar with Presentation during Berlinale

The seminar picks up directly where last semester left off (Summer Semester Seminar by Alisa Berger „Self Erasure — Personal Film and Archives as a Starting Point for Situational and Performative Film Practices“). It is aimed primarily at participants who have already created first filmic sketches and dossiers during the first block, have continued working since then on their projects, and want to attempt finalising them into a presentable state. At the core of the seminar is a collective engagement with the emerged projects. In the form of collective colloquia/critique sessions, we will give in-depth constructive feedback to work towards finalising the projects. The colloquia themselves will be reflected upon. We will practice exercising and receiving (or choosing not to receive) critique. We won't

use expressions like „I liked something because...“, instead we will attempt to train ourselves to observe and articulate which formal aspects we recognise, what links form, with which methods something is built, and how form follows content or conversely content follows form. Or how the two resist each other.

We want to understand how each of us works and learn from one another: which tools and skills we can steal and rethink, question and destroy, from each other and from the so-called masters. The seminar is about sharpening, leaving things out, condensing, acknowledging discomfort as well as the courage it takes when finishing a film.

Focus Areas

- Composition and pause. How does the work breathe? Where does it leave room? Where does it condense? The dramaturgy of gaps.

- Historical and political contextualisation. The first session of the seminar last semester dug deep into the personal. A work doesn't always have to show everything, but a filmmaker, an artist, must have asked themselves all the questions beforehand and done the research in order to lift the work from the personal into the universal.

- References. Particular attention will be given to referenced films. Each participant will bring (at least) one reference work (or a key scene), which we would analyse together to see how the student can take something from their idol, and how we can all learn from the great masters. Watching, stealing, embracing or pushing away from the references, while keeping a concrete eye on one's own work.

Presentation / Discussion

The finished works will be shown in a curated context, most likely as a curated cinema evening with a conversation (hopefully with an external film scholar or similar) in a cinema (currently in discussion: Sinema Transtopia, additionally Kunsthaus Essen). The exact format (screening, exhibition, programme) will be developed together.

Prerequisites for participation are either active involvement in the first Self Erasure Seminar in the summer semester, along with a continuously updated dossier with current project status and timeline, and ideally a new version of the project (further developed, ideally close to completion) at the start of the seminar.

For students interested in the seminar who did not attend the first one, a project dossier (synopsis, information, artistic statement or director's statement, references, timeline) and a rough cut would be required. Both should be submitted two weeks before the seminar begins; if anything is unclear, example documents can be requested in advance by email.

Blockseminar

Dates and hours: Always full days (5h plus lunch break)

25.11.2026 - in Kiel at Muthesius - Seminar room with projection possibility

26.11.2026 - in Kiel at Muthesius - Editing Rooms

27.11.2026 - in Kiel at Muthesius - Editing Rooms and Seminar room

13.01.2027 - Online Colloquium (Final Cut Film edits to be sent 1week before the Meeting so everyone Watches before and we can discuss them) (Date flexibel)

TBA between 10-20 February presentation with discussion at Sinema Transtopia in Wedding Berlin (around 18Uhr)

Max. 12 Teilnehmer*innen. “Self Erasure I” - Teilnehmer*innen  haben Vorrang.

Für die Teilnahme bitte diesem Workspace beitreten.