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Screening: "Gangster Project" & "Gangster Backstage" with Director Teboho Edkins in Attendance
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Event information
| Info | Tickets: 7,50€; Reduced: Berlinpass, 5er & 10er Karte, Gildepass, Heavy User Card |
| Address | Hackesche Höfe Kino | Rosenthaler Straße 40/41 10178 Berlin |
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In his (self)reflective and genres-crossing films, awards winning director Teboho Edkins tackles the deep, persistent divides in post-apartheid South Africa from the perspective of gangsters, a group at the very edge of society.
"The films of awards winning artist Teboho Edkins are minimal in their resources, but massive in their effect.“ (FAZ)
The screening will be followed by an open discussion with director Teboho Edkins as well as by a small reception.
Gangster ProjectIn Cape Town, South Africa, one of the world's most violent and unequal societies, a young white film student sets out with his cameraman, leaving the comfort of his protected neighbourhood. He wants to make a Gangster Film, with real gangsters. After a lengthy search for a suitably 'cinematic' character, he finds the perfect gang and settles into their everyday rhythm. The reality soon catches up and the claustrophobic gangster life doesn’t exactly fit to the expectations. 20 year after the first democratic election South Africa remains a deeply divided society, one in which dialogue and understanding seem impossible, out of reach. Gangster Project is a film between fiction and reality, where real truths are revealed and fiction stops being fiction, and when it stops mattering.
Trailer: http://youtu.be/G9MANoHvKYc
Gangsters Backstage
For Gangster Backstage, Edkins casted gangsters from Cape Town, who answered an advertisement in the newspaper stating “Looking for actors for a gangster film, experience of gangsterism appreciated.” As the film moves, strictly between a casting interview and scenes in an empty spartanic theatre, the sense of confinement within the space increases. Gangster Backstage is a fascinating exploration of the concepts of identity and acting and delivers incredible insights into the life of the gangsters, their fears and dreams.
„Intensively and by times cautiously, this film that transcends classical genres explores the complex reality of life at the edge, a life which faces the immediate expectation of death as a part of daily reality.“ (Jury of the 60th Short Film Days Oberhausen at the Award Ceremony of the Prize of the International Jury 2014, granted to Gangster Backstage)
Trailer: player.vimeo.com/video/79677425
Teboho Edkins
Teboho Edkins was born in the USA in 1980 and grew up mainly in Lesotho, South Africa but also in Germany. He studied Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, followed by a 2-year post-graduate residency at le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains in France and then a post-graduate film directing programme at the dffb film academy in Berlin. After a couple of Video-Art projects, he shot „Ask me, I'm Positive“ in 2004 as part of the „Steps for the Future“ Project of his father Don Edkins. With „Looking Good“, „True Love“ and „Thato“ he created further documentaries on HIV/AIDS. In 2006 he engaged in a series of mixed-genre films which explore the deep-rooted division in the South African society by portraying the socially marginalised group of gangsters. At the Locarno Film festival he was recently awarded with the Open Doors Postproduction prize for his film „Faraway Friends“ which is currently edited and finalised.
With the financial support by Aktion Afrika of the German Federal Foreign Office.
Media Partners: Africiné, SEV-Magazin, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Club der Freunde von RFI, Berlin Poche, rendez-vous-cine.de, Exberliner, Radio multicult.fm, Art Labour Archives, Planète Métis, Contemporary &