About to open for its 66th edition, DOK Leipzig is the word’s longest-running documentary film festival. Inaugurated in 1955, it has come a long way since surviving a shaky birth under East Germany’s wary, censorious Communist regime. Rebranded multiple times over the decades, this annual cinematic Oktoberfest is now a buzzy industry meeting point and highly regarded platform for animation, shorts and non-fiction cinema, with a strong focus on politically engaged subjects past and present. Previously head of the Forum section at the Berlinale, Christoph Terhechte took over as DOK Leipzig’s artistic director in 2019. Here he speaks to The Film Verdict about the festival’s past, present and future.
The Film Verdict: DOK Leipzig is the world’s longest-running documentary festival. Does this mean you feel the heavy burden of history on your shoulders?
CT: “No, it’s more like a solid basis to build on. But it does come with its own responsibilities. We have to take the history of the festival into account all the times. We’re doing so by asking questions to the history of the festival, mostly through the retrospective programs, but also by re-examining what the festival used to be about and how to build upon that. The core value of the festival in the 1960s and 1970s officially was ‘peace’. But peace from the GDR standpoint meant something different from what, say, West Germany considered a peaceful situation. Now, we can all subscribe to the value of peace, but there are others that were more in the background during GDR times that came into the foreground in the 1990s, namely democracy and human rights. Lately, also, diversity has become more and more important as a value. So yeah, we are re-evaluating that. But more precisely with the retrospective, we are also always looking back at the festival history and examining how the festival positioned itself. This year’s retrospective is about the revolts in the Soviet sphere beginning in 1953 in Berlin and reaching to the early 1990s in the Baltic states. And also reminding people of a few events that have been more or less forgotten, like the revolt in Poznan in 1956, which was overshadowed by Budapest of course.”
“We are also looking at films that could have played Doc Leipzig at the time but didn’t. For example, in 1968, Santiago Alvarez brought a newsreel from Cuba where you hear Fidel Castro commenting on the events of Prague. And even though he’s not overly critical, just the fact that he’s talking about it was too much for the festival direction in 1968. So the film was not shown, even though Santiago Alvarez was a welcome guest to many festival editions. Just a small examples of how we look back at festival history. Another interesting thing that in the 1980s, during the Solidarity movement in Poland, suddenly this Socialist government in Poland started sending films to Leipzig that were about an independent union. And that’s something Leipzig did not find all too amusing at the time, so they changed their guidelines, they actually did not allow the ‘brother countries’ to automatically just send films and they would just put them in the program. So they started filtering. There’s a lot to examine in the history of the festival from different angles.”
Films about Cold War geopolitics have long been central to DOK Leipzig, have they become more timely in the light of resurgent Russian imperialism and war in Ukraine?
“Of course, this is of high value today when we look at the new relations between Moscow and what used to be its influence sphere. Not just former Soviet republics but also countries that were officially independent then, but that are defining themselves very differently in relation to Moscow nowadays. There are several films in the program that do that. Self-Portrait Along The Borderline is a Georgian film about Abkhazia, which basically is too small for the world to have had the same outcry against the war against Ukraine, but what happened to Abkhazia was not so different from what the Russians intended with Ukraine. There is a film about the protests in Belarus. There is an Estonian documentary about the Russian opposition in Yekaterinburg. We have lots of films that look at this power struggle. And of course we have many films about the war in Ukraine, or about Ukrainians in exile. So it all comes together in this edition, it’s a very political edition, one where geopolitics actually play an important role.”
How far does the festival’s duty extend to oppressed or exiled film-makers. Besides screening their work, can you help them in a more concrete ways?
“The festival is limited in what we can do to actually help anyone’s situation. But what we can facilitate is an understanding. I’m well aware there are still very different positions about what that understanding could be, and how to define what’s happening in the world. For example, just now on social media, there’s some discussion about a ‘Russian’ film, as they say, that we have in our program. It’s not a Russian film, actually. It’s a film made by a Russian film-maker who left the country as soon as the full scale invasion started. To me, that’s like Fritz Lang leaving Germany after Goebbels offered him to become head of film, taking the next plane to Hollywood. At that point, I would not have considered him a representative of the fascist German government. But there are lots of Ukrainians now who say you cannot possibly show a Russian filmmaker’s work unless that person clearly speaks out against the war in Ukraine and against Putin. I happen to disagree. I’m not in favour of this kind of identity politics, where the passport you were born with determines what you can do or say or whether you’re considered a valid artist.”
You must have some red lines about what films you would refuse to program?
“Yes, we’re not showing Russian films. We’re not showing films produced by the state of Russia. And I don’t think you could possibly make meaningful films there without being heavily censored and therefore not being able to send them to a festival. So there are no Russian films in our program, but there are people who were born in Russia as guests, and I welcome them.”
How do you deal with controversial film-makers, Ulrich Seidl for example? Certain directors who have attracted scandal are still welcomed at many festivals…
“The people we’re probably thinking of are all fiction film-makers. I’m not too familiar with the Ulrich Seidl case. If there was a new film, I would definitely have to dig deeper and find out what the accusations actually are. It’s very easy these days to make accusations, they’re not necessarily justified. So it does take a lot of effort to find your own position. But clearly there are red lines. There are things you should not do, whether you’re a documentary or fiction film-maker, within the scope of your work. And there are things people have done outside their field of work that are also inexcusable. Personally I still would watch Polanski’s early films, which I think are great, but that does not mean I would organise a Roman Polanski retrospective.”
DOK Leipzig also looks into Germany’s own colonial history this year, with the world premiere of Togoland Projections by Jürgen Ellinghaus plus the talk event Sensitivity Screening – Unlearning the Past. Is part of your mission to try and “decolonise” cinema?
“What does that even mean, decolonise cinema? I have a really hard time with this kind of vocabulary. The question is what should we do with the images and the artifacts from colonialism? Who should do something with them and whom should they address? Other people have different opinions, but I think it is super important to look at whatever material there is and not just discard it because it’s uncomfortable. I don’t think a festival is there to create comfort, it’s there to create progress, to make sure certain things we didn’t bother about in the past become bothersome. We cannot undo the past. The past is the past. It happened. Germany was a colonial power and committed horrendous crimes. Colonialism is awful, but I don’t want to draw a line there and say, okay, now it’s dealt with, we never look at it again. We have to continue examining the past, otherwise we’re becoming dumb, and we’ll repeat it.”
DOK Leipzig has a large, busy industry component. How do you balance commerce and art?
“It’s not like the automobile industry! We’re still talking about handmade films, and documentary films are even more handmade than most fiction films. But yes, there is an industry side to the festival, and it’s super-important because we depend on the industry and the industry depends on people who facilitate their access to audiences. So I think it is of mutual benefit. The balance between commerce and art? Of course you need to make films that speak to audiences. The question is, which audience do you want to reach? Do you want to reach an extremely broad audience, or do you have a specific way of making films, you are aware the audience is small but they will always enter into a dialogue with what you are doing? This festival is about all of that, from the Camera Lucida program, where we have highly artistic documentaries that we’re aware cannot reach huge audiences, to the Audience Competition, which has some award-winning or super-popular films from other festivals. I think we have the whole reach in our program, broad enough to really bridge the art world and the commercial world.”
With the festival about to open, what personal highlights you are looking forward to?
“First of all, I’m looking forward to meeting some of the people that should have come to the festival during COVID and couldn’t! Like Lina Soualem, who should have come with the film about her father, which was in competition three years ago. Now she’s coming with Bye Bye Tiberias, the film about her mother Haim Abbas. That’s a beautiful film, one of my favourites. Another one is Asmae El Moudir ‘s The Mother of All Lies, a film that I adore. On the other hand, some of my favourites are also in the Camera Lucida program. I just like their playfulness. Matthew Lancit’s Play Dead!, which is actually a world premiere. Or Jim Finn, who was also in competition three years ago but couldn’t come because of COVID, he is bringing The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology. The longest title here, and the film is just as wild as this title. I’m looking forward to seeing how audiences enjoy that.”
“The Nikolaus Geyrhalter film is a real event too, The Standstill. It’s an example of a film that, two years ago, when it was actually shot, would have completely divided audiences because we were all extremely partisan about the lockdowns and wearing masks and vaccinations and so on. Now that a certain time has passed, I think the time is ripe for a film like that, to really rethink and reevaluate what has happened, what was wrong, what was right, to discuss all of this in a very calm way. I find Guy Halder’s films very calming because his images have a grand scale that really gives you room to think and breathe and relax.”
One magical aspect of DOK Leipzig is the free public screenings inside the city’s main train station, a fantastic space to see films, almost randomly. Will they happen again this year?
“Yes. And since the festival is one day longer this year, we are opening on a Sunday, it means we have one more screening. It’s great because this is really where the festival embraces the audiences, even those that are not among the happy few that already know how the festival works and how to navigate it. I’m very optimistic that people who stumble into a screening there by accident might get new ideas about documentaries, and maybe find their way into our regular audiences.”
The Berlinale, Germany’s biggest film festival, is currently suffering serious budget cuts. Does that affect the general festival landscape? Will it impact on DOK Leipzig?
“Not yet. I think the Berlinale situation is special. It costs 10 times more than Leipzig. It’s huge, you can’t directly compare it. But what’s comparable is that we all suffer from inflation and the rents of cinemas and hotel rooms and travel and whatever services you buy. Everything has become so much more expensive, so of course festivals suffer from this, because we don’t automatically get a raise in funding when this happens. So we’re struggling. We can’t afford certain things, like our opening screening happens in a smaller venue this year because we need to save here and there. But it’s not yet something that is making our work impossible.”
