Sunday, 11 October 2026 at 7 pm
Critical Dramaturgy presents three films by Anna Zett, followed by a conversation with the author, organised by Kurziv and SPID. Moderated by Barbara Gregov. Admission is free.
Now vs Now vs Now, dir. Anna Zett, 2012, 5'35"
Santiago Álvarez's short agitprop film Now! and Mikhail Romm's documentary The Ordinary Fascism were shown at the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival in 1965.
Now vs Now vs Now once again brings together these two milestones in the production of political film, applying the revolutionary spirit of Now! to documentary footage of post-war communism. What happens to the present moment when the people whose liberation is at stake are trapped in photographs because they have been killed?
The film was produced as part of the research project ‘Now! extended’ led by Prof. Hito Steyerl at the University of Berlin, within the Berlin Institute for Film and Video Art ‘Living Archive’.
Afraid doesn't exist (Es gibt keine Angst), dir. Anna Zett, 2023, 31'29''
Anna Zett collages materials from the Berlin archive of the DDR resistance into a flickering and poetic short thriller. Today, the defunct police state becomes possible to experience simultaneously as a source of hazy horror and a place for intimate political action.
This Unwieldy Object: A Modern Research Drama, dir. Anna Zett, 2014, 47'
On a journey through the baked heart of the USA, the researcher intends to establish physical contact with fantasy, crossing the mythical non-place between East and West, the masculine and the feminine, the material and the projected, memory and dinosaurs. Meeting fossil traders, sculptors and scientists on both coasts of America, the researcher attempts to reconstruct the story of extinction, the story of progress. The story ends in the middle, in Rapid City, South Dakota, at the bottom of an imported piece of the Berlin Wall. But the journey continues.
Note: The films are shown with English subtitles. After the screening, there will be a discussion with the filmmaker.
Anna Zett is an artist and writer born in Leipzig, based in Berlin. Through various media, they work as a witness, a facilitator and a performer. Anna Zett's practice is rooted in dissident and queer perspectives, shaped by their theoretical training (a master's degree in anthropology, philosophy and gender studies) and experience in filmmaking, dance and group analysis. Through her artistic practice, Zett challenges repressive structures and calls for the creation of new, living connections with that which cannot be contained.
The result of this work is videos, audio works, tangible installations, analytical texts and participatory performance formats. Since the premiere of her first film in 2014, Anna Zett's work has been presented in international contexts of art, film, research, literature and performance — in cultural institutions as well as in DIY spaces such as museums, theatres, festivals and conferences. Zett is the author of two experimental radio plays for German public radio, as well as the collection of literary texts Artificial Gut Feeling (Divided Publishing, 2019). Since 2024, they have been teaching media art in the performance class at the Academy of Visual Arts / HGB Leipzig.