Secrets
9 pm–2 am
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| Ticket for the Lange Nacht der Museen required |
| Ground Floor, Schlüter Courtyard |
| Belongs to: Lange Nacht der Museen Berlin |
Secrets belong to film like darkness belongs to the cinema auditorium: they can be discovered in the stories on the screen, in images, sounds, gestures, looks, landscapes…
At the Lange Nacht der Museen, we are showing a programme of current, very different short films from six countries in keeping with this year’s motto. The Witness Tree (Niranjan Raj Bhetwal) from Nepal is about a family secret, while in Printed Rainbow (Gitanjali Rao), an elderly woman from India provides insights into the secrets of her matchboxes. In Pássaro Memória (Leonardo Martinelli) from Brazil, a mysterious bird takes flight, while in Slow Shift (Shambhavi Kaul) langurs animate the mystical temple complexes of Hampi. The Nigerian film Rehearsal (Michael Omonua) is about bizarre religious secrets and the Kenyan film A Guide to Dining out in Nairobi (Hugh Mitton) is about a lucrative business secret. The films can be seen continuously from 9 pm to 2 am in the Schlüter Courtyard.
The films
Sabitri takes her son Sridhar, who is suffering from doubts about his identity, to an initiation ritual, but he runs away. The feeling that his mother is hiding the true circumstances of his father’s suicide is too strong. Sabitri wants to tell her child the truth, but also wants to protect him. However, her memories keep leading her back to the tree on which her husband hanged himself and to her father-in-law, who played a major role in this.
15 minutes
2022
Nepal
Nepali / English subtitles
Niranjan Raj Bhetwal
Niranjan Raj Bhetwal is a talented Nepali filmmaker from Kathmandu. As a filmmaker, Bhetwal’s passion lies in authentically portraying the Nepali voice and culture in his films. His work explores themes of family ties, magical realism and complex, diverse characters with strong spiritual values.
His most recent short film, “The Witness Tree”, was selected for the Busan International Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival and the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival.
He is also currently working on his debut feature film “Across the Rainbow Brigde”, which has already been selected for prestigious programs such as Open Doors – Locarno (2017), Cannes Cinefondation L’Atelier (2018), NFDC Film Bazar in 2019 and GMM LA Film Residency 2022.
An elderly woman and her cat travel to the colorful pictures on matchboxes. She has a whole collection of them and thus also a selection of adventures that she can experience with her cat during her fantasy journeys.
15 minutes
2006
India
without language
Gitanjali Rao (Direction)
Gitanjali emerged onto the international stage with the animated short film “Printed Rainbow“ which premièred and won three awards in Cannes Critic’s Week, 2006. The film made it to the OSCAR shortlist in 2008 and won 25 awards.
Her animated feature film “Bombay Rose” opened the Venice Critic’s Week 2019, followed by Toronto IFF, Busan IFF, Macao IFF, Marrakech IFF etc. Her début feature film has since been to over 50 international festivals in 2019-20 and won seven awards including the Silver Hugo at the 53rd Chicago Intl Film Fest and Silver Gateway at MAMI, Mumbai Intl. Film Fest. It is now available on Netflix.
For her body of work, she recently received the Pardo D’Or (Golden Pardo Locarno Kids Award) at 75th Locarno Film Festival 2022.
For more info – www.gitanjalirao.com
A bird called Memory has forgotten how to come back home. Lua, a trans woman, searches for Memory in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, but the city can be a hostile place.
15 minutes
2023
Brasil
Portuguese / English subtitles
Leonardo Martinelli
Leonardo Martinelli (1998) is a filmmaker from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His films have been selected at more than four hundred film festivals worldwide, including Locarno, San Sebastián, BFI London, Clermont-Ferrand, Palm Springs, Montreal and others. Through a vote among Brazilian film critics, Martinelli was listed as one of the Top 10 New Brazilian Filmmakers by Papo de Cinema. In 2021, his film “Fantasma Neon” won the Golden Leopard for Best International Short Film at the 74th Locarno Film Festival. He also holds a Master’s degree in Communication from PUC-Rio and is currently developing his first feature film, which was selected for the Locarno Residency.
Langurs contemplate their world as it changes around them. In “Slow Shift” humans, animals, music, and rock are entangled in dialogue. The film is shot in Hampi, India in the remains of a 14th century city that is also a World Heritage site in the state of Karnataka. This city, strewn with ancient ruins and massive boulders, some of the oldest in the world, is also said to be the mythic monkey kingdom of ancient lore. Currently, the site is overrun with langurs, a genus of “old world monkeys” native to the subcontinent. The film playfully interrogates various intersections between timescales (the present, ancient, and geological), real and mythic, lived and preserved (considering the world heritage site as a museum), and human and animal.
9 minutes
2023
India
without language
Shambhavi Kaul (director)
Shambhavi Kaul is an experimental filmmaker whose projects speculate on the possibilities for cinematic storytelling to build worlds. Her films make temporal and spatial demarcations porous by reorganizing cinematic space and layering historical, mythical, geological, ecological, and cultural timescales. Eventually, audiences consider their own time and space in relation to survival, the environment, and these filmic worlds. She has exhibited her work worldwide at film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, Berlinale, New York, Rotterdam, Edinburgh and London film festivals, Oberhausen, and Experimenta Bangalore among others. She has presented her work at museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate, London. She has had two solo gallery shows at Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai. She was born in Jodhpur India, and lives in the United States where she is a professor at Duke University.
How do you stage a miracle healing? Protagonists are castand different variations are tried out, improved anddiscarded. Boundaries dissolve between church and theatre, faith and credibility.
9 minutes
2023
India
without language
Michael Omonua
Michael Omonua is a film director andscreenwriter based in Lagos Nigeria. Hegraduated from the film school UCA Farnham and has since gone on to complete several short films and one feature. His films have screened at many prestigiousFestivals such as Berlinale, International FilmFestival Rotterdam, BFI London Film Festivaland Encounters.
Juma, a modest man in his forties, works as an askari (security guard) in the home of a wealthy Kenyan businessman in Nairobi. One morning, as his boss hurries off to work, he slips Juma a tip. When he unwraps the bill, expecting the usual 100 Kenyan shillings, he sees a crisp 10 US dollar bill instead. He can hardly believe his luck. For Juma, this is an incomprehensibly large sum of money and he thinks about what he could do with it. In the end, he decides to treat himself in a fine hotel restaurant and can hardly believe that in the end the money is not enough and he is arrested.
11 minutes
2021
Kenya
English
Hugh Mitton (director)
Hugh grew up in the South Island of New Zealand, with no television and not a whole lot to do in his hometown. After discovering the escapism of cinema, he became obsessed with it. He started making films for fun with friends and then began entering online video contests, which he started winning. This in turn got him a foot in the door at advertising agencies and production companies all around the world. He continues to travel and work in the advertising industry.
Writer, director: A Guide to Dining Out In Nairobi (2021)
Co-director, editor: Little Messi (2021) (documentary short)
Co-director, editor: The Ronaldo-over (2018) (documentary short)