What does Filipino punk have to do with feminism and Shakespeare? How is cinephilia related to Brazilian telenovelas and fetishes? What does the freedom of art have to do with labour, sex and rock ‘n’ roll? How does cinema overcome the obstacles of history with new images? How can criticism and filmmaking know the past and yet be completely of the moment? Do audiences only believe what they see, and in cinema is the proof of the pudding truly in the eating? And finally: new and old discuss the revolt of the analogue in the digital present. The film programme of the 8th Critics’ Week is complete.

The Berlin Critics’ Week 2022 will take place from February 9 to 17. The film programme begins on Thursday, February 10, at Hackesche Höfe Kino.

Berlin Critics’ Week has announced its collaboration with directors Želimir Žilnik and Ute Adamczewski for a jointly curated program. They have chosen two films that will gain a new context at the Berlin Critics’ Week, freely curated without premiere constraints: The short experimental film Triple-Chaser was made in collaboration between the research collective Forensic Architecture and Laura Poitras’s production company Praxis Films, and it represents part of a broader political and legal work in which art is nonetheless more than a means to an end. In 2019, the group’s work in relation to the Whitney Biennial forced the resignation of Warren B. Kanders, at that time a board member of the Whitney Museum of American Art. We discuss the group’s practice in relation to the feature-length film Rights of Man by Spanish director Juan Rodrigáñez (The Money Complex), which uses a performance group, a circus tent, and 35 16mm reels to work in a completely improvisational manner, exploring human creativity. Under the title The Proof is in the Pudding, we position cinema at the nexus of fact, fiction, ethics and taste to explore in which sense a logic of proof matters in art, activism, and life.