Eva Könnemann is a film maker and will be scholar at the Graduate School UdK Berlin starting in June. She will show her film –ensemble- and present her new project with the aim to work together with fine art students on a film in collective authorship.
Eva Könnemann about her work:
I have made several films in the past years, where I explored artistic thinking and working processes of fine art, music and theatre. My working method is to create a fictional situation as a starting point which is then left to its own dynamics, to enable me to document what is happening. In my last film ‘ensemble’, which I will present June 1st at the UdK , I have put together a fictional theater ensemble of actors, musicians, dancers, and a director.  This group has worked together on the production of Büchner’s ‘Dantons Tod’ aiming at its staging in front of a real, paying audience at the end of the rehearsals and shootings. The interest of our cooperation was not so much the finished piece, as to much more the time of its creation: the roots, ideas, detours and conflicts, the failure and hopes of the protagonists and their attempts of reaching out: to become an ensemble or not.

With my new project BANDEN, I am looking for cooperation with art students to explore the possibilities of collective authorship together. BANDEN is supposed to offer the possibility of working on a film narration together as a group. How the collaboration can work is the central question of the project: How can we develop working methods and narration techniques which are not aiming for a compromise of our diverging interests, but enable the differing views to appear next to each other? Not only the concept and shootings should be equal group work but also the final step, the montage, should make an attempt at obtaining polyphony.

Each of the participants should be having access to the created film material. As a sole person, in teams or as the whole group, different positions can be taken and cutting versions can be created. This way, a conglomerate of single films will be made, where each production refers to the others on many levels and in their connections create a complex and broader story. A narration that especially in the recognition of its differences and the perseverance of the individual positions is giving an idea what fellowship can be today. Themes emerging from this could be i.e.: drafts of utopia, art education outside the system ‘academy’, why do we make art, how can one live of it and under what circumstances this can be done? What would it be like if these conditions could be shaped by oneself?

I see it as my work to organize the space as well as bringing the group together. All creative work steps will be taken together. In a workshop that will take place this summer, we will, as a group, which will bring together students of the Akademie der bildenden Künste München, der HbfK Hamburg and – hopefully- the UdK Berlin, begin with this conceptual work.

If you would like to know more about the project and its current developments, you can visit this link: http://banden.pbworks.com and request access through the according button. For any questions you can contact me directly as well: eva.koennemann_ @gmx.de. I will be happy to discuss my concept with you.

Film screening and project presentation: June 1st, 7 p.m. at the GraduateSchool for the Arts and the Sciences UdK Berlin, Einsteinufer 43-53, Hörsaal

Film: ENSEMBLE, 83′, 2010
with: Nikola Duric, Felix Kramer, Vanessa Stern, Michael Rastl, Charalambos Ganotis, Niels Bormann, Jacob Peter Kovner, Carsten “Erobique” Meyer, Jelka Plate, Inga Fridrihsone and Tom Stromberg.
Directing, camera, montage and production: Eva Könnemann
In cooperation with Kampnagel Hamburg
Co-Production ZDFtheaterkanal, Editing: Bettina Kasten

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/16954329