About
– Outstanding Artist Award –
„ …in this case the name ‚Lab‘ says it all: it is the professionally skilled, and excitingly inquisitive way of experimenting with different approaches to documentary filmmaking that has led Ascan Breuer to create outstanding films. His capability to expertly apply various aesthetical means while keeping exploring the boundaries of documentary work in a self-reflecting way is highly appreciated.“
Since 2005, DOKUMENTARISCHES LABOR („Documentary Lab“) promotes and encourages free and innovative documentary art, investigation and production – beyond conventions, doctrines and dogmas. It was founded and is currently coordinated by filmmaker Ascan Breuer.
Production house
As a result award-winning films have been created that were performed on events like the Berlinale or the Cannes Film Festival, as well as at art space like the MoMA New York, the Thessaloniki Biennale, Centre Pompidou, Anthology Film Archives New York, the National Art Galleries in Jakarta and Taipeh, Berlinische Galerie or German Film Museum in Frankfurt. Also the works have been shown in towns and villages all around Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, and Thailand…
In addition to our commitment as a production house to create various kinds of documentary formats we also like to engage in interesting projects on behalf of partners.
EXCURSION: CURRENT DOCUMENTARY PROJECT
Developing the multimedia documentary project Starless in Stalingrad.
Starting in June, 2017 through to February, 2018 we organized a so-called #realtimetravel (German: #Echtzeitreise) which became the starting point of the project. On that occasion all of the 100 letters Max Breuer had written to his wife were successively released on social media.
As a front-line soldier in the months-long „Battle of Stalingrad“ those letters obviously had become instrumental for him to keep his wife informed about the state of affairs as it evolved day by day. Corresponding to the concept of the interactive #realtimetravel as it had been conceived for the project the letters were released online to the day exactly 75 years after they had been posted.
Thus more than 7000 people were able to follow the time travel based on hard facts of the primary source.Subsequently audiovisual investigations were made on site (May and June, 2018). We currently present results of this expedition to the public as an ongoing photo blog (see here: Blog, Facebook, Instagram).
The letters have also been published as ebook (download as Kindle and ePUB).
Our work in progress is the developing of documentary formats, among others in the context of the Berlinale Talents in February 2019.
More information about the project here.
Mediacy
Another purpose of the lab is to organize events dedicated to promoting documentary cinematic art like, for example, the annual UNDOX-Film Festival at Belvedere 21 – Museum of Contemporary Art Vienna, which serves as a panel for innovative documentary art.
Science & Teaching
We also engage in cinematic science, offer workshops and lectures, and supervise pedagogical projects in the field of media.
WE DO DOC
DIFFERENTLY
