International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
With Hito Steyerl, Guest of Honor
Frederiksplein 52
1017 XN Amsterdam
November 17 – 28, 2021
www.idfa.nl

Special events:
November 19, 2:30–4:35 pm – Hito Steyerl: The Empty Center + Master Talk – Tickets
November 20, 8:30–10 pm – IDFA Dialogue: Hito Steyerl and her Top 10 – Tickets

Hito Steyerl who is Guest of Honor of this year's International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam curated a Top 10 program. Key to apprehending her own seismic body of work, Steyerl’s selection presents a lineup of dissident filmmakers who, each in their own way, have radically shaped the art of political documentary cinema.

Selected films include Videograms of a Revolution, the cult masterpiece by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, in a nod to Steyerl’s long-held admiration of Farocki, who she has written about, exhibited with, and studied under at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Unearthing hidden stories of Japanese activism, the rare Yama: Attack to Attack will be screened on 16 mm, charting the consecutive assassination of the film’s directors, Mitsuo Sato and Kyoichi Yamaoka, as they document the conditions of local workers.

Germane to Steyerl’s own artistic methodology, several titles reimagine notions of truth and fiction, as seen in Stories of Destroyed Cities by the Rojava Film Commune, which sensitively illuminates the Kurdish cause—a returning subject in Steyerl’s writings. The fluidity of the real is again reimagined in Kenedi Goes Back Home, one of two selected films by Yugoslav Black Wave icon Želimir Žilnik, as well as in Peter Watkins’ acclaimed epic La Commune (Paris, 1871), remastered for cinema release under Watkins’ supervision.

Dissident filmmaking takes the form of avant-garde feminist art with titles such as Barbara Hammer’s Nitrate Kisses and Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen. Still elsewhere in the selection, Steyerl presents a mainstay of documentary journalism with Laura Poitras’ Oscar-winning Edward Snowden film Citizenfour.

In accompaniment of her Top 10, IDFA is pleased to present an extensive Filmmaker Talk with Steyerl in Amsterdam’s historic Tuschinski 1 cinema. During the festival, Steyerl will also moderate a special panel discussion with several filmmakers from her selection.

For a full program please visit the IDFA's website.