Easterndaze x Berlin: opening screening at Lichtblick Kino / Wednesday, 28.09.2016

This month, Lichtblick Kino is hosting the first of the opening events for the concert and film screening series Easterndaze × Berlin: DIY Music Topographies. The festival is a continuation of ‘Easterndaze: DIY Music Topographies’, an exhibition and event series with alternative and underground musicmakers organized for the OFF Biennale Budapest in 2015.

The concert series takes place at silent green Kulturquartier, a new cultural space situated in the former crematorium Wedding. Documentary films linked to the musical acts and exploring DIY music culture in various Eastern European cities and Berlin are screening at Lichtblick Kino. The collectives will also exhibit artifacts of their unique visual identities such as flyers, covers, and video works.

A screening of 31 Endings / 31 Beginnings (CZ 2011), the film debut of the artist collective Rafani, opens the film program on September 28, 8 p.m., at Lichtblick Kino. The documentary is both an introduction to alternative art and music scenes in Prague and a meditation about the role of culture between the urban periphery and center.

Twenty-one notables mainly from the fields of contemporary art, noise music, or political activism (e.g., Vladimír Skrepl, Birds Built Nests Underground, Ondřej Slačálek, and others) make their appearance in the film. It has the form of a cinematic treatise. Individual parts are ordered in a numerical sequence one after another. Their succession gives rise to a metaphorical movement, which can be described as a movement from the city periphery to the city center or a direction towards power and consciousness. Rafani will be present for a Q&A at the screening.

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Brought to you by the blog Easterndaze, Easterndaze × Berlin brings together the most interesting and idiosyncratic collectives and cultural activists from Central/Eastern Europe and Berlin, such as Future Nuggets (Bucharest), Christoph de Babalon (Berlin), WIDT (Warsaw), Farbwechsel (Budapest), KETEV (Berlin), Praxis (Berlin), and many others. The festival presents music collectives from Budapest, Bucharest, Prague, and Warsaw, and pairs each of them with groups from Berlin’s diverse DIY scenes.

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Easterndaze is a platform for up-and-coming independent Eastern European arts and music scenes. The blog explores and maps local DIY scenes operating in a digital realm, introduces the creative personalities and collectives behind them, and provides context.