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HANDBOOK

Pavel Mozhar
Germany/Belarus, 2021
26 min.

Using personal testimonies, Pavel Mozhar creates a minute reenactment of the methods that were used to torture Belorussian dissidents arrested during the massive protests that took place in August 2020 against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.

Drawing on reconstructions and utilitarian imagery, Pavel Mozhar compiles a manual of the torture methods used against Belarusian anti-Lukashenko protesters in 2020. In a process deeply influenced by the methods of Harun Farocki, most notably Inextinguishable Fire (1969), we see images of bodies subjected to torture, terror, pain, and the processuality/procedurality of these techniques – and their fictional, narratively compressed nature potentiates another image, one that is abstract: that of their real intensity, which recomposes itself in the viewer’s inner mind. Working and regarding from a distance, Mozhar transforms the familiar space of the bedroom into a potential prison, the space of imagination into one of horror. (Flavia Dima)

Date and Location

29th of September, 18:30, Cinema Elvire Popesco

Tickets

Premii și festivaluri

Pavel Mozhar

Pavel Mozhar was born in 1987 in Minsk and has lived in and around Berlin since the age of ten. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy & Economics at the University of Bayreuth (2009-2012). During this time, he was involved in student film projects and attended seminars at the Media Studies faculty. After graduation he had various internships and jobs in the film industry. In 2015 he started his Master’s degree in Directing at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, majoring in documentary forms. Mozhar’s most recent work is Handbook, a short documentary about the protests in Belarus in August 2020.

  • Technical sheet
  • SCREENPLAY: Pavel Mozhar
  • PRODUCER: Kolja Wolle, Pavel Mozhar
  • CINEMATOGRAPHER: Adam Graf, Jonas Römmig
  • SOUND RECORDING: Joscha Eickel
  • SOUND DESIGN: Ganna Gryniva
  • VOICE RECORDING: Jack Jacks
  • EDITING: Florian Seufert, Pavel Mozhar
  • PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Frederike Blume
  • ANIMATION: Laura Därr

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