Generationen von Bildern / 16mm / Sound / 2025 / 103min
"Wir singen ein Schlaflied, nicht um es in den Schlaf zu wiegen,
dieses riesige Baby aus Eisen und Beton.
Wir singen ein Schlaflied, damit es stärker wird
und die Revolution unaufhaltsam voranschreiten kann."
Ein Gedicht als Weckruf zur Revolution, oder doch ein regimetreues Schlaflied? GENERATIONEN VON BILDERN unternimmt eine Spurensuche durch die tiefgreifenden Transformationsprozesse albanischer Geschichte.
In den Archiven, vergessenen Orten und Erinnerungen verschiedener Generationen werden Brüche und Kontinuitäten sichtbar, die der Übergang von der kommunistischen Diktatur in die kapitalistische Demokratie hinterlassen hat. GENERATIONEN VON BILDERN findet dabei eine eigene Sprache Regimebilder und Bilderregime zu untersuchen. Es ist die Sprache der Poesie, die sich der Logik und Linearität herkömmlicher Geschichtsschreibung verweigert, Widersprüchliches zulässt und sich als Gedanke ebenso wie als Handlung ausdrückt. Sie ermöglicht es, Bilder nicht nur zu betrachten, sondern selbst sprechen zu lassen, neue Bedeutungen zu finden und dahinterliegende Erzählungen hervorzubringen. So formen sich Generationen von Bildern zu einem vielschichtigen und vielstimmigen Geschichtsbild, das oft weniger über Vergangenheit als vielmehr über ein ambivalentes Verhältnis zu ihr erzählt und aufzeigt, wie tief die Spuren der Geschichte in das Gewebe der Gegenwart eingeschrieben sind.
"We sing a lullaby, not to lull to sleep,
this giant baby of iron and concrete.
We sing a lullaby so it grows stronger and upon it,
incessantly the revolution can walk."
A poem as a wake-up call for revolution, or rather a regime-compliant lullaby? GENERATIONS OF IMAGES embarks on a search for traces through the profound transformation processes of Albanian history. In the archives, forgotten places, and memories of different generations, ruptures and continuities become visible, left behind by the transition from communist dictatorship to capitalist democracy. GENERATIONS OF IMAGES finds its own language to analyse regime images and image regimes. It is the language of poetry that rejects the logic and linearity of conventional historiography, allows for contradictions and expresses itself as both thought and action. It makes it possible not only to look at images, but to let them speak for themselves, to find new meanings and to create underlying narratives. In this way, generations of images form a multi-layered and polyphonic picture of history, which often tells less about the past than about an ambivalent relationship to it and shows how deeply the traces of history are inscribed in the fabric of the present.
∣ Credits ∣
A film by Johannes Gierlinger
Assistent & Researcher: Mira Klug ∣ Assistent in Albanien, Researcher: Eros Dibra Production management: Lara Bellon ∣ Sound: Mira Klug, Jan Zischka ∣
Translation: Sara Kraja ∣ English Adaption: Thomas Logoreci ∣
German Adaption: Anjeza Cikopano ∣ Music Performer: Benjman Klug & Gökan Arslan Music Composition: Johannes Gierlinger ∣ Colors: Mira Klug ∣ Sound Mixing: Florian Kindlinger ∣ Producer: Johannes Gierlinger & Lara Bellon
Supported by Bmkoes, Land Salzburg, Cine Art Styria, Stadt Wien
∣ Festivals ∣ Screenings ∣
43rd BFM Bergamo Film Meeting - Close Up Competiton, 2025, Italy
Vila 31 x Art Explora - The Albanian Cinematheque , Tirana, 2025, Albania
In the archival images from the times of dictatorship, there is jubilation, mourning, admiration, and astonishment. Hopeful glances are directed from the applauding masses upward, where Enver Hoxha raises his clenched fist to the sky. The footage from communist Albania speaks the language of propaganda. It originates from a time of isolation, both toward the outside, as well as internally, which prevented other images and narratives from being preserved. However, history manifests itself in many ways: in museums as well as in their backyards, where Lenin, Stalin, and Hoxha linger in the memorial cemetery; in a poem that, in its ambiguity, can be understood both as a regime-compliant lullaby and as a call to revolution; in films, photographs, and books – and in their gaps, in what is left untold.
GENERATIONS OF IMAGES embarks on a search for traces through the profound transformation processes of Albania’s history, from communism to capitalism, from civil war to democracy, collecting historical images that are composed of the written, the built, the dreamed, the narrated, as well as the unspoken. Essayistically interwoven, memories of just and carefree times overlap with the experiences of the politically persecuted, who tell stories of internment camps made invisible, like Tepelenë, and Grabian. These narratives intersect with the thoughts of a generation that did not personally experience communism but is growing up amidst its aftermath. The stories, texts, films, photographs, monuments – they all convey stories and historical images that speak of both ruptures and scars, as well as the continuities left behind by the change of regime. The film gets to the bottom of these images and follows their material: the melted statues of dictators, that find new forms, as well as the film reels in the archive that lose their red hues over time and gain new meanings through the shift of power.
Depending on the perspective and context,distortions and fractures become visible, giving rise to new narratives. This is also the case in never-before-used archive material from the private life of the dictator Enver Hoxha and in propaganda films, where in that brief moment before the masses applaud on command, the staging suddenly be- comes visible.
The question of who constructs historical images and where their distortions begin leads the filmmaker to the writers, storytellers, film- makers – and thereby also to a reflection on his own role as im- age-maker and storyteller. He intervenes in the image, dissects it: silhouettes of hands that mask and accentuate, the sound makes the distortion of the narrative palpable, and the empty eyes of statues, the photographed, and the painted are met by the attentive gazes of young adults.
From a perspective always situated in the present and directed towards the past, GENERATIONS OF IMAGES finds its own language to examine regime images and image regimes. It is the language of poetry, that rejects the logic and linearity of conventional historiogra- phy, allows for contradictions, and expresses itself both in thoughts and in actions. It enables not only the observation of images but also allows images to speak for themselves, to find new meanings, and create underlying narratives. Thus, generations of images form a multilayered and polyphonic historical image, that doesn’t speak of the past as much as it speaks about an ambivalent relationship to it, showing how deeply the traces of history are inscribed into the fabric of the present.
Text by Martina Genetti, Curator