Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit (original title) / 2019 / 3h 38min / directed by Thomas Heise /
country: Germany | Austria / language: German | Korean with English subtitles
Friday, 3/13 Q&A with filmmaker Thomas Heise
co-presented by ACROPOLIS CINEMA
“HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME picks up the biographical pieces of a family torn apart through the end of the 19th and into the 20th century. It is about people who by chance found each other, only then to lose each other. Now it is their descendants, their children and grandchildren who are beginning to disappear.
“This is all about speaking and silence. First love and happiness lost. Fathers and mothers, sons and brothers, the affairs, the hurt and the joy in landscapes of transition – each bearing the intertwining, hallmarks of their times. A collage of images, sounds, letters, diaries, notes, voices, fragments of time and space.
“HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME is a journey of reflection of time and the love held within using sounds, images and language. Yet some of it shall remain forever lost. The material used in this film is what remains of my family. The remnants of those I knew, whose circumstances I had been part of or had otherwise experienced. Remnants that mirror history. A history that is just as much my own.” –Thomas Heise, director
“Over the course of his 218-minute opus “Heimat Is a Space in Time,” Heise examines nearly 100 years of German history through the prism of his own complex genealogy, drawing on letters, diaries and other documents from throughout the 20th century. It’s an enormous undertaking for Heise — and for even the most adventurous viewers — but his essay-film holds the personal and the historical in elegant balance, revealing how all families are subject to forces beyond their control.” -Scott Tobias, Variety
“Spanning from the end of the 19th century into the start of the 20th, the film reroutes the stories that emerge from Heise’s own genealogy into a broader national history, rendering the personal political in a scale and seriousness rarely seen on screen.” -Matt Turner, Little White Lies
“A monumental film, judging by its construction, thematic range and duration (nearly four hours), Heimat Is a Space in Time admirably avoids presenting history as a well-rounded story, instead inviting its viewers to reflect on what led from one event to the other.” -Ioana Florescu, Cineuropa
LUMIERE CINEMA 