Like Rats Leaving a Sinking Ship

Running time: 24'

Lyrically poignant yet contained, “Like Rats Leaving a Sinking Ship” is an intimate piece that combines personal subjectivity with the clinical objectivity of medical reports, challenging the very notions of these categories. The film is partly based on the author's psychiatric assessments diagnosing her with Gender Identity Disorder, in accordance with the International Classification of Diseases. Along with the discourse of the legally mandatory documents for transgendered people are her own personal writings that reflect upon the nature of memory – the present interpretation of the past - and question the possibility of any coherent biographic or filmic narrative. As evocative images inconspicuously blend with found family footage, a multilayered reality emerges in which the distinction between what is true or false becomes unimportant and obsolete. Although in line with topics such as general assumptions of gender, or “popular knowledge” of transgender people, “Like Rats Leaving a Sinking Ship” is, in fact, a deep reflection on the relation of “abnormal individuals” to authority apparatuses such as state, law and psychiatry.

 

 

Authors:

  • Vika Kirchenbauer
    Vika Kirchenbauer is an artist and filmmaker. She currently lives and works in Berlin. In her practice she often examines the construction of narrative and temporal coherence in relation to memory. Her films and videos have been described as multifaceted realities full of sharp analysis, poetic beauty and absurd contradictions.  Internationally awarded, her work has been shown in more than 30 countries worldwide at events and institutions such as VIDEONALE.14, Uppsala Int’l Short Film Festival, São Paulo Int’l Short Film Festival, Cork Film Festival, Tampere Film Festival, cph:dox Copenhagen Int’l Documentary Film Festival, Jihlava Int’l Documentary Film Festival, Visions du Réel Nyon Int’l Documentary Film Festival, L’Alternativa Barcelona Int’l Independent Film Festival, Hamburg Int’l Short Film Festival, European Media Art Festival, MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, Busan Int’l Short Film Festival, La Cinémateque Française, PACT Zollverein, Kunstraum Bethanien Berlin, Göteborg Konsthall, Kunstmuseum Bonn and Bundeskunsthalle Bonn.
     
    Filmography:
     
    The Multitude is Feverish (2010)
    We – 1st Person Plural (2009)
    Reproduktion (2009)
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Screenings: