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Benjamin Ramírez Pérez

Despair

Film expérimental | 16mm | couleur | 21:50 | Allemagne | 2019

DESPAIR works with cinematic reenactments, which are connected in an associative collage-like layering into an experimental film, taking Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film of the same title from 1977 as its starting point. Drawing on and digressing from various complementary sources such as Fassbinder’s contribution to "Germany in Autumn", David Cronenberg’s "Dead Ringers", the 1970s "Mission Impossible" TV-series as well as cel-animation, the theme of the cinematic double is explored and questions of identity, identification and alienation are raised alongside an inquiry into the political and cultural legacies of the German Autumn.

Benjamin Ramírez Pérez (*1988, Germany) lives and works in Cologne. He studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne from 2009–2015. He undertook the residency programme at de Ateliers from 2016 - 2018. His works have been screened at Locarno, Edinburgh, Toronto and Rotterdam International Film Festival, among others. He had recent Group and Solo shows at Artothek Cologne, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade and Alternative Space LOOP, Seoul.