Movie Nights @ HambiCamp: Brand I – III ( de|en )

This week we’ll be screening the Brand trilogy by Susanne Fasbender at the Hambi-Camp in Manheim. Impressive and sometimes surreal oppressive scenes from the coal country of Rhineland (and in particular the Hambi) depict the epic devastation caused by resource extraction & land grabbing in context of the economic growth paradigm and the climate crisis – a process that has been affecting this region across generations now.

The decade-long, domineering seizure of land has deeply marked the character of the region. Everything appears violated or remains in tragic expectation. The coming destruction of what lies restfully is equally omnipresent in the still inhabited villages. The already uninhabited villages have been abandoned by people, while birds accompany the wild growth in gardens and parks with their song. The count-less, ancient high trees that dress the old localities will be removed first of all when demolition starts.

BRAND II portrays the destruction of a century-old cultural landscape for the extraction of lignite in the Rhineland up until 2027. It makes the scope of this existential interference tangible: forced displacement and the knowledge that the place you call home is being put to waste – everything down to language, traditional crafts, and several hundreds of years old family histories. The conversation about the societal relationship to nature, the Kyoto Protocol and the concept of the imperial mode of living will be continued and interwoven into the pictures of this country. [https://www.brandfilme.org/]

In November 2012, an activist holed up in a complex tunnel system in the Hambach Forest, ending the silence about the deforestation of this once gigantic forest area between the cities of Cologne, Düsseldorf and Aachen. The energy company RWE has been felling this ancient forest since 1972, but the occupation has spread awareness of the clear-cutting far beyond the local boundaries. Today only 10% of this forest remains. Activists from different groups had taken on the task of making the Rheinische brown coal (lignite) area to a crystallisation point for the struggle against coal power generation. Five years later, between summer and autumn 2017, more than 10,000 people took part in protest actions around the mines.

In Brand III, Susanne Fasbender looks back at the first Climate Camps in the Rheinland, visits citizens taking action against the threat to good health caused by power generation from lignite, and tells the story of the forest occupation in the Hambach Forest until its eviction in 2018. In co-operation with the Hambach Forest Film Collective, she followed some of the many key events of the resistance, not only to document these individual transgressions, but also to give them a space where the underlying concepts are explained and where personal thoughts can be expressed. Activists speak about tactics and motivation, and about their experience of living in the forest and at the same time, through their struggle for a future worth living for, being exposed to anti-ecological repression mechanisms. “The eviction is not the end”. That’s how the movie ends. [https://www.brandfilme.org/]