BIFED 2020 – Open for Submissions!

Good news! It seems like we all have to be vegan now. It is not because we care about animals. It is because we always and only care about ourselves and because the animals have caught up with us. They store as much poison as possible in their bodies so that whoever eats them should be poisoned as well. That’s what the pigs, chicken, cows, and sea basses at fish farms do. They are full of poison, mercury, and antibiotics. We had better not eat them!

It turns out that we all have weak imaginations, especially the scriptwriters. They were not able to imagine the inextinguishable fires that broke out in Australia, the unstoppable virus in China, the cruise ships that have turned into prisons, and leaders such as Bolsonaro and Trump. I think it takes more than imagination to picture the last two leaders.

In another context, Harun Farocki used the term “Inextinguishable Fire” as title of one of his films in 1969. These are stories that we are quite familiar with: Napalm and Dow Chemical. Dow Chemical produced an inextinguishable bomb that burned the human flesh to the bone and it was tested during the Vietnam War. And we all know that photograph. The photograph of the burning little girl, running away. That photograph was a sign for the days to come. It was obvious from the look in that little girl’s eyes, who was running away her back on fire, that these days would come.

We cannot fight against all of these evil deeds by producing new bombs equipped with even longer range, new and awful antibiotics, camera systems with night vision, and drones. Self-driving cars won’t save us. We can endure and fight against all of these by acting in solidarity and speaking our minds even though we might think our voices will not be heard. Eventually they will be heard.

We are looking forward to see you and your beautiful documentaries in October at BIFED 2020.

Petra Holzer & Ethem Özgüven