Es gibt keine Angst

Afraid Doesn’t Exist

Forum Expanded 2023

A German police state of the past is the setting for the pulsating short film thriller Es gibt keine Angst (Afraid Doesn’t Exist). In it, Anna Zett collages video and audio material from the Berlin Archive of the GDR Opposition, partially taking the perspective of a sensitive child. Based on her own intimate involvement, the artist traces a successful, yet mostly unknown act of resistance at the very end of the GDR, while at the same time opening up an associative space for connecting with experiences of violence that are otherwise difficult to access today. Vocally highly condensed voices from a 1986 East Berlin poetry reading support the voiceless narrator – “an adult child” – in the reconstruction of her own emotional world, as does the multi-layered musical score. From footage of the environmental library to private videos and journalistic material, the film leads to the second occupation of the Stasi headquarters in Berlin-Lichtenberg in September 1990, where it settles into a very different mood.

by Anna Zett Germany 2023 German 31’ Colour

Crew

Director	Anna Zett
Editing	Anna Zett
Music	Matti Gajek
Sound Design	Jochen Jezussek
Producer	Anna Zett

Produced by

Anna Zett

Anna Zett

Anna Zett is a Berlin-based artist and writer. Centering dialogue and play, her time-based, emotional, analytical and often participatory work questions systems of control, and makes space for new relations to emerge at sites of loss and damage. Since 2018, her quest for feminist practices of world-making set a focus on how to personally make sense of embodied legacies of the GDR, which also led to the development of the format “Postsocialist Group Improvisation.” Anna Zett’s video works have been shown in the international art and film context since her first release in 2014.

Filmography

2014 Dinosaur.Gif; 20 min. · This Unwieldy Object; 47 min. 2015 Circuit Training; 12 min. 2019 Endarchiv; 18 min. 2023 Es gibt keine Angst (Afraid doesn't exist)

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2023