Fred Kelemen: Fate / Verhaengnis

Fred Kelemen, Fate, 1994. © the artist

Fate is a remarkable debut film, admired by Sontag as “a visionary, one-of-a-kind achievement”. Taking place over one night in Berlin, it follows an emigrant Russian accordion player and his lover through this city of lost people, fatefully bound together by their solitary quest for happiness. Unscripted, and shot on handheld video with natural lighting, Fate is a dance of desire, pain and survival.

Dir. Fred Kelemen, 80mins + Q&A, 1994

One of the boldest German filmmakers of the last 20-years, critic Susan Sontag compared Kelemen’s “urgently relevant” work to Sokurov and collaborator Bela Tarr. He garnered attention for his 1990s trilogy – Fate, Frost and Nightfall.

Believing in “time and not in speed”, meditations on human dissolution, cruelty and loneliness unfold at somnambulant pace. Set amongst Europe’s late-capitalist underclass of the unemployed and dispossessed, he captures nocturnal urban low-life with beauty.

Kelemen is present throughout the weekend to introduce and discuss his work, in conversation with film critic Jonathan Romney.

Part of Slow Cinema Weekend

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