Film screening: Jasco Viefhues – Rettet das Feuer (Rescue the Fire)

Language accessibility: German, English
Free entry

Berlin,1993. The photographer and artist Jürgen Baldiga is battling HIV. In the 1990s the AIDS epidemic reached its climax, for which no one was prepared. Infected bodies and their stories are diminished, erasing their existence. Through the death of his friends and subsequently his own, Baldiga became the chronicler of his time: “I am taking a picture. I photograph the world. I exist.” Identity and history disappear without the persistence of memory. Until the final days of his life, Jürgen documented the exodus that seized him. Rettet das Feuer (Rescue the Fire) directs the gaze to a piece of West Berlin history and the voices of collective memory.

Jasco Viefhues (*1980, Offenbach, Germany) completed his A-Levels in the year 2000, followed by a traineeship at Schauspielhaus Hamburg in the department of stage design. He is active in the fields of new media, graphic design, and film, having volunteered and worked for several PR agencies and productions as a freelancer. He studied at the renowned Film Academy Berlin (DFFB) from 2005 to 2017, graduating with a diploma focused on directing. He completed a fellowship at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation from 2008 until 2012. His film Capernaum was nominated for the German Short Film Award in 2010. In 2014 his film Internal Body Shots (part of the compilation Fucking Different XXY) premiered in the Panorama section of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival. His work is currently focused on racial politics in film, queer history, heritage, and ancestry.