Jan Soldat – Männer(t)räume

Jan Soldat is one of the most unconventional filmmakers of our time, his films have been shown at renowned festivals such as Cannes, the Berlinale, Rotterdam and Karlovy Vary, as well as at short, porn and niche festivals. His films can be roughly categorized into two groups of works:
1. date films, special documentary forms, which successively create a catalog of sexual deviance, a lexicon of the perverse and non-normative.
2. meticulously researched found footage works focusing on the death scenes of Udo Kier, Danny Trejo, Nicolas Cage, Lance Henriksen, Christopher Lee or, most recently, the murders of women in the series A Case for Two.

Static images, very rarely a hand-held camera, are Soldat's formal signature. He is responsible for directing, producing, cinematography, editing and sound himself and is alone on set. His “First Dates Short Films” series, which he started in 2010 and now comprises over 120 films, virtually demands this production process. Who wants to be filmed? - is his call on both homosexual and heterosexual platforms, which to date has primarily been answered by older, bisexual and homosexual men. They share their experiences, often sexual routines, preferences and fetishes, freely and mostly naked. In a documentary sense, Soldat's date films can be associated with the Kinsey Report, which attempted to track down human sexual behavior as early as the 1940s and 1950s. Porn often plays a role in Soldat's films as mediatized displays, but his works are rather to be read at an interface with the documentary, paying greater attention to the conversation and the framing of sex. Wanting to see and showing, in short being curious, function as Soldat's most important parameters; - cinema as a space of experience. (Dietmar Schwärzler) 

15.01.2025, 6 pm
Programm 1 / Sex & Fetisch
rein/raus, 2009, 1 min.
Geliebt, 2010, 16 min.
Endlich Urlaub, 2010, 3 min.
Ein Wochenende in Deutschland, 2013, 25 min.
Coming of Age, 2016, 13 min.
Protokolle, 2017, 20 min.

Sexual desire encompasses a broad spectrum of human behavior, which is also shown in this program from its transgressive and sometimes disturbing side. The program begins with four films that were made during Soldat's studies at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. While the miniatures rein/raus and Endlich Urlaub present sex as an exchange of energy and a sequence of actions, Ein Wochenende in Deutschland focuses on the loving and humorous relationship between Manfred and Jürgen, who are planning a BDSM threesome. Geliebt is dedicated to the protagonists Jens and Pascal, two young men who are friends and have zoophilia, in this case an emotional and sexual relationship with their dogs. In Coming of Age, Horst and Kalle are united by their fetish for diapers and a cautious, socially sophisticated connection, while Protokolle brings together interviews with hetero/bisexual men who dream of being slaughtered and eaten. (ds) 

15.01.2025, 8:30 pm
Programm 2 / Control & Admission
Der Unfertige, 2013, 48 min.
Hotel Straussberg, 2014, 27 min.
Der Besuch, 2015, 5 min.

Odenwald-Gay, Golem or Klaus, sixty years old, gay, slave - this is how the protagonist introduces himself at the beginning of Der Unfertige. Profession: tax consultant, worked for a brotherhood in the finance office for a long time, in an environment in which he could only live out his sexuality in secret. Dressed primarily in chains and leather straps, Klaus gradually reveals his life and family history. What he seeks is understanding, not tenderness. At the end, a Beethoven sonata is played and Soldat shows his protagonist's face in close-up, a visual translation of the metaphorical coming closer. The setting of film two is a prison in Germany run as a hotel, where military drill, punishment as a fetish, often waiting times and occasional sexual pleasure prevail, but sometimes simply sausage platters are served. In The Visit, the grandmother and the operator's mother are given a guided tour of the prison with instructions on how to use the corresponding corporal punishment devices. (ds)

16.01.2025, 6 pm
Programm 3 / Portraits
Erwin, 2020, 16 min.
Wohnhaft Erdgeschoss, 2020, 48 min.
Nullo, 2021, 16 min.

Erwin, Heiko & Norbert are the names of the very different protagonists of these three portrait films, in which the relationship between the portrayed and the director becomes clear almost incidentally. Soldat, always present off-screen as a friendly questioner (and here also as a companion), approaches the three men openly, neutrally and without any psychologizing subtext. While Erwin sketches an average gay biography in rural Austria in the 1970s, Wohnhaft Erdgeschoss and Nullo get down to the nitty-gritty. Heiko is scarred by life and has been unemployed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. He feels hatred for his violent father, he is often annoyed by his mother and his stories about past relationships are tinged with disappointment. He loves piss, which can practically be smelled, and lives out his fetish unabashedly in his own apartment - in bed, on the sofa or on the kitchen floor - in Berlin. Nullo, on the other hand, shows a self-confident man posing naked, who has independently removed his penis and testicles and gives a decidedly sober account, and not just of this. (ds)

16.01.2025, 8:30 pm
Programm 4 / Dates & Found Footage
Haben Sie Interesse an einem Film zum Thema Shopping, 2020, 5 min.
Erwartungen, 2020, 5 min.
Mensch Christian, wir dreh´n ´nen Porno, 2020, 9 min.
Blind Date, 2022, 12 min.
Männerabend, 2023, 12 min.
Speed Date, 2023, 1 min.
After Work, 2023, 5 min.
Zumindest bin ich draußen gewesen, 2021, 5 min.
Staging Death, 2022, 8 min.
Faces of Death, 2023, 7 min.
Die schöne Tote, 2024, 7 min.

Soldat calls a group of works “First Dates Short Films”, which now form an archive of male, homo/bisexual desire. Three criteria are required for these encounters. Firstly, the person must want to present themselves in front of the camera. Secondly, showing the face must not disturb the person, unless masks are part of a sexual practice. Thirdly, the director must make it clear from the outset that their position is exclusively behind the camera. Meanwhile, individual protagonists appear again and again, the spectrum of what is shown ranges from wanking in underpants in a department store, a porn shoot, group sex, fisting or the date initiation itself - failure included. Soldat's found footage films also document something, namely the multifaceted variations of the death scenes of individual stars such as Udo Kier or Christopher Lee and how these differ fundamentally from the stereotypical, fetishized and sexist death scenes of women in a TV series. (ds) 

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No admission under 18 years