Goldene Taube for „Der König von Spanien“ at DOK Leipzig

Leonard Volkmer received the Goldene Taube Short Film, in conjunction with 1,500 euros, for "Der König von Spanien" (Germany), the cinematic search for his own past, which takes him from stories about Berlin darkrooms and clubs in Madrid to the archives of a psychiatric ward. "A film that entrusts us with the personal and makes it possible to experience it on film - not as an illustration, but as a venture," said the jury members Tilman König, Katrin Mundt and Susanne Sachsse. The award ceremony of the 67th edition of DOK Leipzig took place on 02.11.24 at the Schaubühne Lindenfels in Leipzig.

Leonard Volkmer is a master student in the Intermedia Photography class (Prof. Peggy Buth, Holger Jenss) at the Kunsthochschule Kassel.

"The King of Spain"
A young man is seemingly lost between his parents' home in Lower Saxony, darkrooms in Berlin and a shared flat in Madrid. The clinical coldness of the psychiatric reports on his case is contrasted with a disturbing diary text that resists being categorized too quickly. The images also speak a different language to the diagnosis: "Disoriented and out of touch with his surroundings", reads the initial anamnesis. But we see how film footage traces and replaces photographic evidence of loss, how it reconnects the narrator's ego, who is striving for self-empowerment, with his environment. The protocol of a history of illness and treatment opens up into an autosociobiographical document of self-positioning through artistic work - in lived life. (Jan Künemund)

DOK Leipzig - International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film
The International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, DOK Leipzig for short, is the largest German and second largest European festival for artistic documentary film. It is also the oldest documentary film festival in the world.

Link:
www.dok-leipzig.de