March 2024

Following the world tour of the art installation and film version of Manifesto, two-time Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett and artist-filmmaker Julian Rosefeldt have teamed up again for his new film, which will be screened after Manifesto in a private sneak preview, including a Q&A with the two artists.

MANIFESTO – starring an overwhelmingly multi-faceted Cate Blanchett – pays homage to the moving tradition and literary beauty of artist manifestos, ultimately questioning the role of the artist in a society threatened by populist tendencies.

The film draws on the writings of Futurists, Dadaists, Fluxus artists, Suprematists, Situationists, Dogma 95, and other artist groups, and the musings of individual artists, architects, dancers, and filmmakers. Passing the ideas of Claes Oldenburg, Yvonne Rainer, Kazimir Malevich, André Breton, Sturtevant, Sol LeWitt, Jim Jarmusch, and other influencers through his lens, Rosefeldt has edited and reassembled new collages of artists’ manifestos.

Performing this ‘manifesto of manifestos’ as a contemporary call to action, while inhabiting 13 different personas – among them a school teacher, a puppeteer, a newsreader, a factory worker, and a homeless man – Australian actress Cate Blanchett imbues new dramatic life into bothfamous and lesser known words in unexpected contexts. Rosefeldt’s work reveals both the performative component and the political significance of these declarations. Often written in youthful rage, they not only express the wish to change the world through art but also reflect the voice of a generation. Exploring the powerful urgency of these historical statements Manifesto questions whether the words and sentiments have withstood the passage of time. Can they be applied universally? And how have the dynamics between politics, art and life shifted?

Berlin-based artist Julian Rosefeldt is internationally renowned for his visually opulent and meticulously choreographed moving image artworks, presented as complex multi-screen installations in museum spaces. Inspired equally by the histories of film, art and popular culture, Rosefeldt uses familiar cinematic tropes to carry viewers into surreal, theatrical realms, where the inhabitants are absorbed by the rituals of everyday life, employing humor and satire to seduce audiences into familiar worlds made strange.

Julian Rosefeldt is Villa Aurora Fellow of Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.

Manifesto won three Lolas (German Film Academy Awards) and the German Camera Award.