IT’S A WRAP!
The UNERHÖRT! Music Film Festival Hamburg came to an atmospheric close on the 2 of November 2025:
During the filming of his movie HALF MOON about Syrian-born clarinettist and composer Kinan Azmeh, our Dutch guest Frank Scheffer shot footage in Beirut with a Bolex camera on 16 mm film.
From this footage, he created a montage specifically for UNERHÖRT!, to which Ulrich Kodjo Wendt and Erol Arslan – known for having made several scores for films by Fatih Akin – improvised with accordion, oud and vocals at the Amargi Culture Space.
UNERHÖRT! 2025 remained keen to experiment right up to the end!
The closing event began with the announcement of this year’s audience award. The prize went to the documentary STRANGE JOURNEY – THE STORY OF ROCKY HORROR by Linus O’Brien, which we screened on 29 October at the opening, as a German premiere.
Congratulations, dear Linus, and lots of ongoing success with the film!
Many thanks to all visitors, guests, and supporters.
UNERHÖRT! Festival Trailer
A collage of films from this year’s programme – full of sounds, images and nuances, edited by Hervé Dieu. A cinematic foretaste of five days of the UNERHÖRT! Music Film Festival.
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Music and film are communal arts: music films bring together musicians, filmmakers, and an audience that listens, resonates, and thinks ahead. 2025 was all about new collaborations: with the help of Le FIFA Montréal and support from Québec Antenne Berlin and the Hamburger Senatskanzlei, we put together a three-part program of music films from Québec – and brought their creators to Hamburg. Together with the Magazin Kino, we celebrated 50 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Also new: the Screening-Location Rineuto Lichtspiele in Wilhelmsburg. Our festival hub was once again the beautiful Metropolis – while at the B-Movie we were celebrating a Binge Night with an exclusive special screening.
In a concentrated cross-section, we explored the work of Dutch filmmaker Frank Scheffer, who concluded the event at Amargi with improvisational live music to film.
OPENING FILM
STRANGE JOURNEY – THE STORY OF ROCKY HORROR
Linus O´Brien | USA 2025 | 90’ | OV
Linus O’Brien, son of ROCKY HORROR SHOW creator Richard O’Brien, brought them all in front of the camera: his own father, of course, Tim Curry, naturally, Susan Sarandon, and many, many more! Exactly 50 years after the musical was made into a film, colorful archive footage proves how the film became a cult classic: through the passionate love of its fans!
THURSDAY
Pre-reading: TANZ AUF DEM VULKAN – WIDERSTÄNDIGE PUNK-FRAUEN IN DER DDR
Geralf Pochop | Germany 2025
Nancy De Gregorio, an East Berlin punk woman (almost) from the very beginning, reads from the chapter dedicated to her, with photos and film clips. This is followed by a moderated discussion between Nancy, Annette Benjamin (ex-Hans-A-Plast), and other guests.
“STILL ALIVE” – HARDCORE. PUNK. STRAIGHT EDGE.
Peter Steinert | Germany 2024 | 45’ | OV
An authentic insight into the DIY and hardcore punk subculture in the Rhine-Main-Neckar region, a documentary about its sounds, places, attitudes, and lifestyles, featuring current voices from the scene. Stage dives and political resistance!
Québec – Cinematic Waves
COMME UNE VAGUE / BIG GIANT WAVE
Marie-Julie Dallaire | Canada 2021 | 88’ | OV with english subtitles
A film like a wave, an ode to music, to invisible, abstract, floating sound sequences that trigger the same reaction in the brain as chocolate, sex, drugs (and good films)!
BALKANCISCO
Tuğrul Sarıkaya | Turkey / USA 2023 | 66’ | OV with english subtitles
Portrait of the Balkan beat scene in… San Francisco! A playful overview of a specific milieu, with surprising combinations and encounters that confirm a fundamental human experience: homesickness in exile does not have to turn into nostalgia, but can give rise to something new and fluid. With Ismael Lumanovski, Roman Havası, Deuce Eclipse, Beats Antique, and many more.
WE WANT THE FUNK!
Stanley Nelson, Nicole London | USA 2025 | 80′ | OV
A groovy history lesson on the most important ingredient of contemporary dance music – eloquent interviewees and rousing archive footage not only establish musical and political contexts, but also turn the film into a party. With and about James Brown, Sly & The Family Stone, Parliament/Funkadelic, George Clinton, Nona Hendryx, Fred Wesley, Questlove, David Byrne, David Bowie, Prince.
FRIDAY
Québec Shorts and Mid-Lengths – Indigenous. Queer. Collective.
Canada 2015 – 2024 | 80’ | OV with english subtitles
Indigenous and queer identities as rituals in the short films MOBILISER, CEREMONIALS, PIDIKWE by Caroline Monnet and GULABRR by Gabriel Dharmoo, as well as Benoit Fry’s portrait of the internationally cast Montreal string ensemble collectif9, CE QUI NOUS LIE, on a musical quest for balance between personal expression and collective harmony.
SUN RA: DO THE IMPOSSIBLE
Christine Turner | USA 2025 | 84’ | OV
About Sun Ra, both a heavyweight and a solitary figure in jazz history: the man from Saturn who played free jazz with a big band and synthesizers, and for whom the term “Afrofuturism” had to be invented.
Doppelprogramm: House
ULTRA VIOLET NEON PLANET
Jashan Walton, Jack Lilley | UK 2023 | 18’ | OV
About the British house-techno hybrid bleep, which emerged in the late 1980s in the major cities of deindustrialized Yorkshire (Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford).
MOVE YA BODY – THE BIRTH OF HOUSE
Elegance Bratton | USA 2025 | 92’ | OV
The film tells the story of how a handful of friends around African-American teenager Vince Lawrence in the early 1980s, driven by a passion for disco-oriented underground club sounds from their city of Chicago, made their first mark on vinyl with house music—empowering the LGBTQI+ scene, first locally and later globally, with artists including Marshall Jefferson, Lori Branch, Lady D, and “Screaming” Rachel Cain.
SATURDAY
FRANK SCHEFFER – SHORT FILMS
Frank Scheffer | Netherlands 1987-2019 | ca. 85’ | OV with english subtitles
The program outlines 40 years of the filmmaker’s engagement with musical avant-garde, from Cage, Stockhausen, and Carter to Zappa and Eno to the New Yorkers Bang On A Can and the pop culture-influenced experimenters Squarepusher, DJ Spooky, and several others.
Binge Night
DJ MEHDI: MADE IN FRANCE
Thibaut de Longeville | France 2024 | 242’ | OV with english subtitles
Six episodes about the rise and career of DJ Mehdi, turntable prodigy from the banlieues, who made the leap from hip hop to French Touch house and Ed Banger label electro as a producer—and was taken from life far too soon by a tragic accident. Featuring Kerry James, Idéal J, La Mafia K’2 Fry, MC Solaar, Cassius, Daft Punk, Justice, Pedro Winter, and many more.
Québec – Musikalische Wellen
LE CHANT DES ONDES: SUR LA PISTE DE MAURICE MARTENOT / WAVEMAKERS
Caroline Martel | Canada 2012 | 94’ | OV with english subtitles
This is about the Ondes Martenot, one of the first instruments to produce purely electronic music by manipulating radio waves, and how it is still cherished and cared for today and continues to be used. Featuring Jean-Louis Martenot, the Ensemble d’Ondes de Montréal, Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead), and several others.
PAULINE BLACK: A 2-TONE STORY
Jane Mingay | UK 2024 | 92’ | OV
Portrait of the charismatic singer of the ska band The Selecter. Raised as an adopted mixed-race child in the predominantly white working-class environment of a small English town, she first forged her own identity through music. From Coventry, she helped launch the second wave of ska on 2-Tone Records alongside label mates Madness and The Specials. In the film, the style icon looks back on 40 years of anti-racist and anti-sexist pop culture. Statements from Skin (Skunk Anansie), Don Letts, Damon Albarn (Blur), and others accompany her clear-sighted self-reflections.
SUNDAY
BEETHOVEN’S NINE: ODE TO HUMANITY
Larry Weinstein | Canada / Germany 2024 | 83’ | OV with german subtitles
Nine perspectives on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the question of how far we have come in global politics in the 200 years since its creation. Featuring the conductor of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, a Polish rock singer, a deaf composer, a legendary cartoonist, an even more legendary conductor, a philosopher, a psychologist, and last but not least, the director himself, who lost his sister in the attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023.
HALF MOON
Frank Scheffer | Netherlands 2025 | 92’ | OV with english subtitles
Frank Scheffer’s latest film about Syrian clarinet virtuoso and composer Kinan Azmeh. From his exile in New York, he combines Western classical music with Arab tradition, exploring the role of art in communities and identities. He performs in the world’s greatest concert halls—including the Elphi!
CLOSING NIGHT with award ceremony
To conclude UNERHÖRT! 2025, we are moving to Amargi in the Gängeviertel. Cinematic art meets live music: Frank Scheffer presents previously unreleased outtakes from his film HALF MOON and transforms them into an improvised audio-visual performance.
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