STOLPERSTEINE 2025
CURATION
SYNOPSIS
Titled 'Unseen!', this year's production series sheds light on stories that have long remained in the shadows of memorial culture. The films give voice to women forced into prostitution at Buchenwald concentration camp, and to Kurt Koch from Halle, a gay man whose story has never been told. One production follows Michal Saar Bleiweiß on her journey from Israel to Halle for the installation of a Stolperstein in memory of her father Manfred Katz, and explore with Tanya Yael Raab how antisemitic body norms continue to shape beauty ideals and the pursuit of self-optimization today. Another production documents the attacks on the Stolpersteine in Zeitz, capturing the civil courage of a city that refuses to look away. This years screening and panel talk is curated by Leef Hansen and Maren Schuster.
On 26th, January 2026, the MA programme Multimedia and Authorship (MMA), in cooperation with the Stadtmuseum Halle and the Puschkino cinema, premiered five documentary films from the series Stolpersteine – Films Against Oblivion.
STOLPERSTEINE is a short film series attached to the MA programme Multimedia and Authorship. It takes its cue from Gunter Demnig's Stolpersteine project. Since 2007, students have made documentary films about the people named on the stones and the lives those names stand for. As artistic director of the series, Leef Hansen sees each production through from the first idea to the finished film. He develops the material with the students into a treatment and a screenplay, advises on camera, sound and editing, and stays with the productions through the shoot and post-production.
*Stolpersteine are small concrete blocks topped with a brass plate, laid into the pavement outside the last homes that people persecuted by the National Socialists chose freely for themselves.