Tania Libre

Summary

Dr Frank Ochberg is a New York based psychiatrist and trauma specialist. His specialism is post-traumatic stress disorder and the Stockholm syndrome. Cuban artist Tania Bruguera consults him after spending eight months in a Cuban prison. A dissident, she was accused of treason for a performance she was developing that was critical of the government. During her conversations with her therapist she analyses the revolutionary potential of art and how the censor that intervened even before she was able to perform the piece in question. To her, the short-term, spontaneous and transitory nature of performance art represents a means to criticise the Cuban government. Just six months after her release an undaunted Bruguera was already inviting artists from all over the world to Cuba.

Lynn Hershman Leeson's previous documentaries "Strange Culture" and "!Women Art Revolution – A Secret History", both of which screened in the Panorama, closely scrutinised the concept of political and critical art forms. In her new work, she has chosen to collaborate once more with Tilda Swinton who narrates Bruguera's "Manifesto on Artists' Rights".

Source: 67. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)