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Category: HYENAZ Works: Sound Design

  • Damage Done // Say Goodbye To

    Damage Done // Say Goodbye To

    Dates

    21-23 February 2025Ballhaus Ost

    Welcome to a living room that turns into a smouldering scene of remembering and forgetting. Here, between a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and her daughter, worlds collide: an interplay of anger, sadness, despair and disorientation. What remains when memories fade and the past becomes an unreliable companion?

    Damage Done takes the audience on a journey through the fragility of memory and the construction of identity in a world that wants to save everything. The starting point is private video recordings from the family archive that were never intended for the public. But it is precisely this intimate closeness that challenges us to pause and ask questions: What does this material show – and what does it do to us who view it?

    Through a collaborative process, the recordings are dissected, reinterpreted and translated into images, movements and dialogues. Alternative forms of communication emerge, transforming the stage into a multi-perspective space in which remembering and forgetting are negotiated in equal measure.

    Credits

    Concept, DirectionTobias Yves Zintel
    Sound DesignHYENAZ
    ScoreHYENAZ, Daniel Murena
    PerformersJuno Meinecke, Adrienne Teicher, Anatol Käbisch, Janet Rothe, Rasmus Slätis, Karen Zimmermann, Kathryn Fischer
    Director’s AssistantKaren Zimmermann
    StageSabina Moncys, Tobias Yves Zintel
    CameraShane Mcmillan
    Produced byTobias Yves Zintel in co-operation with Ballhaus Ost
  • The Visual Feminist Manifesto

    The Visual Feminist Manifesto

    Dates

    2, 4 & 8 February 2025International Film Festival Rotterdam (Premiere)

    Expressing desire, pursuing dreams, loving oneself, questioning the oppressive confines of patriarchy. Farida Baqi takes us on a lyrical and emotional journey through the life of a young woman from birth to adulthood in an unnamed Arab city.

    The moment of birth, the possibilities of childhood, the growing pains of teenage years, the expectations imposed by society on young women: The Visual Feminist Manifesto explores how a woman’s life is crafted by the world around her. We are witness to the ways in which she makes meaning, both from her personal experience and how she is told she must behave, both deeply shaped by patriarchal structures. Repeatedly told that women are “less than”, her behaviour is made small by the threats of shame, fear, and ostracisation. All the while, she is seeking something more emancipatory.

    Farida Baqi brings us into the fold through the life of an unnamed woman in an Arab city, homing in on the experience of a cisgender woman making encounters with heterosexual desire. But the filmmaker’s ode will resonate with many, united through universal emotions of joy, pain, love, and frustration. 

    Contrasting shots depicting the urbanity of an Arab city and the gentle scenery of the seaside, Baqi makes a woman’s life inextricable from the spaces and places around her, all the while hinting at a more liberatory future forged through solidarity.

    Credits

    DirectorFarida Baqi
    MusicMad Kate | the Tide, HYENAZ, Lynn Adib
    Sound DesignStudio Mitte, HYENAZ
    ScreenplayFarida Baqi
    CinematographyJanne Ebel
    Principal castAmal el-Hani, Lynn Adib, Rosalie Cella, Gaël Abou Jaoude, Michelle Zallouaa, Norah Toledano, Alice Canzonieri
  • Chokehole

    Chokehole

    One hot summer night in New Orleans a drag collective staged wrestling night. They dressed up as their vibrant alter-egos, and proceeded to beat the living daylights out each other while the audience collectively lost their shit. That night, Chokehole was born. This documentary follows Chokehole as they take the show to Germany, sharing the stories of cast members as they grapple with racism, gender conformism, queer identity and America’s suppression of the arts.

    The film depicts the artists both with and without drag, sharing their larger-than-life and theatrical alter egos while displaying the unique vulnerabilities that lie behind the character. This film explores their loud, vibrant personas alongside their heart-breaking personal stories, and the adversity they’ve had to overcome to be accepted in the US. As the documentary progresses, we learn how each character copes with love, sex, transitions, post-trauma, and socioeconomics while offering a glimpse into their fantastical, vivid world… which is as much an escape for the artists as it is for the audience.

    “Chokehole: Drag Wrestlers do Deutschland” is the story of how disenfranchised, queer performers defeated all the odds to make a compelling theatrical show.

    Chokehole screened at New Orleans Film Festival, Outfest and Chicago Underground Film Festival.

    Credits

    DirectorYony Leyser
    Music & Sound DesignHYENAZ
    Sound RecordistsAdrienne Teicher & Kathryn Fischer
    CinematographyShane Thomas McMillan
    EditorRuth Schönegge
    Sound Re-recording MixerCornelius Rapp
  • The Fourth Generation

    The Fourth Generation

    Premiere – Vienna Queer Shorts Festival

    The Fourth Generation, is a homage to Berlin’s vibrant underground and the communities that breathe life into the city. The film is set in a dystopian future, but the themes explored are very real. Queer identity, feminism, sexuality and the intersection of politics and art. In the near future Professional provocateur and artist Maven Shegula has returned to Berlin after a hiatus in Zürich. She’s back to celebrate her 50th birthday, and to appear on a popular German talk show.

    As she wanders the streets of Berlin with her girlfriend and friend, it becomes apparent that being an artist in this city is no longer acceptable. The humming nightlife has disappeared, and the vibrant creative community pushed to the margins of society. The film is alive with tension, both sexual and otherwise. As Maven’s story unfurls on live television, we learn about her son, her politics, her  heritage and her alter-ego Rosa who champions radical self-expression and  feminism. The interview is dispersed with beautiful and volcanic eruptions from Maven that act as both a denunciation of the city’s leadership and a love letter to Berlin.

    Packed full of vibrant fashion, queerness, dark humour and experimental visuals, The Fourth Generation depicts every artists worst nightmare – and the lengths one woman will go to stand by
    what she believes in. The film features a predominantly trans and non-binary cast.

    Credits

    Directed and Written byYony Leyser
    Sound DesignHyenaz (Kathryn Fischer & Adrienne Teicher)
    CastAerea Negrot, Gigi Spelsberg, Yvon Jansen, Daniel Zillmann, Mano Thiravong, Mathea Hoffmann, Chilly Gonzales
    CinematographyPaul Faltz
    EditingHamed Mohammadi
    Art DirectorDarko Petrovic
    Production DesignJeff Schaul, Victoria Shved
    Costume DesignAlexis Mersmann
  • Like Lovers Do

    Like Lovers Do

    Dates

    24 March 2022Volksbühne Berlin (Performative Reading)

    In myth, Medusa is raped by the god of the sea, after which she transforms into a winged figure with serpent hair, whose gaze turns anyone to stone. Medusa’s violent, kaleidoscopically structured memoirs in Sivan Ben Yishai’s work are a dedication to all lovers, cataloging moments of our collective memory: between desire and violence, between porn and sexual fantasies, between political attacks and familial complicity in looking away. In a seemingly contrasting scenario, five young girls collectively imagine the dream man of their future, involuntarily casting themselves as perfect attributes by his side. On a third narrative thread, the author drafts a literal reversal dynamic of traditional storytelling patterns:

    A woman picks up a knife, leaves the crime scene of the marital bed, hijacks a crowded bus, and shifts into reverse gear to collect century-old storylines and all the battered human love-flesh, decomposing them. Could it not become humus for an eco-sphere of feminist narratives?

    BuySuhrkamptheater

    Credits

    TextSivan Ben Yishai
    German TranslationMaren Kames
    Audiobook Sound DesignHYENAZ
    Performative Reading Live Sound DesignHYENAZ
  • Körper Figurationen Welten

    Körper Figurationen Welten

    Körper Figurationen Welten introduces queer studies as a transdisciplinary research field in an intersectional way. The interplay of power and desire causes physical, mental and emotional movements in space and time. According to queer theory, these can solidify into domination, sometimes even take on violent forms; but they can also cause attraction, unexpected connections and movements, forms of pleasurable encounters or intimacy. Queer theory is power analysis and criticism of domination, which faces the contradicting challenge of criticizing difference as social inequality, but promoting it as uniqueness and particularity. The videos test experimental formats and queer aesthetics. Because the question of what is presented is directly related to the question of how it is presented. As is shown, in turn refers to possibilities and limits that are open to the imagination and desire or are set.

    The videos are freely available as Open Educational Resources at the following link: e.feu.de/queer-theory-videos

    The work was featured on the radio program “Gerecht Sprechen – Über die Lust auf Gendersternchen, neue Pronomen und Co.” hosted by Sabine Rolf on BR2.

    Credits

    Concept & Academic DirectionAntkek Engel
    Film ProductionFilmfetch (Magda Wystub; Tali Tiller)
    Sound DesignHYENAZ
    Produced byFernUniversität Hagen
  • Unsere Stadt aus Vogelaugen

    Unsere Stadt aus Vogelaugen

    Eine Blutung im Dunkeln

    Dates

    3 October 2021Weltecho Chemnitz
    14-15 June 2021TD Berlin
    25 October 2020Münchner Kammerspiele

    On October 3, 1938, just before Pogrom Night, the city of Dortmund ordered the city’s Great Synagogue to be torn down. On October 3rd, 2020, just a few meters from the square of the Old Synagogue, the city theater opened its season with this text. After Munich and Berlin, the writer Sivan Ben Yishai is performing her text in a special collaboration with the duo HYENAZ: “Our city from bird’s eyes / bleeding in the dark”. The performative, musical reading is a meditation on the 35 days of repentance, which lie between October 3 and November 9, and draws an arc from the past to the future.

    Credits

    Written & Performed bySivan Ben Yishai, HYENAZ
    Sound Design & Musical PerformanceHYENAZ
    VisualsPatricia Bateira
    Production AssistanceLuise Heiderhoff
    German TranslationMaren Kames
  • Annies: ein gesangliches Konzert

    Annies: ein gesangliches Konzert

    The 2020 edition of the Droste Festival features a dialogic project between authors Sivan Ben Yishai and Maren Kames. These two incisive voices of a younger literary generation interrogate war, peace, and their transhistorical entanglement with language, engaging Droste’s legacy as both interlocutor and spectral collaborator. The project is produced by and features HYENAZ, who weave sonic architecture and filmic praxis into the discourse as well as performing in the work.

    Credits

    Conceived & Written bySivan Ben Yishai, Maren Kames
    Performed bySivan Ben Yishai, Maren Kames, HYENAZ
    Sound Design & Filmic PraxisHYENAZ
    Commissioned byBurg Hüllshoff Center for Literature

  • Oder: Du Verdienst Deinen Krieg

    Oder: Du Verdienst Deinen Krieg

    (8 Soldiers Moonsick)

    Dates

    8-11 November 2019Maxim Gorki Theatre, Studio Я

    Eight young female bodies are lying in a tent, breathing in unison and protecting the rifles under their mattresses, waiting for the next mission. Their nightmares during the night and the daydreams of army’s everyday life are experienced together.
    Again and again the soldiers circle the multiple possibility of their own death. What dies in a person when they operate the trigger of a loaded gun? When does the dispossession of your own body begin?
    In the fourth part of her tetralogy, Let The Blood Come Out To Show Them, writer Sivan Ben Yishai holds a ceremony of memory. Which visible and invisible traces does serving the so-called fatherland leave in a person?

    Selected for Radikal Jung – Festival für junge Regie 2020.

    Credits

    Written bySivan Ben Yishai
    Directed bySasha Marianna Salzmann
    Sound DesignHYENAZ
    Stage & CostumesCleo Niemeyer
    DramaturgyRebecca Ajnwojner
    Dramaturgic AdvisorAnna Heesen
    Lighting DesignFritz Stötzner
    Sound EngineerMiloš Janjić
    TranslationMaren Kames
    CastKenda Hmeidan, Abak Safaei-Rad, Elena Schmidt, Catherine Stoyan
  • The MultiVerse in a MouthFuck

    The MultiVerse in a MouthFuck

    Selected Dates

    June 7th–12th, 2022Post Porn Film Festival (Warsaw, Poland)
    October 6th–10th, 2021Porn Film Festival Vienna (Vienna, Austria) [BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM]
    September 10th–12th, 2021SECS FEST (online, USA) [BEST SEX-POSITIVE FILM]
    May 21st–30th, 2021Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival (Calgary, Canada)
    December 3rd, 2020CineKink NYC (online, US) [HONORABLE MENTION]
    November 20th–22nd, 2020Satyrs and Maenads: The Athens Porn Film Festival (Athens, Greece)
    September 28th, 2020Oslo/Fusion International Film Festival (Oslo, Norway)
    February 1st, 2020Excéntrico: Muestra Internacional de Pornografías Críticas (Santiago, Chile)
    October 2019Berlin PornFilmFestival (Berlin, Germany)

    A metaphysical trip of self discovery, from the seven principles of Hermetism to the seven keys to master our lives (Inspired by true fuckts)

    StreamPinkLabel

    Credits

    CastRafael Medina, JorgeTheObscene, Sultan of Filth, Schoko Channel, Tristan Rehbold, Medad Rangay, Jo Pollux, Kate Hole, Candy Flip, Mad Kate, Nicky Miller, Gio Black Peter
    Written, Directed, EditedJorgeTheObscene
    ProducerJorgeTheObscene
    Assistant DirectorDoxytocine
    Director of PhotographyTheo Meow, Jo Pollux
    CameraTheo Meow, Michal ANdrysiak
    Still PhotographyJo Pollux
    LightsMichal ANdrysiak
    Art/CostumesMad Kate, Michal ANdrysiak, EXIT
    Sound DesignHYENAZ
    Location Sound MixerHYENAZ
    Producer AssistantFelipe Carrasco
  • W(a)rmholes

    W(a)rmholes

    Dates

    12-15 June 2019Maxim Gorki Theatre, Studio Я
    Photo Esra Rotthoff

    Five queer Berliners of different generations and backgrounds take the audience on a performative journey through Berlin’s queer history between Pankow and Schöneberg, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, Mahlsdorf and Charlottenburg.

    In search for the intersections of queer identities in a collective consciousness, they liquefy time, space, body and gender and connect with ancestors and future generations. The performers have been living in Berlin for generations or have recently moved here. They will channel their icons, ex-lovers and former selves to draw a political-personal portrait of queer Berlin between East and West.

    Credits

    Text and DirectionYony Leyser
    WithHYENAZ, Adrian Marie Blount, Jair Luna, Zazie de Paris
    Sound DesignHYENAZ
    DramaturgyTobias Herzberg
    Stage Design & VideoShahrzad Rahmani, Camille Lacadee
    Costume DesignAnne Fidler
  • The Beauty of ReveRso

    The Beauty of ReveRso

    Credits

    StarringReveRso, Thea Adora Bauer, Chika Takahashi, Julietta la Doll, Yeorg Kronnagel, Sekou
    MusicHYENAZ
    Make-up ArtistYeorg Kronnagel
    Costume DesignReveRso, Yeorg Kronnagel
    Sound DesignJoscha Eickel
    Production AssistantLeo Carnein, Christoph Brunner
    Director of Photography, Editing, PostproductionLukas Kunzmann
    Written, Produced, Directed byBrent Adam
    Executive ProducerRainer Spix @ Who’s McQueen

    Selected Festivals

    • Hollywood International Independent Documentary Award 2018
    • Festival de Cannes Shortfilmcorner 2018
    • Redline International Filmfestival 2018 (4 nominations – winner “Best Documentary Short”)
    • Atlanta Docufest 2018 (winner: “Best Foreign Documentary Short”)
    • International Fashionfilm Festival Sarajevo 2018 (award winner “Best Story”)
  • Queercore

    Queercore

    DATES

    12 June 2017Sheffield Doc/Fest (Premiere)
    17 June 2017Frameline
    15 July 2017Outfest
    2018ARTE

    What happens when the community you need is not the community you have? Tell yourself it exists over and over, make fan zines that fabricate hordes of queer punk revolutionaries, create subversive movies, and distribute those movies widely—and slowly, the community you’ve fabricated might become a real and radical heartbeat that spreads internationally. This is the story that Queercore tells, from the start of a pseudo-movement in the mid-1980s, intended to punk the punk scene, to the widespread rise of artists who used radical queer identity to push back equally against gay assimilation and homophobic punk culture.

    Interviewees discuss homophobia, gender, feminism, AIDS, assimilation, sex, and, of course, art. The extensive participant list includes Bruce LaBruce, G.B. Jones, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, John Waters, Justin Vivian Bond, Lynn Breedlove, Silas Howard, Pansy Division, Penny Arcade, Kathleen Hanna, Kim Gordon, Deke Elash, Tom Jennings, Team Dresch, and many more.

    Underscoring the interviews are clips from movies, zines, concerts, and actions iconic to the movement. As steeped in the radical queer, anti-capitalist, DIY, and give-no-fucks approach as queercore itself, the movie reveals the perspectives and experiences of bands, moviemakers, writers, and other outsiders, taking audiences inside the creation of the community—and art—so desperately needed by the same queers it encompassed.

    HYENAZ’s sonic architecture for the film is a love letter to the physical labor of zine-making. Xerox photocopiers grind and whir like industrial choirs, their rhythmic churning transformed into percussive beats. Scissors slice through tape and paper in crisp, ASMR-like bursts, while the rustle of collaged pages becomes a textured whisper of rebellion. By amplifying the mundane tools of zine culture into a visceral soundscape, HYENAZ resurrects the movement’s tactile grit, turning the act of cutting, copying, and stapling into an anthem for marginalized world-building.

    Credits

    Written and Directed byYony Leyser
    Produced byNina Berfelde
    StarringLynn Breedlove
    Kim Gordon
    Kathleen Hanna
    Silas Howard
    G.B. Jones
    Bruce LaBruce
    Genesis P-Orridge
    Peaches
    John Waters
    Music byHyenaz