We are pleased to present the film INVISIBLE PEOPLE (2025) about the extraordinary Butho dance in the presence of the filmmaker at li.wu Rostock
INVISIBLE PEOPLE is an experimental documentary film about Japanese Butoh dance, also
known as the "dance of darkness". This avant-garde form of expressive dance emerged in
Japan after the Second World War and moves between rebellion, ritual and meditation.
The film shows impressive portraits of butoh masters and performers -
including Yoshito Ōno, son of butoh co-founder Kazuo Ōno, who died during filming
. In INVISIBLE PEOPLE,
Berger interweaves personal experiences with poetic and
philosophical texts by butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata. Based on the loss of her
father, the director embarks on a cinematic search for the invisible - for
moments, people and movements that take place between life and death, visibility and
memory.
"The film focuses on the hidden," says Alisa Berger. "I wanted to create a trance-like
experience that makes the invisible tangible - that which exists between things."
Alisa Berger, born in 1987 in Makhachkala (Republic of Dagestan), grew up in Lviv (Ukraine) and
later in Essen. She studied film and fine arts at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne
(KHM), at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá and at the renowned Le Fresnoy -
Studio national des arts contemporains in France. From 2018 to 2022, she lived in Tokyo, where she
researched and practiced Butoh dance on location.
Berger is one of the most exciting young voices in experimental film in Germany. She
was nominated for the Max Ophüls Prize and the FIRST STEPS Award and received the Studio Collector Prize from Isabelle & Jean-Conrad Lemaître at the Jeu de Paume, Paris in 2023
. Her
works have been shown at the Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam), Jeu de Paume (Paris), Tokyo
Metropolitan Art Museum, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, HMKV Dortmund, Kindl Berlin and at festivals
such as the Berlinale, IDFA, CPH:DOX and Hot Docs.
With INVISIBLE PEOPLE, Alisa Berger presents a multi-layered portrait of a dance that defies
clear explanations - and at the same time is a deeply personal film about farewell,
transformation and living on in the invisible.
