Through an approach that aims to foreground subjectivity, Rachel Ashton creates a record of the diverse biographies, communities, collective memories, and personal traumas that are housed in a given place. The process of translating people’s lived experiences through the act of filmmaking always takes into consideration the artist’s own position and the relations between camera/subject and film/viewer. fifteen weeks later presents two films by Rachel Ashton that focus on social relationships and roles. The works overlay real and fictional life stories and various temporal perspectives, from nostalgic memories to visions of a possible future.

Living Too Late (2022) was filmed in the small Welsh coastal town of Borth and follows Ted and Graham, two old friends and bandmates, whose bond is based on a shared enthusiasm for punk music. With honesty and intimacy, the film documents the dreams that provide support in the face of harsh realities, but also chronicles coping methods that can prove to be fleeting or even destructive. Beyond the two men’s connection, the work reflects on the complex relationship between people and their environment, here in particular the local peat bog, which serves as a natural carbon sink while being threatened by rising sea levels. This landscape provides a backdrop for the close-up of an unconventional friendship.

Crossing the Bar (2025) is a cinematic portrait of the Baßgeige in Braunschweig, one of the oldest jazz bars in Germany. At the film’s center is a one-time performance of Tennessee Williams’s 1944 play The Glass Menagerie. The production transforms the bar’s interior, full of objects and anecdotes, into a stage; the artist and the regular guests embody the play’s various characters, whose personalities, lives, and interpersonal dynamics at times mirror their own. The play, the bar, and the film all witness the interweaving of several layers of reality and fiction, of memory and nostalgia. In this constant shifting between observation and performance, the film captures the emotional landscapes and social relationships within these spaces of interaction. It is a portrait not only of a place, but of the people who inhabit and shape it.

Rachel Ashton (b. 1995 in Worcester, UK) is an artist and filmmaker. She studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg, and Goldsmiths, University of London. She lives and works in Berlin.

The films include dialogues in English and will be screened with English subtitles.

Organized by Clara Maria Blasius

(number of) weeks later is supported by The Gingko Foundation.