Europäischer Wettbewerb

FRA 2011, 22’

Two women live in one of Cologne’s largest private houses, a villa built in 1912 – with a cat, a dog and their extensive private art collection. A precise camera captures the fastidious furnishings and design of both house and garden, through which the inhabitants, their staff and visitors appear to move in orderly paths. We rarely see the protagonists in close-up, instead they blend in to an overall picture, which holds the viewer’s attention in a symbiosis between art and life. Deliberately rhythmic static camera shots allow us time to take in the myriad details. Just before it moves on, the film shows us a cross-section of this unique place, where living space and art space mingle.

Büttel, Germany. Fragments of an “empty” landscape – with its characteristic windmills, a yellow mailbox, a petrol station. Industrial, mobile homes of construction workers. The sole commentary is a poem by Ulrika Almut Sandig, where the word “Heimat” sounds foreign and empty.

AUT 2011, 13’

During his excursions into the literature, archives and history of China Ivan Garcia encounters the Red Guard Zhou Xuan, the daughter of a metal worker, who was born in 1946 and later studied mathematics and mechanics,. She speaks to us with the voice of the younger Su Guangyu, leading us through Mao’s cultural revolution. But Zhou Xuan is film, she is a fiction fed by the unspeakable knowledge of the multitude. In our lives there are circumstances, truths and hells of which a single individual cannot tell. 

Cairo in 2011-2012, during the revolution. The camera is aimed at the ground. On a walk through the city it films feet, road surfaces, suitcases, carpets, rubbish and flyers, accompanied by the sound of traffic, scraps of conversation, people chanting. The unusually limited bird’s eye view stimulates the imagination. The footsteps and film cuts are sometimes unhurried but then there is a sense of anxiety. People are lying on the ground.

ESP 2012, 26’

GER 2011, 12’

Großmutters Wohnung ist nachempfunden. Dinge des früheren Lebens auf Flohmärkten in Buenos Aires gekauft. Fotos Verschwundener sind imaginiert. Auch die mit anderen Großmüttern zuvor geführten Gespräche über die Jahre 1976 bis 1983 werden auf einer poetischen Ebene verdichtet. Alles ist animiert, aber wahr. Auf diesem Wege wird das Unvorstellbare darstellbar: 30.000 Kinder, Frauen und Männer verschwanden während der Diktatur General Videlas und kehrten nie zurück. Die in Internierungslagern geborenen Babys wurden zur Erziehung an Familien übergeben, die dem Militär und Terror dienten. Ihre Großmütter suchen bis heute nach ihnen.

AUT 2011, 5’

The successive uncovering of trauma experienced by the Turkish family of Arslan from the German town of Mölln. An annual family and community meeting commemorating the tragic day – the day of the fire that killed 3 family members. The survivors struggle to cope in every way possible. The film shows a specific example of human cruelty and stupidity (the perpetrator is a victim himself – a victim of family violence and neo-nazi ideology); it is also a universal story of coping with unjust trauma. 

UK, GEO 2011, 29’

Julian lives in a small town in northern Florida – with his mother, without a job, without a future. When he’s not hanging out with his friends he goes to the American Veterans’ Club to recite one of his patriotic poems. Once a year he leaves his scruffy home to take part in the 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York. He greets policemen with a “God bless you sir. Thank you for serving” in passing. Julian’s naive patriotism stems from his lack of personal prospects. Thomas Haley’s subtle portrait of this “poor white boy”, clinging to the American Dream, at the same time describes the inner turmoil of a society traumatised by the events of 9/11.

Die Frau des Filmautors wird polnische Sprachlehrerin in Azara, Argentinien. Die ganze Familie – das Ehepaar und zwei Kinder – zieht nach Südamerika. Azara ist ein bescheidenes Städtchen, in dem es immerzu regnet. Der achtjährige Sohn der Starońs schließt Freundschaft mit Marcia Majcher, Tochter eines Nachfahren polnischer Einwanderer. Marcia ist reif für ihr Alter: Ihr Vater lebt aus finanziellen Gründen auf einer Plantage weit entfernt vom Familiendomizil, ihre Mutter hat psychische Probleme. Das Mädchen probiert verschiedene Berufe aus: Sie versucht, einen Laden zu öffnen, arbeitet in einer Ziegelfabrik. Jasiek begleitet sie und hilft ihr, für ihn ist sie wie eine Reiseleiterin in die seltsame Welt eines fremden Landes und eines anderen Kontinents. Der Vertrag seiner Mutter läuft bald aus.

GER 2012, 20’

RUS 2011, 36’

GER 2012, 27’

With calm concentration the camera tracks through modest homes in a remote village in rural Poland. People are watching TV, listening to music, playing computer games. The inhabitants don’t seem bothered, are not addressed directly. Now and then the camera closes in on their faces. Otherwise it makes the transition to the next home through a close-up of a radio or a TV screen. Then our gaze can continue to roam. Like voyeuristic, weightless divers we comb through the moving tableau, and are permitted to look into living spaces that normally lie beyond our perceptional horizon.

Rich in colour and content, minimal in its form, a story about a father who painted. His colour preferences changed during the long years of practising his art. He only ever painted in the evenings, as he was an accountant during the day. He never liked to throw things away. He was not fond of corporal punishment. The story of a man, realised through the objects he made use of and for which he came up with applications of his own.

The history of December 1970 and August 1980. Creating the Solidarity movement presented through the story of a hypothetical activist; rich in private and social emotions, emanating with the spirit of Polish opposition of the '70s and '80s. The offscreen narration accompanies the archival photographs. Basing on the recollections of many women, Maj Hasager created one cohesive narrative, whose key dramaturgic moments are: the cold asphalt before the shipyard gates, and a procession of men led by the story's heroine.

GER 2011, 6’

Paratroopers landing in Provence. The images are commented on by a voiceover typical of WWII propaganda newsreels. Battle sequences are interwoven with footage of soldiers resting. The newsreel ends, the film's frames withdraw. Once again we are watching paratroopers in Provence, but the commentary is different – now in the convention of a TV documentary on a history channel. Dragoon, an airborne operation of the allied forces, began in August 1944 with a landing in Provence.

FRA 2011, 20’

A heap of rubble from buildings bombed in wartime rises like a green forested wall outside the city which Edward has refused to acknowledge for 22 years. The hermit has built his shack and paths out of the bricks he digs nonstop from the ground and constantly handles. He can sell the metal he unearths in the process. He has no objections to the film about himself.

ESP 2011, 48’

A ten-minute product of a fascination with the possibility to produce pure cinematic beauty, lined with melancholy and an affinity towards industrial buildings. Sequences of factory interiors and working machinery that give the impression of 19th-century relics, interwoven with images of lamps against a green background, musty water, peeling paint, and broken windows through which sunlight beams.

FRA 2012, 3’

The Romans called the département in the far northwest of Brittany that today bears the number 29 “End of the Earth”. Finis Terrae. Its Breton name Penn ar Bed means “Beginning of the World”. Between these two points of view an unnamed suicidal man survives in a boat on the beach, and attributes his favourite quote to the anarchistic chansonnier Léo Ferré: Better lonely than in bad company. In death the man hopes to finally find his daughter Sophie, who died before him but still has no gravestone.

Die im Filmtitel behauptete Leerstelle Grossvaters, der angenommene Mangel seines Lebens, erweist sich beim Tasten durch dessen familiäres S8 Archiv und verwandte Filmmaterialien als bodenlose Fundgrube unserer Neugier und Spekulation. Der sehnsüchtig-wehmütigen Collage gelingt ein mentaler Spiegel aus Epoche, Idylle und Traumata. So wird das einzelne Unbehagen ein gemeinschaftliches und aus dem Bild der Familie der seelische Klang eines Unwetters. Erinnerungen sind das einzige Paradies, aus dem wir nicht vertrieben werden können. Gleichzeitig aber sind sie die einzige Hölle, zu der wir auch ohne Schuld verdammt sind.

At the beginning we see Mr Kikuchi massaging his face. The precise movements prepare him for his regular daily routine, and prepare the audience to watch him and his wife as they go about their tasks. Unhurriedly the camera captures them working in the fields and in their garden. Some repairs need doing to the house, they cook and eat, do Aikido, barbecue with guests. In the evening a hot bath. A life in flow and at one with Nature. Over again the focus is on the simple things and gestures. After retirement the Kikuchis created their farm on the Japanese island of Kyushu – the fields, the garden, the buildings – with their own hands. Only the vapour trails in the sky bring back memories of their former life in the city.

ESP 2011, 14’

GER 2011, 4’

Every day we are bombarded with images from many different countries, making us feel we’re in touch with the world and understand what’s going on. Beneath TV footage of demonstrations, uprisings, exchanges of gunfire, conflagrations and floods crawls a line of text, a news ticker that speaks of the subjectivity of our perception: “There are many things I don’t know, but I see them, and what I see, am I.”

A walking comedy from Appenzell about naive and magical chasms. Mountains and echoes reflect our inmost soul. The commentary whispers and dramatises, open hate of tourists takes over and makes the camera tilt. An expressionist essay examines what mountains do to us, and what we do in them.

A car journey through a landscape, villages, an industrial area. We are looking straight ahead, only occasionally to the side. All is silent. Here language exists only in the form of a literary text crawling across the windscreen. In three episodes a narrator considers his own experiences and those of his family during the bombardments in the Bosnian War. He tries to find connections, to make logical sense of them. But the journey into the past opens up a chasm between the images of the present and the text about what happened in 1992. The lack of soundtrack, the dead silence, takes possession of the images. From time to time the very words cast doubt the communicability of the experience, contradict themselves. The destination is not a specific place (of remembrance). 

A boy is dancing in the street amidst the cars. He is probably dancing for money. His attire is bizarre – something like an ice-skating dress and puffed pants. He has no headphones on, you can't see any music player. A quote from Pushkin at the film's opening mentions a certain sound of a South-American flute that can be heard only by its player.

BIH 2011, 17’

GER 2011, 43’

Die Kamera begleitet den obdachlosen Zoran, der durch das abendliche Belgrad läuft. Er versucht, eine Ikone zu verkaufen, bettelt um eine Zigarette. Die Gegenwart ist wie sie ist. Zoran lacht in die Kamera. Hinter seinem Lächeln, den Linien um seine Augen und seiner obdachlosen Entourage enthüllt der Filmemacher eine menschliche Geschichte, mit diesem Teil Europas verstrickt, mit allem anderen verstrickt. Zwei Studenten der Wirtschaftswissenschaften kommentieren fröhlich die düstere makroökonomische Lage. Für sie ist Zoran ein gutes Beispiel für solche Überlegungen. Zoran spricht für Zoran: „Hier sind wir... Was ich bin. Wer du bist... Jetzt fang’ ich wieder an...”

POL 2011, 15’

GBR 2011, 18’

AUT 2011, 5’

ITA 2012, 25’

FRA 2011, 27’

Ein Kinderschuh liegt auf einer Bahnsteigkante. Ein Video ohne Zusatztechnik, ohne Schnitt bewahrt das Drama seiner Verlorenheit in Echtzeit und verleiht ihm einen 170 Jahre alten Titel.

POL, NOR 2011, 30’

China’s urbanisation programme is consuming up to 40 per cent of the world’s cement and steel reserves. Kangbashi is being built as an ultramodern administrative, research, finance and education centre to dwarf all its predecessors. Not far away, Yumen is crumbling hopelessly. Two manifestations of megalomania, both of them ghost towns: one post-industrial, the other obsessed by the future. Against the backdrop of the one goats graze among the ruins, and in the other the world’s largest and most beautiful fountains are all but deserted. Man Made Place is a Janus-faced opera, like a gigantic coin, not with two sides but with haunting images full of quiet mourning and painful melancholy. 

Es könnte ein Ausschnitt aus einer Fernsehdokumentation der Volksrepublik Polen sein. Fanatismus, Härte, vollständige Aufopferung. Nahaufnahme eines Arbeitergesichts: zerfurcht, mit einem der Schnurrbärte, die in den Siebzigern und Achtzigern so beliebt waren. Gearbeitet wird mit Hingabe, ohne Faulenzen, obwohl der veränderte Rhythmus des Hammers verwundern könnte. Die folgenden Bilder decken die Konvention der gefilmten Situation auf: Der Hammer des Arbeiters schlägt die Luft, er selbst steht in einem auf dem Boden aufgemalten Rechteck. Die Werkshalle (in der die Handlung stattfindet) ist absolut authentisch, mit einer starken symbolischen Bedeutung. Es ist die Halle der Schiffswerft in Danzig. Die Produktion liegt zwischen Dokumentarfilm und Videokunst.

Maria is passing away, gently and peacefully, surrounded by family and friends. The calm voices of women fill the room – a room with a television set, a tile stove, and candles lit by Maria's side. She is sleeping peacefully. Her companions are eating, laughing quietly, and talking all the time. Maria passes away amidst their friendly and cheerful voices. This documentary film, very simple both in terms of image and sound, is filled with calmness, discretion, respect for the situation and characters; at the same time it aptly captures this terminal situation and its participants.

Corinnas jüngerer Bruder Tiemo verbringt sein Leben in sozialer Isolation und konsequenter Schwarzseherei, er ist lebensmüde, verweigert die Therapie. Die Eltern ertragen das nicht länger und verweigern ihm ihr Haus. Seitdem dämmert Tiemo in einem Wohnwagen in Ingmars Garten vor sich hin, Corinna verstrickt sich immer mehr in sein Problem, hofft aber trotzdem, dass von jetzt ab alles aufwärts geht. Aber Tiemos Zweifel scheinen unüberwindlich und seine Absichten absichtlich weltfremd zu sein.

Wolves’ eyes shine in the night, surround you, seemingly multitudinous. War has many facets, abduction and displacement have opposite causes. Janina, born in eastern Poland, found herself in the Soviet Union after the German-Russian division of the country, was deported to Siberia at the age of ten and six years later to Stettin, which was now called Szczecin. This is where Annemarie lived, until Janina arrived, when she moved to the West with the Germans. Both women have ceased to weep. They have wept enough during their lives. 

Schnee, eintönige Musik, vorbeifahrende Züge. Eine Reise? Vor der Kulisse einer Nachbarschaft, die überall in Europa sein könnte, laufen Menschen in verschiedene Richtungen. Ein aufmerksamer Beobachter betrachtet sie, weiß nichts von ihnen (?). Sie könnten meine oder deine Nachbarn sein. Hinter dem Vorhang: Vielleicht bist du das? Alltägliche Schönheit, Langeweile, Hast, Angst – oder vielleicht ein perfekt arrangiertes System, in diesem Fall für einen Film? Solltest du große Fragen stellen und ein Universum bauen? Solltest du die Rechtecke der Balkone zählen? Dich auf die Muster konzentrieren: eines Teppichs, der Vorhänge, der Struktur des Schnees? Das richtige Detail finden? Der Anfang und das Ende einer Reise, und was dazwischen liegt.

POL 2011, 17’

Der Esel ist das einzige Tier, das Jesus getragen hat. Es ist ein heiliges Tier. Ein Esel geht hier wie durch eine biblische Landschaft. Über ihm kreisen Geier. Der Esel stirbt in Einsamkeit. Aus seinem Unterkiefer wird ein Musikinstrument. Der 2009 verstorbene afro-peruanische Tap Dancer und Cajun Musiker Amador Ballumbrosio wusste, dass er einmal, wie alle hier, als Esel wiederkehren werde. Anstatt zu trauern und zu weinen, tanzten die Menschen auf seiner Beerdigung und machten Musik wie er. Auf Eselszähnen.

Die statische Aufnahme einer Gasse in Teheran. Kleinste Veränderungen der Helligkeit. Blick auf eine leere Straße, am Ende ist die Bewegung von menschlichen Figuren kaum auszumachen. Ampeln blinken, das Fehlen von Leben wird überwältigend. Eine vierspurige Straße: erleuchtet, voller Lichtpunkte: Hochhäuser. Mittelpunkt, der Gipfel des Lichts, ist der Azadi Tower (Freiheitsturm). Um ihn herum verdichteten sich die Ereignisse der jüngeren iranischen Geschichte: die Revolution von 1979, nationalistische und patriotische Demonstrationen während des Krieges gegen den Irak. Die Bilder wurden im Frühjahr 2011 mit der Kamera eines Mobiltelefons aufgenommen. Während des Arabischen Frühlings wehrten sich die Regimes gegen die Protestierenden, indem man sie von Telefon- und Internetverbindungen abschnitt.

An Israeli airstrike kills Ahmed Jabari, the leader of the Al Qassam Brigade. Amidst the chaos a young combatant gathers up flesh and an eye of Jabari in a cloth and takes them to the place where the body is being mourned. God willing, he will one day blow himself up in Israel so they will look like this too. At the same time Bissan, the daughter of the Palestinian journalist who is supervising the filming in Gaza, has three fingers blown off by shrapnel, and he fights for her to have surgery in Israel. The operation there is a success. The concept of OTS, a TV documentary series that has been a world-wide success is: Let the locals tell their stories.

A poster is an image with a purpose. It informs, it advertises, it warns or entertains. Collectively, posters form a gallery in the public space. But if there are no longer any messages, if advertising is prohibited and the billboards are abandoned, they reflect only our inner void. Out of the sound of traffic in the street, voice fragments and a concert of whistles and sirens emerges a continuous ominous tone that grows steadily louder, like the sound of approaching aircraft squadrons.

GER 2011, 13’

A chronology of isolation: in the autumn of 2011 Banja Koviljača had a population that included 1500 illegal immigrants, who were very conspicuous in the town. They used the small spa on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina in western Serbia as an interim stopover on their way into the EU. But the town’s inhabitants, who had previously made good money renting out accommodation to the asylum-seekers, said “no” to the immigrants. In the spring of 2012, on the initiative of the citizens of Banja Koviljača, units of special police ensured that the town was freed of immigrants. In September the inhabitants celebrated their royal carnival amongst themselves. We see a sad performance with dancers dressed as cockerels: filmed as a farce about the spa culture, now saved from foreign influence. Then a melancholy journey through a wall of fog that isolates the town from the outside world. 

Durch ein Hochwasser der Vistula verloren im Mai 2010 Tausende das Dach über ihrem Kopf. In der Ruine seines Elternhauses findet Czapla als einziges eine Schachtel mit alten Familienfotos. Aber auch sie sind vom Wasser und Schlamm heillos zerstört und beim besten Willen nicht mehr zu retten. Film als Versuch, zeitlich und natürlich Vergangenes, bruchstückhaft Fremdes und die Katastrophe als eigene Herkunft und Familiengeschichte zu bewahren.

FRA 2011, 30’

AUT, ROU 2011, 20’

POL 2011, 26’

ESP 2012, 13’

POL 2011, 16’

GER 2012, 29’

The bodies of parents grow old. The mind of an adult child refuses to accept these changes. Daniel Bunnik speaks about this directly in his diptych about his father and his mother. Shadow obscures the most drastic elements of the picture, the lighting is discreet. The author's mum has strategies for walking down the stairs – comical, in a way. The weight of the body is still bearable for its owner. For whom is this weight more difficult to withstand: for the parent or the child? The child keeps rebelling and the parent must accept it? The burdens of rebellion and acceptance is counterbalanced by the final scene.

Cornelia is tense and focused. She turns her laptop on and watches long binary sequences. Her face grows tighter, while her gaze, persistently observing the screen, reveals utmost concentration. The binary sequence runs up and down underneath her fingers. “I'm ready,” says Cornelia. The zeros and ones flood the room. Cornelia Beddies' record is 2940 binary symbols memorised in 30 minutes. The code used to digitally reproduce William Turner's “Snow storm at sea” is about 2 million symbols.

We don’t need a road here. There are more and more poachers and they drive foreign snow vehicles, with a road we’d be robbed of everything. We used to have so many elks here, now there are none left. In an endless winter landscape men feel that they and their animals are threatened by our world, until one after another they leave it.

This three-minute film is marked with cultural “isms” of the past two centuries. This can be taken both as its fault and its merit. The daring swimmer submerges and emerges, alone against the water's current, but is she actually against the current of meanings produced in the audio layer? The fear of being overwhelmed by them is indeed a bother, one wishes to escape, and the current is relentless. It makes its way mercilessly into the ears with its monotonous rhythm. The framework for this performance was made with the “rhythmisms” of several artistic generations.

Dr Hans Schonger has followed in his father’s footsteps and is an expert in one of the fringe fields of science: leaf-fall research. During his field-work in the forest he comes across an unusual creature, the timid “Bigfoot”, who is on the run. The sensitive scientist gains the trust of this far-travelled individual, despite their being two seekers worlds apart –expressed in the film by the use of a split screen. A study of a unique friendship that transcends linguistic and cultural barriers. 

The water reflects a gigantic building. One could take it for a part of an overgrown housing estate in an impoverished district. A wall separates the building from a strip of greenery – a miserable area of wilderness in the middle (or perhaps on the outskirts – we don't know yet) of town. On the wall, someone sprayed the word SPACE. There we become the invisible onlookers of an intimate, though shouted, conversation. A young woman is talking through the moat, wall, and barbed wire with her love, an inmate inside the huge prison complex not far from central Amsterdam. She is with her daughter.

Das einfache und wiederholte An- und Ausschalten einer Deckenlampe führt in Flora Watzals gerasteter Bildoberfläche wie durch eine stroboskopische Verlangsamung und Zerlegung zu einem Effekt, der unweigerlich Heiterkeit auslöst. Und das Klicken des Kippschalters führt durch Überlagerungen durch ein akustisches Geflecht bis hin zum rhythmischen Rattern.

At first just 16 photos, dating from 1992, of a basically simple movement, combined in rhythmic variations. Each image is allocated to a note of a 12-tone scale, until the visual event of sitting down blends with the musical and becomes comical. Then blue sky, white clouds, black chairs and sensual entanglement in an earworm of a New Orleans tune and a 2D world of 25 frames per second, but full of rotation, reflection, refinement, time-lapse, pixilation, rotoscoping and illusion to the point of self-deception in this extended self-portrait that begins with a childhood photo from 20 years before the film, and ends with the drawing of an old man 20 years after it.

Two women – one mature, the other very young, positioned symmetrically in relation to each other, symmetrically dressed. The young woman talks about getting into character, about constructing a personality, about how she becomes that role's persona. She starts to speak in third person: about the actress, about the audition, about the feeling of transparency. The senior woman looks to the side. A suspenseful autothematic situation between an actress and a casting professional – played out with image, short monologue, and silence.

Vor 5 Jahren bot der senegalesische Staat 10 Frauen die Chance, eine Fahrerlaubnis zu machen und ein Auto auf Kredit zu kaufen. Heute gibt es in Dakar unter den 15.000 Taxifahrern 15 Frauen. Boury, eine davon, begleitet der Film durch den Streit, den ein Mann mit mittelalterlichen Argumenten gegen sie vom Zaun bricht, und durch den Tag bis hin zu ihrem Traum: eine eigene Taxi Company, in der Frauen und Männer arbeiten können. Die Company soll Malaou heißen, wie das Pferd eines Helden Senegals. Bourys Vater starb vor 3 Jahren bei einem Autounfall, weshalb sie glaubt, dass sie auch für ihren Vater eine der Taxi Sisters wurde und so seine Funktion in der Familie übernehmen konnte.

BLR 2012, 21’

An analysis of modern-day capitalism, definitely surpassing everyday media coverage. The authors have interviewed economy experts, offenders, and activists fighting for change. The analysis is aggressive – due to its content, which can be an unpleasant surprise for the meek (the economic news receivers unskilled at analysing modern capitalism – most of us, that is), as well as its grotesque form. The absurdity and horror of economic reality wittingly presented through animations and talks taking place in a virtual pub.

GER 2011, 7’

For a long time Jean-Gabriel Périot wanted to make a film about the Black Panther civil rights movement. But this was not possible until he met Boogers in Tours and heard his song “The Devil”, which, in the version of the time, faded into a Jeremiah Wright sermon. Périot’s footage loops of violence in a bar and on a sidewalk are not a video clip, they describe the relentlessness of racism. Wherever it reigns there will be not just one blow, kick or shot, but this will happen again and again, the moment a victim shows up in the “wrong” place, answers back or stands up for himself.

GBR 2012, 15’

The Peruvian civil war lasted two decades (1980-2000) and cost the lives of 69,000 people, 70 percent of whom belonged to the Quechua-speaking rural population. Terrible crimes were committed not only by the left-wing rebel groups, but also by the military and the police. In addition to its final report, Peru’s Reconciliation Commission compiled an archive of 1500 photographs, on which the film draws. Using selected photographs the director develops a poetic narrative, which is augmented by statements from the forensic specialist José Pablo Baraybar. This is a film about the power of images waiting to be viewed, but which later continue to resurface, as if they were part of one’s own memory.

“Most of all I'd like to work in a... where women walk around in fashionable dresses. I'd like to be an actress. And I'd like to be pretty. And for all the boys to love me, and for everyone to know me” - Kasia confesses. She is 6 years old, has a vivid imagination, lots of energy, dreams, and plans. She carefully observes the world around her and is not naive. Kasia, her siblings, parents, and neighbours are separated from the “better” world by a high wall. Kasia lives in Central-Eastern Europe, in Poland. She dreams of dancing lessons, but knows that you need to pay for those, and her parents must first and foremost feed the family.

A motion picture about Eadweard Muybridge, who analysed the movement of a galloping horse with the use of photography in the 1870s. Jean-Michel Rolland rhythmically repeats two shots of the Marseillais race track. The beauty of gallop is gone here. The crack of overcoming an obstacle brings to mind meaningless effort and pain, and the connotations with Muybridge give rise to a variety of questions regarding technology, ideology, analysis, evolution, and activism.

The Garib Nagar slums, Bandra district, Bombay, India. Adjoining houses, colourful garbage. Twelve years old Rubina likes this place: “Life here is nice, really. (…) There are eight-ten kids in every house in the neighbourhood.” For Rubina and her friends, the slums are one huge playground. They can bathe in the rain. Rubina knows, however, that each house can drift away, and each grownup or child can get very sick. She wants to be an actress but is unsure of the future. Rubina Ali is a genuine slum-dweller. She has played in two movies; her first one was “Slumdog millionaire.”

Anonymous consumer products on a shelf. Nonstop staccato from the small and large print from the packages, catalogues, consumer information and world history. In the foreground Auguste Rodin’s “Thinker”, posing as he does in countless copies the world over, sitting and thinking and thinking und depicting for all time Dante Alighieri. But this Thinker is made neither of bronze nor plaster, but of flesh and blood. Here and now a Serb contemplates human behaviour, until the infernal fire turns his supermarket too into the gates of hell.

According to Clausewitz, war is the continuation of politics by other means. 16 years after the war the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague sentences the Croatian general Ante Gotovina to 24 years’ imprisonment for war crimes against Serbian civilians. On the streets people sing a fervent a love-song for their hero, then are stunned when the loudspeakers announce his sentence. They weep, defiantly, angrily, and one declares war. The crowd chants “Fight, fight, fight! Fight for our people!” A year later the Tribunal reverses the verdict and finds him not guilty on all counts. Ante Gotovina is a free man and is given honorary citizenship of the city of Split. Since Roman times it is said that before the courts and on the high seas we are in God’s hands.

Wera und Marcels Mutter Tonia kam als jüdische Kommunistin nach Palästina. Von dort wurde sie nach Frankreich deportiert. Ihr Mann Sioma kämpfte in Spanien, wurde in Frankreich interniert, der Gestapo übergeben, in Auschwitz ermordet. Tonia ließ sich in Frankreich 1941 als Jüdin registrieren, wurde dort aber 1945 wegen Illegalität verhaftet. Mit ihren Kindern kehrt sie nach Polen zurück, wird hier 1949 verhaftet, 5 Jahre lang gedemütigt, gefoltert und bezichtigt sich dann selbst und trotz der Entlassung im Sinne der Anklage, eine Handlangerin Noel Fields gewesen zu sein. Bis zu ihrem Lebensende in Israel bleibt sie Kommunistin, Wera und Marcel summen ein linkes Kinderlied, das in ihnen übrig blieb.

The intersection of two straight lines, not only in the acrobatics of formulae but also as far as perspective in concerned, lies at infinity. If we stood on rails and looked along them, optical illusion and lack of experience would help overcome the mathematics. But what if, right at our feet, there were countless intersections of countless rails, and what if they looked anything but straight, and the whole tangle began to revolve? We wouldn’t trust our senses, wouldn’t know which way to turn, and that would be the end of all our infinity. No train would ever get through unscathed.

A man in the subway talks about his fight with corruption, about the corporation people who killed his family and now want to silence him forever. Images of a modern city, scenes from the life of an ordinary Chinese family, and archival footage are accompanied by Tibetan and Western music, including “Lacrimosa” from Mozart's “Requiem,” as well as themes from the “Foundation” cycle by Isaac Asimov. A universal tale about civilisations.

A metropolis pictured from the perspective of a cemetery located on Hart Island in New York. Since 1689, the 18-hectare area served as a burial ground for the homeless, children, newborns. The images of the island – a deserted, cluttered place ideal for a population of wild birds – are accompanied by a dry report on the number and headcount of the transports of the deceased, and on the system of arranging bodies in mass graves. Metropolises and civilisations have their cemeteries bereft of plates or memorials, and their junkyards – literally and figuratively.

FRA 2011, 11’

“In Tivim there’s a street, in the street a house, in the house a staircase” ... The voice of a little girl leads us into the rich and colourful images of this animated documentary, created together with HIV-infected children in a hospital in Tivim (Goa, India). The drawings and voices are from the boys and girls themselves. They talk about their time in the hospital, their everyday lives and their dreams – with the fantastic logic of children.

FIN 2011, 7’

Karthago, Vorort von Tunis, März 2011, mitten im Schlachtfeld des arabischen Frühlings ein Luxushotel. Leerer Strand, leerer Pool, leere Lobby. Alles verwaist. Nur zwei, drei ältere Touristen waren über die Kämpfe hinweg geblieben. Oder sind danach zurückgekommen. Man sieht es ihnen nicht an. Sie liegen in der Sonne. Wie immer. Tischtennis. Bar. Nachtclub. Das Ballett tritt in Uniformen auf und draußen dankt ein revolutionäres Graffiti Facebook. Sonne, Wellness, Entertainment, Internet, Revolution, Entertain- ment, Wellness, Sonne.

GER 2012, 22’

First the musician Todd Terje speaks: YouTube clips of someone called “Inspector Norse” inspired his dance track of the same name. In real life, Inspector Norse is Marius Solem Johansen. The 27-year-old lives with his sick father in a dismal little Norwegian town, where he runs a tanning studio. Marius hoped to make the big time with his music, but had to accept that no-one was interested: “Whateverest” represents the huge pile of his unfulfilled dreams and plans. A life in the superlative of whatever. The camera is watching when this lonely nerd dances round the supermarket, or when he rampages, completely stoned, through the night-time town dressed as a Christmas tree. An exemplary tale of a lost generation, as only life could write it?