A male voice, accompanied by the eponymous instrumental piece by Reinhard Lakomy, comments on photographic and material evidence of the events on the grounds of the Langenstein-Zwieberge subcamp. The audiovisual tour concludes with a visit by an FDJ (Free German Youth) group who lay down wreaths at the memorial site built in 1949. The speaker unequivocally classes this ritual of remembrance as part of the raison d’état.

The married couple Angelika and Horst Butter sum up successes and setbacks of their joint amateur filmmaking. They now produce elaborate puppet animations in their private rooms, under sometimes adverse conditions. They adapt fairy tale and fantasy sources, but also take up topical social issues, for example in an entertaining vision for International Women’s Day.

A cosy family picnic at the place they have been visiting since the Cretaceous period is what Mom, Dad and Go Zilla want. But first the big city that has annoyingly sprung up there must be flattened. In the father’s opinion, the performance of his offspring unfortunately leaves a lot to be desired: Too dreamy and still sucking on a pacifier, the little one just doesn’t wreak enough havoc. It’s an entertaining story in the almost normal everyday life of a family.

High up north, in the Stralsund People’s Dockyard, Gitta Nickel encounters a youth brigade whose members speak frankly: “I’m 27 now. Judging from my own example I can say: it’s been nothing but work, really nothing. I can really say that about me, stark and stiff.” Stralsund as the focal point of socialist conditions of value creation: A ship may be completed every two weeks, but housing, let alone leisure facilities aren’t. The diagnosis: The quality-of-life to performance ratio is less than ideal. The brigade’s team spirit, though, is still strong, even if, as some think, there are some shortcomings on the “ideological side”.

The film opens with the image of an elderly individual in a hospital, hooked to a machine: assistance is needed to slowly breathe in and out. This existential moment of physical precariousness is followed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s typical long shots, though in this case they do not document work processes but look like a prequel to his fantastic science fiction documentary “Homo Sapiens” (2016): deserted airports, swimming pools, playgrounds.

The filmmaker sets out with his identifiable aesthetic tools to tackle the documentation of the first three waves of the Covid-19 pandemic, from March 2020 to December 2021. In Vienna, a major city with a relatively well-functioning health system, he looks at institutions that are in a “flexible learning mode”: intensive care units, emergency shelters, schools, cinemas. Time and again he visits a flower shop that is not system-relevant but, by its own definition, sells food. Lockdown followed by eased restrictions followed by lockdown. The camera registers how paralysis in the face of a natural disaster is superseded in some people by anger at the restrictions. Meanwhile, cases of Long Covid are being treated in the hospitals. Topical, only a little later, these images cut across the repression of what has been experienced.

Railway slewing cranes by TAKRAF in global use: salvaging derailed trains, assembling bridges, moving goods. The company, now operating again under the name “Kirow” and based in Leipzig-Lindenau, has been able to maintain its standing on the global market until the present day. Constantly improved operating comfort and increased maximum loads represent 100 years of the art of engineering.

“See you next year!” a Portuguese fire warden says as he dismantles his control equipment at the end of the season. Humans and nature in southern Europe may be used to forest fires, but that does not change the facts: The ever more massive conflagrations are caused by climate change. We have long been living in the age of fire.

In the Portuguese interior, a forest fire has just devastated a large area. Wounded nature is silent, not a single bird is heard, only the wind that makes the charred tree trunks rustle. But the vegetation recovers astonishingly fast. Where all life seemed to be gone, greenery soon sprouts from the ruined trees. The residents of the affected region are engaged in the reconstruction with great respect for their natural environment. Because plants, too, are sentient creatures. In quiet, almost melancholic, but also hopeful images, the film pays tribute to the strength of the trees and illustrates how essential it would be for humanity to learn to live in harmony with nature again.

What will future urban environments look like? And how are they designed when they are inspired by the imagination of children? 250 children used their imagination to envision the city of tomorrow. On this basis, the VR experience designs walk-through scenarios. The work is part of an ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration to develop new concepts for changing societies.

In 1923, the Dutch erected a radio station on Puntang Mountain on Java deploying indigenous forced labourers. 2,000 metres of wire between two mountain ridges were meant to transmit news from what was then the Dutch East Indies across the 12,000 kilometres to Europe. A speculative and poetic examination of the remains of Radio Malabar – in the earth, in the mountain, in dreams of geoengineering, in local history.

Barcelona, 1991. Juanjo has to repeat the last school year. His new teacher seats him in the last row next to Miquel, who is not exactly happy about this. The two have to write an essay together on the same afternoon. A disagreeable task that is gradually forgotten as they discover that they share a great passion: music!

Juanjo comes from sheltered circumstances, his family pamper him. Miquel is the son of a single mother who could hardly manage to take care of his two siblings without his support. Heavy Metal becomes the refuge and central node of their friendship. Screeching guitars and screamed vocals – with a few remarkable exceptions – are the soundtrack of this exciting but warm-hearted and gentle story that allows a glimpse into the souls of two teenage boys. The film’s visual design is consistently pared down – to the point of leaving out whole sections of the background and character portrayal. The directors’ poignant use of distinctive striking visual elements takes us ingeniously into the world of the two friends. A wonderful journey into a time of changes, insights and growth.

A nervously vibrating camera, a rubber duck being beheaded by algebra. In only one minute and with a vengeance, David Lynch lights a beacon against the school-inculcated view of the world. Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic – the three basic cultural techniques “drilled” into us turn out to be childhood traumas and opponents of the immeasurable, the mysterious and the indescribable.

Numerous films deal with the American Civil War, which raged between the northern Union States and the southern Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. One general who rose to become a war icon and the 18th president of the United States was Ulysses S. Grant. Director Jim Finn uses board games to reconstruct the battles and documents a divided nation full of rebellious factions.

“Bloody Pond” or “The Flaming Forest” are the names given to places below the Mason-Dixon Line where many cruel and confusing clashes took place within a few years. Today only cemeteries, memorial plaques, wax museums and obelisks bear witness to episodes of the war that was to be of such vital importance for the shape of the USA today. Jim Finn’s 16mm shots are a detailed inspection of various stations to which he adds macabre anecdotes and trenchant descriptions. Statesmen, ideologists and warlords haunt the forests, ruins and riverbanks here – like the incidences of light which make the footage light up time and again. There is beauty in these images, in the trickling synthesizer melodies, too, or in the stop motion animations of complicated board games. This beauty has little in common with the dark underpinning of this conflict: deep-seated racism and an adamant belief in the right to own slaves.

After Ulysses S. Grant, the victorious commander of the American Civil War, maverick Jim Finn has now tackled the Apostle Paul. Eighteen centuries lie between the two and yet those historical super-figures have a lot in common. The acts of both were epoch-making, both had to undertake prolonged expeditions to achieve them, and both have inspired a host of propaganda, including numerous board games that also serve as a visual framework for Finn’s latest film. Above all, both remain controversial to this day, though Paul’s actions, due to the thin factual basis, provided and still provide better groundwork for substantially more outlandish interpretations. The films quotes some of the more outrageous ones in an eclectic montage of red-tinged excerpts from biblical epics, Christian fundamentalist talk shows, cartoons, children’s books, dioramas, theme parks and performances by magicians and rapturous choirs.

The curious title refers to a paper of the German theologist Ernst Käsemann, whose research snatched Paul from the grasp of the Antisemites who had usurped him and placed him back in the tradition of Jewish mysticism. That is also the objective of Jim Finn’s film as it gleefully dissects two thousand years of appropriation and propaganda in a wild ride through history.

Her “artificial assistant” is what Claudia Larcher calls the AI that digitally analysed her analogue “Baumeister” series of collages and generated this film from them. Creator or servant spirit, the machine makes architectural sketches waft biomorphically and enlivens (i.e. animates) rigid shapes. The Japanese Metabolists who called for the fluid renewal of their buildings, the organic growth, deformation and decay of architecture, would have liked “The Artist in the Machine”.

Welcome to the realm of sounds! What separates us – language, individualised lifeworlds – can be overcome, for this is where polyphony reigns. In this multiplayer installation, participants come together through singing and synchronised movements and create an authentic communal experience through their combined vocal power.

The whole world, captured on a somewhat dreary pavement in Warsaw. For two years, director Paweł Łoziński stood on the balcony of his flat with his camera and watched the people passing below from up there. The ones he saw and persuaded to talk are young and old, neighbours or simply passers-by. The filmmaker addresses them, asks questions, listens and creates a space for conversations that rarely happen between strangers.

How do passers-by react when they are filmed from a balcony and addressed, stopped from above? Do they walk on, shaking their heads? Or are they willing to engage in dialogue? This place and this staged opportunity seem perfect for making a film that reflects its own premises, because apparently people feel a rather strong need to talk about themselves from this unusual position. Whether hurrying or strolling, happy or thoughtful, posing or quite natural: Each of the participants who happen to come into view reveals something special. Every encounter, however unpremeditated, turns out to be unique. Some expectations of a certain type of person are disappointed, because hardly anyone can be pigeonholed. Łoziński’s experiment invites us to pause, to wait until the world steps into the camera’s field of view.