This insight into an international subculture shows that the ballroom scene is more than just extravagant competitions. Five ballroom dancers describe a reality in which white-dominated, heteronormative patterns have no place. They talk about ideas of cultural appropriation, about safe spaces, community and mutual support, about identity and self-expression.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, they say. Shelly Silver’s beholders range in age from seven to nineteen years. They focus their attention on artworks in the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts. Their spontaneous interpretations of the works allow for resonances: both, the paintings as well as their young reviewers, reveal different things about themselves, depending on the point of view.

“Shit that I’m not a boy”, a teenager exclaims as she stands in front of the painting of a rich young man who lived centuries before her, perhaps in the Netherlands. Because boys are allowed much more, she says. Playing basketball outside, for example. Shelly Silver’s hypothesis is as simple as it is fruitful: The outside perspective will always lead back to one’s own perspective. The director’s questions and suggestions are not revealed. But she picks out details of the paintings to substantiate and illustrate statements – or put them up for discussion again. Silver’s finesse lies in the montage. Meanwhile, the timeline of the exploration runs from the past to the present, from the pierced feet of Jesus Christ via a reclining naked nymph by Lucas Cranach the Elder to the more recent photography of the Swedish artist Arvida Byström.

Osario and Benedito, two brothers, lead a quiet and isolated life. Gravity doesn’t seem to exist in their cosmos. Objects float around – no up, no down, no points of orientation. The two have never known anything else than this floating in space. We float along and are irritated: is all this lightness just an illusion?

The river Oder: A historical and cultural landscape churned again and again by the tide of events of the past century. A tale told in concentric circles about a region which was and still is the scene of the beginning, end and open middle of voluntary and involuntary migrations. Virulent issues of daily life and politics that, asked with confident casualness, provide a robust account of the present.

Movements and stories in the border region between Poland and Germany – Andreas Voigt’s new film takes up the themes of his 1992 work “Borderland – A Journey”. The charged term “homeland” stirs up (trouble in) the minds and hearts of the people: What it once was and what has become of it! Sure, that’s not the top priority in their daily agenda. But how people appropriate this term and how that in turn structures their attitudes also determines how they figure out the taste of life in the here and now of Europe. The search for closeness is confronted with the insistence on distance. Communication about belonging becomes flimsy because the body language says something different than the spoken word. As a film that’s not about administering a politically correct separation diet, “Borderland” provokes experiences and enables encounters.

A short yes and a long but. A man in a plaid shirt says a friendly hello and rhapsodizes about travelling to southern countries. But when he returns, he finds those southern foreigners have been swept, yes, into Switzerland. That’s not good. Not good at all! Every sentence fires up the next. The longer his hate-rant lasts, the redder and madder the otherwise friendly plaid man grows.

These fucking doubts! And isn’t a 100-kilo massif of a man who recites tender poetry on stage a contradiction in terms anyway? He almost fell silent. But then he defeated the booming silence and made his own fears the subject of his slam poetry performances. One small step for mankind, one big leap for a shy giant.