A diver encounters an injured whale. He decides to help the animal and gets a friendly look of thanks. For the space of a few seconds, the border between the two species seems permeable. The whale disappears in the depths of the ocean and leaves the diver wondering whether this was all just a projection of human hopes.

The aeroplanes are stationary, nothing moves, nothing takes off at the US military airbase in Arizona – until a young woman in a white dress begins to jump on a trampoline outside the fence, framed by an idyllic sunset. She conveys her story from the silent offscreen – only through subtitles. Having come from Saudi Arabia, she is stuck in the US because her father stole her identity papers. So homesick that she is considering drastic measures to get back home, she almost enlists in the military. But the US Army is suspicious and would not station her, a risk factor, anywhere near the Middle East. But there is a Baghdad in Arizona, too …
Artist Samar Al Summary’s work is an investigation into systems of power. She does not only talk about herself, the prejudices and obstacles she faces as a Saudi woman, but also about the crash of two Iraqi air force pilots who were to be trained by the US Air Force but never made it home either. In her dramatically condensed film essay, she takes up the symbolic fight – both against gravity, which she can at least temporarily defy by using cinematic means, and against patriarchy. The latter, however, is not so easy to fight.

In her light-footed film miniature, Zaina Bseiso links the disappearance of the last orange grove from the suburbs of Los Angeles with the fate of the Jaffa orange, a native fruit of Palestine. When she engages her father in a conversation regarding this content and artistic concept, it turns into a discussion about how a good documentary can approach reality and why – with all due respect for realism – we must never underestimate the power of illusion.

An inventive examination of the legacy of the 1990s: In his experimental short film, Ben Young portrays the figure of the then U.S. president – whom he is said to have met once in person in Louisville, Kentucky – as a foil for the questionable political developments, the beginnings of a globalised world and a society marked by collective amnesia. The director’s intelligent, witty and very personal reckoning with Bill Clinton.

How much do staircases and doors leading nowhere in the Californian Winchester House reveal about the owner’s superstitions and how much about the years of converting and rebuilding after the 1906 earthquake? In the centrepiece of his trilogy, Jeremy Blake fills the labyrinthine interiors of this architectural rarity with unreal light and colour apparitions of impressive beauty and oppressive impact.

In the third part of this study of the Winchester mansion in San Jose the eye wanders to the “Century 21” cinema built opposite the street in 1964. Jeremy Blake makes the dream houses correspond visually by means of overpainting in time-based painting technique and visual mass media quotes. The film house contributed to the myth that at the frontier a home for the American Dream was built by gun violence.

From 1884 to 1922, the widow of arms manufacturer Winchester transformed a modest manor in San Jose into a residence of temporarily more than 500 rooms. Rumour has it that it was to protect herself from the ghosts of those shot dead at the frontier. Jeremy Blake starts his Winchester trilogy with a diagnosis of the state of mind of the eccentric building in a Rorschach test of fantastic folded images.