In 1885, two boys came across a large collection of Chumash Indian religious artefacts in a cave in California’s San Martin Mountains. Later named Bowers Cave, it is now located on a landfill site. Lee Lynch and Lee Anne Schmitt’s graceful, protean short braids together a panoply of different texts and images to unearth the different layers to this all-too American story and allow its wider implications to resonate: photos of museum exhibits given their Chumashan names in voice-over, historical quotes that move across views of contemporary industrial activity, Indigenous figures rendered as bright plastic toys, the mouth of the cave and the markings carved into its walls.

“Why should I move? I was born here.” While a senseless war is waged in Vietnam and million-dollar rockets are shot to the moon, there is not enough decent housing in New York – and worse, the poor are being forcibly evicted from their homes, says an angry protagonist of this activist film which introduces the New York squatter movement. Latin Americans in particular are forced to leave the lucrative Manhattan housing market, but the protesters do not accept this without putting up a fight. “Break & Enter” is a spontaneous and encouraging film document about self-organised communities based on solidarity.

At American high schools, the threat of school shootings has become omnipresent. In addition to regular drills of how to act in case of assault, security forces and metal detectors are now part of everyday life in the schools. In the name of security, a whole industry is busy developing bulletproof hoodies and blackboards, arming teachers and installing ever more surveillance devices. Is this prevention? Or a self-fulfilling prophecy?

While cheerleaders rehearse, basketball teams play and homecoming queens are crowned, adults in the background prepare for the emergency: What to do if a school is attacked – from inside or outside? Behaviour and meditation training to prevent violence in the first place are one thing. More money, however, is spent on armament. The so-called security industry has long entered the school market. Todd Chandler’s restrained observation takes a look at the arms and service industries and the media, at social psychologists as well as teachers. He cleverly focuses not on individual schools and incidents but rather on how a whole system responds to a threat.

Eating dirt and burping with relish – an earthworm refuses to be satisfied with this embarrassing evolutionary outcome for his species and sets out to learn better things. But imitating many-legged and winged insects does not result in distinguished behaviour but rather leads to mortal danger. Ethan Barrett demonstrates magnificently that clay is the pinnacle of the evolutionary pyramid of animation, especially when it is set to such a light and poignant score.

A genius of independent cinema looks back on his hitherto unrecognized work. From now on he will leave this unprofitable art well alone, be part of the big business, sell himself and be bought. A brilliant future seems within reach. A torrent of buzzwords from the beginner’s guide to self-marketing. Burning ambition. Caustic sarcasm. Biting irony.