Dwindling membership, a crumbling club house, penniless coffers: The “Bradford Movie Makers” have seen better days. The active club members, most of them fairly advanced in years, sit there, basking in blissful memories and not mincing their words when they pick at the others’ film ideas over multiple cups of tea. Cineastes have met here every Monday since 1932 and can be proud of a ninety-year history including countless amateur films of all genres.

The “club”, as insiders call it, is a typical British working class film club: watching films together on a regular basis and spending every free minute on elaborate shoots including stunt riders and green screens. But the old veterans are beginning to get frail, the occasional death must be mourned. And then the pandemic comes on top of all this, darkening the only bright spot of the week. But it also brings unexpected surprises … Kim Hopkins manages the feat, despite a number of tragic-sad occasions, of avoiding the tear-jerker trap and gives us equally astonishing and funny insights into this pastime that’s far more than just a hobby. This quiet, funny and touching portrait of a band of film buffs – male and female – pays tribute to the need we all have to spend time together.

A train journey begins. On board is a reader whose thoughts begin to move. The letters change and flow from the pages of the book, carrying us into a world of memories and associations. We meet the letters again: swimming in a tea cup. Shot, they bleed to death on a sheet of paper and at last evaporate into the night sky.

Filmmaker Elahe returns to her hometown of Mashhad in Iran to help her parents move house. Boxes must be packed, old stuff must be rummaged through together. Meanwhile everyone involved discusses what Elahe should wear at the upcoming big party, because Mr. Hossein, the respected and devout patriarch of the extended family, has invited his relatives to his garden.
Elahe will not wear a headscarf, nor a hat, not even a borrowed baseball cap for this occasion. On previous visits, she was willing to make a lot of compromises in order not to shame anybody at home. But those days are over. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement encourages her to force a change. In Hossein’s garden the director has intimate and moving conversations with sisters and cousins. They have all had similar experiences with hijab and chador but found different ways of dealing with it. Elahe boldly confronts her family’s fears and wishes and films the honest discussions.

Single frames from a direct animation appear on the screen in staggered repetition. The shapes painted, printed and scratched on 35mm material evolve, with minimal time lapses, from one edge of the frame to the other. A trace is left, telling of time itself and asking: When exactly is “now”? The past, present and future are spinning in the chaos of moments.

The winner of the first golden “Animation Dove”: nine years of war between Greeks and Trojans have gone past. The impulsive Patroclus, comrade in arms and bed mate of the rather battle-weary Achilles, thinks that victory can be achieved by other means. The tragedy takes its course – just as it was passed down in the classical myths but supplemented by what they left unspoken.

A person sits at a plain table. Time makes its usual rounds – until there is a hiccup. Moments fall into each other, angles of vision diverge, normality slips. The table becomes an unmanageable combination of constantly changing perspectives. The troubled person is transformed into a distorted temporal body. The world atomises itself in basic shapes and colours.

It was only long after the end of the GDR that the Leipzig audiences had an opportunity to get to know the work of John Smith, the British master of the trenchant, short artist film that continues to expand enormously in the mind. The ideas of conceptual art and structural minimalism prevalent in the 1970s have influenced his works, which he sees as documentary films according to John Grierson’s definition, as “creative treatment of actuality.” In his view of the world details are highlighted which then cease to be taken for granted. In “Associations”, he recites a text by the linguist Herbert H. Clark. Words conjure up matching images, but mean something different. An experience that could also be had in the “actually existing socialism” of the GDR.

In the mythology of the Kikuyu community the Mugumo, the Kenyan fig tree, represents transformation and rebirth. This multiplayer VR experience invites us to witness a sacred ritual: Dancing around the Mugumo can turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man. We follow Waicici, a genderless person, in the quest for the most honest version of themselves.