Sixteen-year-old Cian is expected to work at his family’s sheep farm after school. Life there is as rough as the Irish west coast landscape. No time to lie in or play football. Instead, rams must be taken by the horns. In this sensitive coming-of-age study, the camera watches the lanky boy from up close as he learns the challenging craft of shepherding, under his grandfather’s patient and critical eyes.

The rough, unkempt facades in Prenzlauer Berg – as if the skin had been peeled off the houses, says photographer Tina Bara. Having grown up in a prefabricated building, the young woman was drawn to East Berlin. She quickly got in conflict with the state, just like the artists Cornelia Schleime and Gabriele Stötzer, whom director Pamela Meyer-Arndt questions in her film about memories, traumas and creative genesis.

Stötzer, Schleime, Bara – none of them had it easy in the GDR. One of them ended up in prison for a petition, the other was harried by refused exit permits, all of them suffered psychologically to the point of pain. Spying, abuse and oppression are reflected in the women’s works. Tina Bara’s dark self-portraits, taken in a sparse Berlin apartment, Cornelia Schleime’s paintings denounced as “garbage art”, Gabriele Stötzer’s photo series of women in cut-up dresses and runny make up – testimonies of desperation, but also evidence of the urge for unconditional self-expression. Meyer-Arndt visits the artists, rediscovers places from the past with them and observes the creation of new works. The narratives shock and touch, and at the same time inspire awe for the vehemently chosen paths in life which more than once skirted very close to the abyss.

“Extinction Rebellion” (XR), known for creative civil disobedience, blockades and performances, want to put pressure on politics to finally adopt effective measures against the climate crisis. The greater the attention, the greater the effect, that’s their hope. But will this equation work? And how can such a heterogenous movement take joint decisions? “Rebellion” follows the development of the first XR group in Great Britain from up close, showing both euphoric moments and heated debates. After all, the issue is whether change is possible without questioning power structures – in society, but also within their own ranks.

The red house dissolves and transforms into all kinds of other things. The house re-assembles, but bigger and wider than before. Quicker than the eye can see, all kinds of brightly coloured shapes appear on the screen. What was a clown a second ago suddenly becomes a wild mix of fantastic images and figures. And right in the middle, the red house keeps turning up.

In the “White Horse” café, waitress and guests apathetically go through their routines. Meanwhile, the reality surrounding them seems to destabilise more and more: between white noise and the sound of tuning forks, between daydreams of galloping knights and ever-growing mountains of drizzling packet sugar. Ivana Bošniak Volda and Thomas Johnson Volda pile up layers of these images and sounds, until they crack – and clear the way to breathe.

Inspired by a political protest movement, the Teatr 21 – a theatre company of acting enthusiasts with Down’s syndrome – develops a play in which the participants articulate their wishes and demands and at the same time get to abandon themselves with great joy to creative development. Martyna Peszko attentively follows the creation process as it unfolds in a productively bustling rehearsal atmosphere, with musical accents provided by the improvisations of a free jazz trio.

In 2018, people with handicaps occupied the government building in Warsaw for forty days to demonstrate for more support and recognition. The protest had almost no political consequences, and yet: The revolutionary spark ignited the public. The Teatr 21 project takes up the events, draws strength from the disappointment about the failed insurgence. That leads to discussions about their artistic craft: What does professional acting mean? What has nudity to do with revolution? And why do you always have to understand the lyrics to songs? In exploring the relationship between performance and politics, they reclaim an autonomy they are often denied in life: over their own body, their own stories. The stage direction and dramaturgy provide an unobtrusive and intelligent framework, which is extended by Peszko’s judiciously observant workshop report.

Having a child is a heavy new responsibility. When Ethan Barrett becomes a stay-at-home dad and suddenly finds himself in charge of the welfare of his little daughter, he realises abruptly that his every action will influence her life – whether he wants it or not. Charming, ironical and witty, he explores how to be least in the way of her perfect development. The next little masterpiece of tongue-in-cheek humour after “Burp” (DOK Leipzig 2020).

Slaughterhouses with concrete blades on top, monumental cemetery gates in the plains: Architect Francisco Salamone (1897–1959) shaped the image of the Argentinean pampa around Buenos Aires. In part 34 of his “Photography and beyond” series, Heinz Emigholz once more probes architecture for biographical traces. Salamone, who immigrated from Sicily as a child, realised his ideas between 1936 and 1940, when Mussolini’s Italy re-discovered architecture as an ideological craft.

Axes seem to be buried in the façade of the Coronel Pringles city hall. Elsewhere, stone tree fungi grow. And in front of the Saldungaray cemetery, viewed from the rear, a giant pancake or satellite dish forms, while in front the head of a suffering Jesus protrudes from the concrete. Monumental designs, occasionally incorporating elements of Art Deco or Italian Futurism, towering in the sky and advertising importance. Francisco Salamone worked in the years of the “Década infame”, that infamous decade followed shortly afterwards by the presidency of Juan Perón. The buildings seem inhospitable and full of hubris. They are supposed to herald modernity and progress and yet loomed terrifyingly over the peasantry of the country. Heinz Emigholz documents these intimidating buildings from every conceivable angle.

It’s lonely out in space and only the sun can warm you. In his imaginative 2D animation, Darko Masnec makes lines come alive and breathes life into abstract geometrical figures, as if Paul Klee and the Shadoks were celebrating a colourful banquet of metamorphoses. Stylised forms sprout luminescent organic compounds that tell a touching love story in outer space.

An Argentinean builder who has built council halls, cemetery gates and abattoirs in the pampa as if from a modernist assembly line. Then a Bolivian architect, whose gaudy functional buildings in the highland defy description and imagination. Last, but not least, a new old palace in the middle of Berlin. Connections are plentiful, none of them edifying. Heinz Emigholz uses them for a pamphlet against stylistic amnesia and historical falsification.

The first film in Heinz Emigholz’s series “Photography and beyond” was released in 1983 and, including the two works screened by DOK Leipzig this year in the Camera Lucida section, there are now 35. But although “Slaughterhouses of Modernity” uses a number of sequences from the other two works, it has little in common with them in terms of form and ductus. While the aforementioned rather minimalist films do without commentary and partly without inserts, this one is characterised by its edgy monologues and courageous use of stylistic inconsistencies. Polemics and black humour are not unusual in Emigholz’s universe. But one has never seen him spoiling for a fight as gleefully as in this complex exploration of German history and its ugly manifestations. Not so much a late work as a new departure.

Ship ahoy, the musifants are back! This time, Charlie and Grandpa Günter get mail from the small green cactus in New Zealand and set sail with Fox and Captain Krause. On the way, they fish the little wild sow Svenja from the sea and sing their special shanty. The waves rise when the retired circus elephant makes musical forays into 1920s and 1930s song collections.

Movement, movement: In the early days of cinema, audiences were hungry for pictures bursting with vitality. For many film pioneers, the subject par excellence was the serpentine dance, which produced graceful shifting patterns by means of ample veils. The Lumière brothers additionally had the film hand-coloured, frame by frame, reinforcing the vivid expression of the dynamic body geometries.

Our everyday digital life is unthinkable without smartphones. Across the world, more than five billion such devices are in circulation. Each one of those is even touched more than 2,600 times per day. This AR experience takes us through the hidden history of this technology and thus into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. What natural and human resources does the tech industry require for its innovations?

A giant ginger mountain landscape that five cooks spent a week to make: Once magnificent culinary works of art were created in Chinese restaurants. Food was associated with a wealth of money and time. The world today is short-lived, customers have become few and far between. Chefs talk about the connection between food culture and socio-economic change in China.

Ricky is a boy from the Ashéninka tribe who lives with his family deep in the Peruvian Amazon Forest. But even here, the children’s favourite pastime is watching videos on their mobile phones. One day, Ricky is faced with the task of overcoming his fears and going hunting for a huge catfish that can only be caught by hook. This is where his journey to adulthood begins.

The rules in rural Poland are clear: Every man must have a woman; every dancer must have a female dancer. The pubescent Miłosz feels safe here, especially after his mother’s death. His sister Agnieszka, who is in a long-distance relationship with her friend Majka, does everything to obtain custody of her little brother. Gradually, a new family model is revealed, documented by Marek Kozakiewicz as an attempt that is as restrained as it is determined.

The windmills behind the houses rotate steadily, standing in place, signalling stability. But the lives of Miłosz and his 35-year-old sister are in turmoil. They are facing a red-tape marathon to make Agnieska his legal guardian: Both have been orphans for a few months. Director Marek Kozakiewicz depicts the establishment of a new family no one expects much applause for in conservative Poland. Because for Agnieszka and her partner, who is ten years older, the determination to try living together manifests tentatively. Without kisses, without celebrations, the decision almost casually becomes reality – the women are exploring the boundary between platonic tenderness and enforced secrecy. And Miłosz, too, seems to realise only slowly what the relationship between Majka and Agnieszka really is.