The work of Berlin-based filmmaker and artist Jack Wolf is based primarily on investigative research into conflict and environmental issues as well as migration. He also operates in political and social epicentres using state-of-the-art technology and innovative hardware. In this short film he ties all these strands together succinctly and precisely. “I Don’t Think I’m Alone in This” was shot with a time-of-flight camera, which is used in 3D technology and designed to give machines, in the broadest sense, human perception. So visually everything is about data flow, numbers, and transformation. In terms of content, the fate of a young man who fled from Damascus to Beirut as a child ten years ago becomes palpable.
Speaking from the offscreen of a cramped room that is both safe haven and cage, Amjad Bahloul talks about the past. About how wonderful it was to meet all the people in the street, play football, interact with the real world, a blessing. A blessing in the cursed loneliness of a foreign country, as it turned out for Amjad, were Facebook, YouTube, and the like – his only means of social contact. “This lightens the burden,” he says. And now they could help him and other refugees find their way home, because the Syrian regime has fallen. He learned about it from a post …

A piece of land awaits Déni Oumar Pitsaev in the Pankisi Gorge, a Chechen enclave in the Georgian part of the Caucasus. His mother bought it for him, hoping to bring her son, who was socialised in Western Europe, back to his Chechen roots. When he arrives, he realises that the gift comes with strings attached: Relatives and friends from the neighbourhood constantly ask when the 40-year-old Déni with his receding hair intends to start a family. When he counters with his own vision – building a treehouse for adults ten metres from the ground, a childhood dream – he triggers complex debates about the relationship between the individual and society and what historical conditions it is subject to: The region is deeply scarred by the effects of the Chechen War, the wounds extending even to his estranged relationship with his father. In all this, Pitsaev’s manner of confrontation is always extremely delicate, never turning into an attack. With expert curiosity, he approaches a world that is both completely alien and home to him.

To put it bluntly, one could say that most of de Antonio’s films are courtroom dramas. In this sense, “In the King of Prussia” is typical – and at the same time unusual, starting with the title. King of Prussia is a small town in Pennsylvania which became the scene of an action by radical Christian pacifists in September 1980. They broke into a factory where, unbeknownst to the public, parts of the nuclear missile Mark 12A were produced, and held a happening inspired by the Sermon on the Mount and Fluxus. The film is a re-enactment, but not of the action, rather of the trial against the so-called Plowshares Eight. In de Antonio’s first video production, shot in the trial breaks, the defendants played themselves. The role of the judge was played by New Hollywood star Martin Sheen.

Following a quarrel with the DEFA, the Sorbian animation and documentary filmmaker Jan Hempel established the independent IWT-Film studio in Dresden. Commissioned by the German Book Traders’ Association, these impressions of the 1977 International Book Art Exhibition were created there. Referencing Leipzig’s century-old tradition as a book city, the film presents production companies, publishers and, last but not least, the IBA itself.

In this work, too, the technique of working directly on the film strip by scratching and painting proves to be beautiful and timeless. The sound, created by analogue interventions on the optical soundtrack of the material is charming, jaunty and organic. Two abstract creature shapes fall for each other in the darkness, come together and fade into the distance.

A cinematic daydream in corrugated cardboard and paint, shot with a Super8 camera. The soundscape consists of hills, some easily climbed, others requiring the last ounce of strength. The shapes, colouring, cross-fades and rhythms of this encounter with paper also shift between tough and tender and are made tangible both on the visual and the tonal level.

Grandfather’s hands making pottery, the vertical linearity of a tower, a train crashing into a car – all of these are fragile, newly born film sketches that crowd each other out in a survival game for the filmmaker’s attention. The sceneries fight against each other, intertwine to form new strands, sink into an endless flood of information, shatter in a sea of open browser tabs. With his authentic voice-over and a mesmerising collection of moving images, director Konstantin von Sichart’s alter ego offers us a deep insight into his creative process. Marked by his neurodivergence, he learns before our eyes to cope with his inability to concentrate on one thing – and to weave meaning from these strands, remain true to his film idea. But how can this ever result in a film?
Toxically coloured images, naively drawn and finely crafted, AI-generated, filmed from a monitor, collaged, worked-on – a wealth of tools and aesthetic approaches translates the described mental overload into the language of design. The film thus becomes more than a self-reflection of modern filmmaking: It is the portrait of a new generation – caught between the compulsion to take everything in and have a position on everything and the urge to stand still or even run away.