The biography of the female elephant Bibi, who is considered to display abnormal behaviour, is marked by misfortunes: Born in Zimbabwe in 1985. Lost her mother shortly after birth. Imported by the East Berlin zoo in 1989. Deported to the Halle zoo in 2008. On the basis of an empathic reappraisal of these traumatic events the film reflects on the significance of social issues and how to deal with exclusion today: a therapy by proxy on film that will hopefully have a long-distance healing effect on Bibi.

In the midst of a blue-violet tinted mountain range are the remains of a lonely pavilion. Accompanied by the music of Max Cooper, this setting becomes the stage of a dance performance – in which our hands play the leading roles. Intuitively we let the rhythm take them over, move them playfully, form graceful gestures. At this hypnotic place everything is possible for the dancers.

Claire Simon’s filmic observation focuses on the institution of school. But instead of a systematic analysis of the objectives and workings of this place of education, her emphasis is on the daily interactions between children and teachers. How are disputes resolved? How do you teach consideration, forbearance, empathy? The film explores these questions calmly and with an unobtrusive camera, using as example the Anton Makarenko primary school in Ivry-sur-Seine, just outside the south-eastern outskirts of Paris.
Parents arrive with their children. The teacher shakes hands with a newcomer – a gesture of encouragement. In class, the instructors seldom raise their voices, authoritarian shouting is out of place here. The staff rely on dialogue instead, which in turn depends on trust and mutual respect. Claire Simon immerses herself in the life of this school and lets the captured moments between children and adults speak for themselves. A sensitive mosaic unfolds: moments of deeply felt learning and teaching bliss, boat trips on the Seine, turmoil in the schoolyard. All these details feed into the vibrant image of a pedagogical mission carried by small and big shoulders.

“The past is an endless cookie.” The past is omnipresent in this fabulously original family portrait. We feel it in the very first minutes, when filmmaker Seth from Toronto calls his half-brother Pete, who is a member of the Indigenous Cree people: The globe on which the distance between the two is visualised snips away the little sign “Dominion of Canada” to reveal the world Shamattawa underneath – the name of the First Nations community where Pete lives. The past is still present because of the injuries the Cree suffer(ed) from the white majority, including police violence and land grabbing. Nonetheless, humour is the Scrivers’ defining stylistic tool – from subtle jokes to self-irony to the detailed, lovingly surreal look of all the characters which they bestow even on racist police officers.
The brothers initially wanted to tell seven stories. At the end there are hundreds – because every sound recording is interrupted by the daily life of an extended family, every anecdote leads to the next. No matter whether the subject is building a teepee, supermarket shopping or butchering animals. This never-ending family chronicle, which also proposes a special chronicle of Canada, was produced over nine years. The result is a distinctive cookie one can chew on for a long time.

Róża Berger-Fiedler’s walk through the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee in search of her grandmother’s grave turns into a walk through the chequered Jewish history of the whole city. Interspersed are impressions of Chanukah celebrations at the “Restaurant of Nationalities” Café Moskau in Karl-Marx-Allee in East Berlin, light-drenched and devout. The film artfully interweaves the past and present of active Jewish life with memories of expulsion and annihilation, brings private and historical perspectives together and thus creates a sensitive approach where in the GDR formal distance was long dominant.

A controversial filmic parable on the loss of homes and the destruction of nature in the name of industrial progress: Between 1979 and 1982, the village of Magdeborn, which was regarded as an obstacle to brown coal mining south of Leipzig, is demolished. The locals are resettled, mostly against their will, to Grünau, Schönefeld and Borna. Those portrayed in this cinematic requiem rarely mince words when they call themselves pawn sacrifices and bargaining chips for the economic needs of the state. Officially, Tetzlaff and his team were attested an unacceptable emotional closeness to the people.

What’s growing in that empty space there? On 17 December 2010, the Tunisian grocer Mohamed Bouazizi burns himself to death in public – the Arab Spring begins, the fire spreads through the Internet. A fast-forward trip through the interior architecture of a modern revolution, right into the dispersed character of the event: from the planet’s surfaces to digital de-spatialization.

58-year-old Erwin introduces himself as “old but horny”. He has declared the mobile home in his front garden his favourite refuge, where he has everything he needs: a computer, a bed, a coffee machine. Two webcams link Erwin to other men who satisfy his carnal desires. In this tiny space, Jan Soldat comes close to him, of course. He learns of love affairs, as great as extinguished, of a complicated family web and worries about the future.

A virtuoso filmic reflection on automatisms in art and an encounter with Margaret Raspé on a Greek island, where the artist and filmmaker spends part of the year. Considered to be a pioneer of feminist German film, “I know where I am” is how she sums up her feeling on the island. Orientation in space, control and letting go are all central categories in her artistic practice.

A very short film, infinitely sad and at the same time mischievous and playful. The opening credits tell us the devastating news: The filmmaker’s son was killed in an accident and left behind an unfinished flip book. The father resumes work on it and continues drawing the superhero tale, creating an animated film between deep mourning and carefree children’s logic. Capturing the proximity of happiness and loss in the most succinct form.

Walter Krüttner is considered the only satirist among the signatories of the Oberhausen Manifesto, which was announced at the West German Short Film Festival in 1962. His film begins like those that the Oberhausen group wanted to put a stop to: with ländler music and a quote by regional poet Ganghofer. “Lord, the ones you love you let fall into this land.” Krüttner observes the tourist hustle and bustle at Obersalzberg: tour guides leading Führer travellers through the Nazi buildings. And Krüttner counts the profits West German authorities make by this. He himself profited by winning the “Silberne Lorbeer” (Silver Laurel) of Deutscher Fernsehfunk (German Television Broadcasting), awarded at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week 1963.

A male voice, accompanied by the eponymous instrumental piece by Reinhard Lakomy, comments on photographic and material evidence of the events on the grounds of the Langenstein-Zwieberge subcamp. The audiovisual tour concludes with a visit by an FDJ (Free German Youth) group who lay down wreaths at the memorial site built in 1949. The speaker unequivocally classes this ritual of remembrance as part of the raison d’état.

An abstract video artwork that explores the fleeting nature of colours, textures and shapes. The images are reminiscent of the rough surface of a damp cave wall on which the light of a distant torch is refracted. Time loses meaning, shadowy crystal structures emerge and fade. An opalescent colour apparition tries to assert itself in this space.

In her childhood, Maka attended her hated piano lessons in tears. When she asks her mother about it, she is told that this torment is extremely important for discipline. The conversation prompts an examination of whether current pedagogical routine in Georgia has strayed far from such a concept of education. A music school in which brutal emotional and verbal pressure is part of the curriculum; a ballet school where little girls must endure intense pain while stretching; a primary school class where even the most passionate recitation of a patriotic poem about the heroes of the motherland is cause for criticism. We plunge into a somewhat surreal, at times hilariously rigid world, reminiscent of a Palaeolithic dinosaur desperately trying to save itself in the present day.
“Steel is tempered by fire,” says the mother. Her words express the burden of responsibility for her beloved daughter and convey many warm, previously unspoken feelings. “But I am a human being first,” Maka replies. The loving daughter insists that the idea of humanity based on authoritarian power structures must be overcome, because it is still reproduced in the most private relationships, including those between parents and children.

Thoughts, sometimes just numbers, reach us from offscreen almost like music, like a mantra or a prayer. What we see are circular fragments from familiar spaces: a mirror, a magnifying glass. A day like any other day: without medication, or perhaps better with? A film like the investigation of an uncertainty principle: do we really see better with a magnifying glass? A face scratched out of the family album: the gap is draped with flowers and cut-out pictures of clothes and finally filled again by a drawing.

Everyday observations from Buenos Aires, shot on black-and-white 16mm film material, alternate with twenty-year-old Hi8 colour shots from New York. The perspective of a father who collects memories for his daughters. The perspective of a son who records his father’s reminiscences. Richard Shpuntoff’s multi-layered montage film is a clever essay on cultural identities, on cities and languages.

When we watch a subtitled film, we look, listen and read at the same time. We assume that the three levels are congruent or at least add up to form a whole. “Even the best subtitles suck”, the subtitles of this film announce, however, because “You are still reading instead of looking at the images.” Translating means rewriting. Therefore, “Everything That Is Forgotten in an Instant” tells parallel stories in images, words and writing: of urban development and power structures in two distant metropolises, of identity and its transgenerational transfer, of three continents and three languages which draw equally dividing and connecting lines through a family. The insecurity caused by the discrepancy between the filmic elements turns into a school of selective perception. Images, languages and texts are no dictate, after all: They leave us a choice.