Two quarrelsome brothers with impressively full beards live on a remote farm in the Bohemian Forest, surrounded by a rugged landscape: At one point, Franta and Ondra themselves become aware that this setting has an almost Old Testament feel to it, but cannot agree on who might be Cain and who Abel in this scenario. They rarely agree in any case: Daily squabbles are the big constant in the life of the identical but otherwise dissimilar twins. When Franta embarks on another breakneck adventure, Ondra wants nothing more than to smoke in peace. Nonetheless, they occasionally exchange hugs and nose kisses. In their early 60s, Franta and Ondra spend their time working in the fields, playing jokes with the animals, or competing in left-hand arm-wrestling duels. The facts that Franta lost his lower right arm in an accident or that the twins took part in the 1989 revolution in Czechoslovakia belong to an apparently distant past. With a domestic cow as narrator, the leitmotif of a huge mirror, and a classical soundtrack, Miro Remo finds a wonderful form for the portrait of these idiosyncratic people.

14-year-old Mali’s head is full of dancing. She is a b-girl and lives for breaking. She has just moved into a big city to live with her older sister – and to go to a new school where dancing is one of the main subjects. But can Mali handle the other dance styles? And will her body be able to stand the strain?

Shimmering lines intertwine constantly to create ever new digital webs. The third dimension is added by diagonals. A moving camera allows us to finally recognise the secret that the visual elements have kept hidden so far: A 3D model of the Kunsthaus Basel creative centre disentangles itself – only to fade back into the luminous void.

A boy, a girl, a bird with a swan’s neck nestling in hands, a gently wooded peninsula of longing: Atsushi Wada’s almost speechless animation, mapped out in uniform and unicoloured chains of motifs and events, follows the dream and shame logic of a sexual awakening. There’s a sadness about the rounded and infantile figures, perhaps that of a first “little death”.

While the communist authorities decide the conditions for an official registration of the Solidarność movement inside, the masses demonstrate in front of the court outside. A contemporary document of the moment when the power of the people seemed to make a lasting cultural opening no longer just a promise but a possibility. At the time, “undesirable” at the Leipzig festival.

Starting from the children’s party where Zhang Shengjia celebrated his ninth birthday at a KFC fast food restaurant in 2006, the Chinese artist and filmmaker’s essayistic archive film unfolds a cheerful cultural history of the birthday cake from a Chinese perspective. The convention reached China from Western Europe and North America in the early 20th century and merged with local birthday traditions. The constantly growing influence of Western consumer culture since Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms of the 1980s was exemplified in 1990 when almost 13,000 customers were registered on the opening day of the country’s very first McDonald’s restaurant in Shenzhen.
The laconically commented foray through a colourful selection of archival film, advertising and photo footage from several decades takes us from the first Chinese emperor eating birthday cake and early pioneers of cake design to the commercialisation and politicisation of cuisine and food culture.

Icelandic musician Björk has always merged natural and technoid creativeness. She samples and loops environmental sounds and transforms them by means of electronic effects. Paul White translates this approach and aesthetics in the video clip for “Hunter”, morphing the singing Björk’s head and human features into an artificial polar bear that seems to be made of liquid plastic.

The figure of the singer Björk seamlessly transforms into petals, into underwater creatures with delicate tentacles and other fantastic organic manifestations impossible to classify. Accompanying Tobias Gremmler’s graceful computer animation, Björk’s singing wipes the slate clean: tabula rasa, a free, unencumbered space for later-born children to blossom and make their own mistakes.

A van approaches the lighthouse of Monte Igueldo on the bay off San Sebastián. A woman and her dog live in the tower. The moving boxes are packed with files and paper. Before the driver can load them, we are given access to the unusual interior of the building, where the history of seafaring and conquests rears its head: in hallucinated picture puzzles full of cruelty.

“Stay calm and level-headed!” Endless armoured convoys, radio stations broadcasting their potentially last announcements and the Slovak Communist Party meeting Czech party representatives. Shaky images and wailing sirens testify to the tension as Warsaw Pact troops march into Bratislava, too, to suppress the Prague Spring.

1971, Novi Sad, a winter’s night. The filmmaker meets six homeless men, is outraged by the negligent state and takes matters into his own hand. As shelter cannot be found at short notice, he invites the men to his apartment, turning his wife into the involuntary accomplice of his relief operation. The experiment fails, but the film is in the can.
Želimir Žilnik is one of those representatives of the Yugoslavian Black Wave who won the hearts of the West. It is true that at home he found state-funded production opportunities for self- and bureaucracy-critical films like this one. He was even allowed to present them at domestic festivals. But he still experienced Yugoslavian censorship. Strangely enough, however, not with “Black Film“.

Grandma has become a little doddery. And since the death of her husband, called E.O., ever bigger gaps have opened in her memory, and her disorientation has increased. Director Astrid Menzel makes a decision: to take a ten-day canoe trip on northern German waters with her brother and the 86-year-old lady. An adventure whose outcome is uncertain and which the three travellers have to face anew at every stage.

Looking at the sky, watching the changing cloud formations, being all there. Things that Astrid Menzel’s grandmother finds easier as her dementia progresses. Horses and beds are recognisable up there, and sometimes there are thoughts of the late E.O. A chain of disintegration has been set in motion: The beloved house has become confusing, a home for grandma is being searched, the relatives feel nagging guilt. The granddaughter Astrid feels the need for action. Gently and with endless patience, she involves the elderly lady in the preparations and organisation of a canoe trip that would be a challenge for any beginner: Travelling on the river day in and day out, a different sleeping place almost every night. Old and young are trying to find strategies of interaction. Rummikub matches and writing a travel diary anchor them, but emotional breakdowns, too, are part of the endeavour.

Against the backdrop of Saint Petersburg’s back courtyards during the Corona lockdown, Tatyana Chistova fuses recordings of the almost empty city and calls to a municipal hotline tasked with offering help and advice, but topics range from the banal to existential questions. Elderly people in particular are affected by poverty, hunger and loneliness. Chistova highlights that in a system that neglects its weakest members, the virus is not the only threat.

A rhythmic collage of sounds and filmed sequences accompanies the demolition of a house. People from a neighbourhood in East London report in interview fragments: The living conditions were not comfortable – ugh, those spiders! – but the families had a home that had grown over generations. Now the community protests against being squeezed out by a motorway network.

A man throws off the shackles of slavery, lays the traditional Kente cloth aside, puts on a business suit – and starts to walk towards the future. Or towards what he thinks is the future, because this is not a pleasant walk: To the cheers of the people, the man pushes into the backroom of an Asian restaurant where he flogs plots of land, moves to the next backroom, money case in hand, to bribe the pastor and ultimately ends up on stage to give a state-supporting speech as President – against corruption, of course. The career of our nameless protagonist – whose sunglasses-covered face, interestingly, we get to see only in the limelight – takes him right through the streets of an African metropolis, past protests being suppressed, through a dilapidated infrastructure, criminal gangs, and even natural disasters.
Nobody has thrown off the shackles of slavery in Francis Yushau Brown’s relentlessly critical film. Instead, a few individuals have chained themselves to nepotism and keep the rest of the population poor and backwards. His film is a 3D indictment brimming with rage, including of the Western and Far Eastern (neo) colonizers. And far above hover the enraged gods, waiting for the people to put an end to this situation at last.

The ringing of a phone segues into the soundscape of a big city. The buzzing of cars mingles with the sounds of a football match. Provoked by a cat, a blind person’s assistance dog breaks free and carries us over into a world whose spatial dimensions are almost impossible to grasp. A journey begins in which the senses are faced with new challenges.