Peeling away layers of pain, layers of perspectives, passing by both trauma and hope, this film dives into Rwanda thirty years after the genocide. Covering such a topic has always presented itself as a challenge to documentarians. While Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoa” (1985) is over nine hours long, “Traces of Responsibility” unfolds its eight potential hours as innumerable 85 to 110-minute screenings. In allowing different viewing experiences, this film does not commit to a single version of Rwanda, but rather accentuates its multifaceted, and, yes, complex history. The audience may vote to visit genocide memorials and hear survivor testimonies or to follow a theatre troupe educating children about tolerance. They might choose to visit a market or an art museum, to go to a karaoke bar or to just go home.
“You could a write a 1,000-page book just from our [two] stories,” says Semana Jumapili, a survivor we might encounter. When one considers this, even this film of many paths seems limited. There are countless stories to be told. The genocide in Rwanda was horrifying, and yet there is so much solace in the people we encounter throughout the film. They inspire us to fight injustice and heal wounds which seem too big to overcome.

Light is a fascinating phenomenon. Without light, there would be no cinema, no film – and no life. So light is at the origin of everything, and yet it remains invisible to the eye until it hits matter. This moment is – quite literally – the starting point of Thomas Riedelsheimer’s latest work, for the springtime spectacle of rainbow shreds in the cinematographer and documentary filmmaker’s flat became the starting point of a search for the origin of the images we form of this world. For this quest he dived deep into two spheres that seem to follow different laws but always strive to fathom the magical: physics and art.
An intellectual and poetic ping pong game evolves between researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Erlangen and the “Extreme Light Group” of the University of Glasgow as well as internationally renowned artists such as Ruth Jarman, Joe Gerhardt, Julie Brook, Johannes Brunner and Raimund Ritz. In its course, the various perspectives on light lead to new insights on all sides that would hardly have been achieved without this methodical cross-over: about laser power and colour pigments, about black holes and floating sculptures. In brief moments, the uninitiated may even get some idea of the laws of quantum physics, generally considered impossible to visualise.

A film projection shows a woman sitting by the water. In “her back” is the shadow of a female figure who conjures radiant golden clouds of dots and balls of lines into the frame with her hands and is even able to blot it out. The magical trailer for the “Tricky Women” festival was made by manually editing the image and sound sequences recorded by Moïa Jobin-Paré when she was artist-in-residence in Vienna.

Hollywood star Errol Flynn loves Havana, its casinos and its cocktails. As an eyewitness to the Cuban Revolution, he also learns to love Fidel Castro, the “Cuban Robin Hood.”

The camera glides through a nocturnal, inanimate Berlin, documenting disembodied dance floors where the spotlights illuminate emptiness. Tales of longing and desire on the soundtrack. A brief visual reminiscence of lockdowns and retreats into bourgeois privacy, threatening a sex-positive culture that demands the consensual, open encounter of bodies. But people, curiosity and lust reconquer cinema. Exploring softness together, finding out where the bodies lead, allowing skin cells and nerve endings to get to know each other – and asking at every step where the boundaries are. This is the agenda of three couples and a group of sex-positive persons who meet here. “Truth or dare” is played, an age-old excuse to override taboos.
What Maja Classen explores with them, without trying to pin it down, is the question of how consensus makes a new sexuality possible. Even the protection from sexually transmitted diseases is part of the game, personal responsibility in the darkrooms, the images of femininity, masculinity and love dragged in from one’s socialisation that need to be defamiliarised again. Nothing we see transgresses boundaries. Nothing that happens happens without consensus. And yet none of it is taken for granted. “The joy of being there – and exactly there.”

In 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo ordered the murder of the Haitian population of the Dominican Republic. Tens of thousands were brutally killed. A language test made the difference between life and death: The Creole-speaking Haitians who could not pronounce the Spanish word “perejil” had to die, which is why this genocide went down in history under the innocuous name of “Parsley Massacre.” Until today, the region is marked by deep traumatisation, racism and classism, which are linked to the colonialist past of this two-state island.
Haitian filmmaker Pierre Michel Jean approaches this rarely examined subject with great delicacy and succeeds in creating a history lesson that combines different historiographies – from factual research to problematic narrative constructions through to the haunting testimonies of the last survivors – in a kind of montage of knowledge. At the same time, his documentary addresses the complexity of collective guilt and the important question of who can and should say “mea culpa” today, more than eighty years later. A performance workshop organised by theatre director Daphné Ménard, which brings together artists from both states, and the memories of the elderly Henry Noncent form the heart of this filmic monument whose empathy makes it compelling.

Rectangular shapes in luminous colours proliferate in a black void. They resemble phosphenes, the subjective perceptions of lights that can appear when we rub our closed eyelids. Coloured round surfaces circle each other, even though they live in separate graphic worlds. Lillian Schwartz, pioneer of computer animation, uses the EXPLOR 2D programming language to simulate strange and fantastic galaxies.

Animated children’s drawings depict the daily life of young HIV patients in a hospital in the Indian city of Tivim. Their daily routine is characterised by learning and playing together, by good food and taking medication, sometimes also by fighting tears and rage. Nonetheless, the film, narrated by the children themselves, is a picture story filled with playful liveliness and energy.

We celebrate the Sandman’s 65th anniversary! To mark the occasion, a brand-new episode is released in which little Sandman travels the country in his multi-mobile. But there is a mishap when he gets out: The bag of dream sand gets torn and the sand trickles out. The way to the dream sand mill is not easy to find. Quite a number of stages must be negotiated to reach the destination.

26-year-old Valentina still lives with her parents. She has always put their welfare before her own needs. The two, on the other hand, keep harping on how clumsy and unambitious she is. The sensitive young woman finds reassurance in the artful crocheting of woollen blossoms and among the thousand-year-old cork oaks of the nature reserve surrounding her hometown. The small Sicilian town of Niscemi is of the highest global political importance: Since 2016, the US Navy has been operating a ground station with huge parabolic antennas here for their satellite communication system MUOS. The system also serves to locate Russian military in the Ukraine and turns the region into a potential target for attacks. The locals have been protesting for years. Due to the strong electromagnetic waves the health risks are enormous.
The remarkable sound design underlines the danger and conveys a sense of unease that grows with all the other threats: massive environmental destruction caused by intensive agriculture, drought, fires. Valentina is deeply shaken. Against her parents’ wishes, she takes part in anti-MUOS rallies, wants to become independent at last, drive a car, get a job. This tender story of emancipation is enchanting with its subtle narrative and dream-like interventions. Valentina will be remembered for a long time!

Pensioner Lehmann, folk artist Köppe, engineer Krahnstöver and the famous painter Willi Sitte: Four GDR citizens explain their motives and actions for solidarity with Vietnam. The emphasis is on the global nature of the protests against the war in the Far East, also and especially in Western countries, and therefore the system-spanning character of the movement. An appeal to the audience to get involved.

A typical workday at the East Berlin precinct 14, Brunnenstraße, near the Wall, at the “interface to imperialism,” as one of the officers puts it. At first, Heise and Badel are free to film unhindered: car patrols, deployments to escalating disputes, criminal charges of “decadent appearance,” missing person reports. The director and cameraman appear to be authorised by the Ministry of the Interior and are allowed to shoot without restrictions. When they are eventually required to show their papers, which turn out to be nothing more than ordinary identity cards, the misdirection is noticed: Shooting is stopped, the footage disappears in locked cabinets. – The film premiered at the 25th Duisburger Filmwoche in 2001.