A Malay fairy tale tells of Sang Kancil, the wily mouse deer that crosses a river by persuading the crocodiles in it to form a bridge for him. Inspired by this story, Zhang Xu Zhan, one of Taiwan’s most distinguished young artists, in his latest stop-motion animation depicts the crossing of the river as a breakneck shaman dance in the deep jungle where acrobatic skill replaces cunning. Spurred on by drummers on the bank, guided by ringing bells, the costumed creature, half human, half animal, leaps from crocodile back to crocodile back, always in danger of losing more than feathers.

Despite the overwhelming complexity of the animated scenery, the hand-made papier-mâché figures recall the seductive power of traditional Javanese Wayang shadow theatre. Its fixed backdrops are transformed here into an extremely fluid world of continuous transformation and metamorphosis reflected in oddly shaped mirror shards, giving us an idea of what it would be like to see through compound eyes.

When the time “when St. Joseph came” is mentioned in this film, it doesn’t refer to a religious phenomenon, but to the most popular product of TML Holy Crafts Incorporated. In the factory on the Philippines, the country with the third-largest Catholic population in the world, the employees manufacture statues of saints under exploitative conditions. Joseph Mangat portrays this place with a focus on the workers, including some from the LGBTQI community.

In the first scene, a plaster bust is uncovered layer by layer. This image could also serve to describe the approach of “Divine Factory”: From the shop to the workshop, from the entrepreneur to the simple worker, from the production to the uses made of the religious articles, this film reveals the social and economic facets of this institution. The Filipino director not only observes precisely how people work and trade there, he also involves the participants in frank conversations about love, wages and living conditions. The employees’ profit-oriented payment model reveals how economical and religious ideas interlock. The success of the company in the city of Antipolo near Manila, desirable for all, thus appears as nothing short of a divine blessing.

We find ourselves in the middle of a gay sauna. In search of physical contact outside ideas of bourgeois romantic love, we are part of a group sex scene. We look at the protagonists, just as they look at us. The space becomes a stage, both real and surreal, that provokes reflections: about sex positive spaces, our own lust and our own sense of morality.

The Nepalese shaman Lil Bahadur and his granddaughter Hima have dedicated themselves to the revival of his native language, Kusunda. It’s about more than communication, namely identity, tradition and awareness of one’s own history. The interactive voice-control of this VR experience allows us to learn Kusunda ourselves. We learners become human archives of an all but lost indigenous language.

A woman and a black cat live together in the city. They seem a little lonely but make the best of it. The small miracles of life can be found in all kinds of everyday moments, and their loneliness is transformed into a cheerful melody. A buoyant piece in black and white which does get a little colour in the end.

What happens when we have to leave the destroyed earth? This VR experience takes us into space: Our consciousness becomes collective and our DNA is modified into new life forms. Time is nothing but an illusion here – past, present and future merge. We end up where we began, but in what form and when? A cycle of endless reincarnation.