At the turn of 1968/69, the decision was taken to introduce a Leipzig City Express to “relieve inner city traffic as an attractive local passenger transport system”. A forward-looking measure of traffic policy which – at a time when the car-friendly city was still the dominant concept in urban planning – represented an appealing mobility option for the citizens of Leipzig.
“Guess what we’re doing! We’re going to practice swimming.” Hanan accompanies her brother to classes in the public pool. The first swimming badge is called the Seahorse, their instructor explains, because it “stands” in the water and doesn’t drown. When Hanan’s family came to Europe in a rubber dinghy, she couldn’t swim. To forget this experience, she learned not to go under in the water – like a seahorse.
Nine-year-old Abuk and 15-year-old Machiek have survived an ordeal. Like many Southern Sudanese children, they were robbed and enslaved by militias. In 2003, after their liberation, they visited Sweden to talk about their experiences. The authentic sound recording expands into animated space and supplies the voiceover for images of fear and memories in children’s colours.
A voice from nowhere proclaims life instructions: “Take a deep breath, say YEEES! … and stop being boring!” But rules and authority gradually elude the anonymous instructor. He becomes a chattering, contradictory flâneur through the universe of his problem-fraught private affairs. Those therapy units have a really sneaky design.
Overpaintings and scratchings in scenes from the Russian science fiction film “Silver Heads” by Yevgeniy Yufit. Considering that this work is already an outrageous deconstruction of the old Soviet pathos of the inevitable victory of scientific and technical progress, “Stakes” must be regarded as its drug-fuelled exaggeration into the unsurpassable.
An ingeniously sketched chamber play about the nerve-racking hour before dinner: mother peels vegetables while father is trying to convince their little daughter to take a bath. The protagonists are pretty caricatures of their respective natures, even more so of the roles imposed upon them. An ordinary family – bound together for little good and much evil.
Katharina’s father used to work for the GDR secret service. In the mid-1990s he was arrested for a murder ordered in connection with his former job … and released. Ever since then, Katharina has feared that the doubts about her father’s innocence might throw a shadow on her life, too. A film about family secrets and the question whether some things hadn’t better remain hidden.
Oh, if only the cat could get up the enthusiasm to do what’s natural for her species, namely, to catch mice! But this cat is good for nothing, just lies around languidly, too lazy to even lift a paw. The clever mouse invests more energy. It’s true she doesn’t show herself, but she manages to make everything revolve around her, even to make human and cat leave the house …
