Ayala Shoshana Guy tries to grasp the ephemeral: She interweaves her grandfather Jancsi’s story, remembered only in fragments, who left Vienna with his brother Bandi to escape the Nazi regime, with her own inner images, thus questioning them in a way. A ship to Palestine turns into an all-inclusive cruise liner, the vague becomes concrete only to fade away again. Cautious and bold in equal measure, the granddaughter enters shadowy terrain.
Lamine recently moved from Germany to Senegal with his family. His parents have bought some land and are now starting a farm. There’s always a lot to do and Lamine helps out after school. The fish have to be fed and the plants in the garden watered. But the afternoons are too hot to work, so it’s off to the beach with his new friend.
“Grrr, I’m a tiger!” Vanja and his big sister turn the flat into a jungle. Then Thea gets a visitor. Three can also play hide-and-seek, suggests Vanja. He runs into the courtyard, where there are dark corners, creepy shadows and strange noises. To overcome his fear, he turns himself into the dangerous tiger again – and discovers that even the big ones are scared sometimes.
A woman’s voice shouts and whispers her wishes, depending on how she feels and what she wants. Her cartoonishly reduced and exaggerated body dances compromise out of the world. Straight, zig-zag or in sweeping curves, on we go through the hustle and bustle of life. Anne Isensee formulates an enthusiastic wake-up call for self-determination and lust for life.
When the artist duo Karnapke and Johnson are separated by Covid-19 in the middle of a project, the result is a correspondence about the constant change we live in. The VR experience based on this is a walk-in meditation: about reality, about normality and about the signs that distinguish the rule from the exception, visualized in a space made of countless particles.
Once again Kurt Tetzlaff portrays Alexander, who in 1990 works as a nurse and is active in the “Action Reconciliation”. The sense of departure of the autumn of 1989 slowly gives way to disappointments about the outcome of the People’s Chamber elections in 1990, the currency reform and the Unification Treaty. The political and social changes took place at a rapid pace that many found hard to follow. The sense of community that carried people through 1989 is fading. “Now it’s every man for himself”, Alexander states. He has no use for capitalism: “I feel just as lied to and cheated as before.” Resignation spreads.
During a ramble through the forest we see video colour fringes break through the shadows of the canopy. Rolls of thunder and birdsong spread as a deep red pixel moss carpet. Ambient sounds creep up from the distance to filter the visual world. Hallucinogenic data errors drag like scrapers across a discarded layer of paint. The forest becomes a cathedral for the eyes and ears.
What does it mean to make an animated film accessible to people with impaired vision? Can audio description convey what’s happening on the screen and what is, especially in animated film, often entirely a product of the imagination? Anne Isensee (Golden Dove for “Megatrick” in 2017) tackles these complex questions with a light touch, humour and verbal wit. She pulls off the feat of producing a concentrated cinematic investigation into the multi-layered quality of (all) perception.
A city crossing: Many things happen, one after the other, at the same time and sometimes inexplicable. Even in animated images reduced almost to symbols there is a lot to discover at this place. A speaker describes what is happening in words for people with visual impairments, but she increasingly questions the meaningfulness and translatability of what she sees.
In a sterile white examination room, a young woman is asked by a doctor to undress completely. An exhaustive examination of the protagonist’s skin begins during which every centimetre, the palm of her hand, the sole of her foot, the back and also the genital area are closely scrutinised. The doctor meticulously probes every nook and cranny of the young woman’s outer shell until she is able to identify a suspicious birthmark. A timely appointment to remove the mole is made.
Exposed and irritated, the protagonist finds herself confronted with her fears about the surgery and the after-effects of the examination. A tiny birthmark triggers an inner process: an analysis of her own body and the control others are allowed over it. Fragile lines on scarred paper and a tonal design that gives us goosebumps make us participate intensely in her emotions.
It’s a beautiful summer day and Sven is finally going to take the plunge. He’s at the public pool, at the foot of the ladder leading up to the ten-metre board. Today he is going to jump. Now! Or perhaps some chips as a start? And it would be good to take a shower first. But then he’ll be ready, though …? Oh no, the queue behind him is waiting, there’s no turning back. Sven climbs up the tower.
