What do an Israeli in Berlin who is painting a portrait of Hitler, a rural family celebration in glorious weather, the discretion of marital infidelities, different types of laughter, athletic movement patterns, the different sense of well-being in old and young people and, for example, a concert in prison, have in common? These 90 minutes of film explore what makes people happy and which social situations can be perceived as exhilarating.
The cross-genre short documentaries frequently work with elements of reality, sometimes with animation and occasionally with fictional inserts. They were planned and realised by students of the HFF “Konrad Wolf” in close collaboration with the rbb, beginning in 2010, to be broadcast during the annual ARD thematic week whose title this year will be “Fortunately”.
This short film project experiments with unconventional documentary formats and recording systems. Its focus is on the visualisation of the students’ generation’s experience. The first step of preparation was a call for project proposals. Students, teachers and editors then made a joint and public decision about which of the treatments had a chance to be realised within the official timeframe of four months. The project is also unique because, being subject to the primacy of education, failure was a legitimate option so as not to curb the students’ appetite for visual storytelling.