The setting and cast of characters seem like the prelude to an unusual fairy-tale. An elderly man, a hermit living in a remote cabin, is visited by a young woman, almost a girl, who can understand and imitate the language of birds. Deep in the forest, Jean and Mana record and catalogue the calls of the different species day by day, night by night. But then they hear the voice of an unknown animal and set out to find it.

The focus is on birdcalls and their classification. But instead of making the meticulous analysis of sound events look like a quirky hobby, the film inspires us to listen closely. The two scientists’ unperturbed curiosity is catching, and as we watch, we are gradually infected not just with their enthusiasm for their object of research but also with their childlike desire to discover a secret.

One of many commemoration ceremonies, eleven years after the GDR uprising. The report combines a Saarland politician’s thoughtful speech with idyllic shots of a high-spirited population: at open air swimming pools, playing cards or on camping sites. “Do you know what we commemorate today?” the reporter asks. The answers are deeply irritating.

A new father takes his wife and daughter on a journey to his mother’s birthplace in Scotland. It is 1976 – the year in which NASA’s Viking 1 and 2 space probes land on the surface of Mars. They send images of an only vaguely explored area from a great distance, enabling a first look into the history of an alien planet. Like the NASA scientists, the small family are hoping that their journey will give them insights into the past, an understanding of the present situation and perhaps even the chance to anticipate the future.

Texts from the father’s travel diary, photos and video recordings are interwoven with visual and sound material from the NASA archives to form a multilayered narrative that navigates several decades of family history, cosmological questions and philosophical reflections. A filmic multiverse unfolds before us whose elementary particles oscillate between times and worlds, between reality and fiction.

The documentary video for the installation version of the short film “1976: Search for Life” takes us to Mars. There – between huge boulders and in the red light of our sibling planet – we find a small television set. With headphones and in an intimate atmosphere, Tess Martin shares a very personal memory of an important historical event with us.

It is Alice’s 27th birthday today. She lives in her old room in her parents’ apartment. Her mother coddles her like a little child. Her kid brother gets on her nerves. The only space for self-realisation and living out her sexual desires is in her imagination, if at all. For economic reasons, she and many other young people are denied the chance to live an independent life in their own four walls. So Alice has to endure the confinement.

On the night of her birthday, she goes pub-crawling with a buddy and dances, free at last for a few moments, at a party on the roof of a high-rise. Looking at the nocturnal city and sobering up after all the exuberance, though, her dilemma re-surfaces again: Where is her private space where body and soul can unfold unobserved? Haunting, colourful, with a fantastic soundtrack and full of eroticism, the film describes the depressing situation of a whole generation.

The narrator of the film was diagnosed with proprioception disorder by her physiotherapist: She lacks a normal awareness of her body in space and thus a reference to the world around her. Dancing as a therapy might help. Instead, she takes a ghost train into Finland’s television history, to the 1960s, when ordinances forbade spontaneous dancing because of a Medieval decree.

Young people were robbed of their body awareness, Finland, with its peculiar position between the blocks of the Cold War, stood untethered in the political geography of the time. Connections were made through television, Swiss campaigns for the independence of the West African province of Biafra, the weightless moon landing, U.S. American stars from soap operas and TV western shows. Travelling without moving. Do ghosts have proprioception? Wouldn’t they float out of this world otherwise? Or are they kept tethered to the ground by film and television recordings?

An overcrowded dog shelter in Serbia. It’s hard to see how many animals are kept here behind wire mesh in desolate kennels. They are cared for and trained by prison inmates who are shown doing their job without further comment or explanation. However, the camera never focuses on the men’s faces. Observations take place at eye-level with the dogs. Especially shaggy Vanja and his training progress are at the centre of Dejan Petrović’s short study of freedom. The uniform, concentrated shots leave plenty of space for questions, above all whether this (dog’s) life is really unfree or whether the desire for freedom must take a backseat under these circumstances, since there is a roof over one’s head and a task that fills the day. While we are still thinking about this, Vanja with his alert eyes and engaging nature has already found a place – not just in the heart of his initially rather dismissive trainer.

A person sits at a plain table. Time makes its usual rounds – until there is a hiccup. Moments fall into each other, angles of vision diverge, normality slips. The table becomes an unmanageable combination of constantly changing perspectives. The troubled person is transformed into a distorted temporal body. The world atomises itself in basic shapes and colours.

After Ulysses S. Grant, the victorious commander of the American Civil War, maverick Jim Finn has now tackled the Apostle Paul. Eighteen centuries lie between the two and yet those historical super-figures have a lot in common. The acts of both were epoch-making, both had to undertake prolonged expeditions to achieve them, and both have inspired a host of propaganda, including numerous board games that also serve as a visual framework for Finn’s latest film. Above all, both remain controversial to this day, though Paul’s actions, due to the thin factual basis, provided and still provide better groundwork for substantially more outlandish interpretations. The films quotes some of the more outrageous ones in an eclectic montage of red-tinged excerpts from biblical epics, Christian fundamentalist talk shows, cartoons, children’s books, dioramas, theme parks and performances by magicians and rapturous choirs.

The curious title refers to a paper of the German theologist Ernst Käsemann, whose research snatched Paul from the grasp of the Antisemites who had usurped him and placed him back in the tradition of Jewish mysticism. That is also the objective of Jim Finn’s film as it gleefully dissects two thousand years of appropriation and propaganda in a wild ride through history.

Narrated by the incarnate ghost of a deceased real hair donor. In the post-war era, the export of real hair wigs contributed to Asia’s economic development, with Hong Kong as a major hub. In its heyday in the 1960s, “Asian real hair” was popular with wealthy U.S. women, but then the USA imposed an embargo on the product, now classified as “communist hair”. This is where the intricate and innovatively realised story begins: Starting with complex economical and sociopolitical contexts, it weaves a thread that runs through various historical and dreamlike staged levels.

Hong Kong was and is a space of in-between-ness – between East and West, between communism and capitalism. Perhaps that is why there are so many spooks in the city, one protagonist speculates. Just like the well-travelled ghost, an eternally wandering entity and contemporary witness of an imperial and colonialist past.

Welcome to the realm of sounds! What separates us – language, individualised lifeworlds – can be overcome, for this is where polyphony reigns. In this multiplayer installation, participants come together through singing and synchronised movements and create an authentic communal experience through their combined vocal power.