Through numerous video essays in film and media theory, Kevin B. Lee has played a key role in developing the form of the so-called desktop film. The elegant meta-staging reflects the fact that his digital desktop is research tool, media archive and distribution channel at the same time. Lee’s first feature-length film in this style dissects a historical work of propaganda: In 2014, the “Islamic State” terror militia, then at the height of its territorial power, published an elaborately produced film entitled “Flames of War”, which many media outlets compared to the aesthetics of Hollywood blockbusters. Lee manages to abstract and defamiliarize the extreme violence of those images, but comes to the realisation that their ideological power cannot be decoded by the tools of film analysis alone. “Afterlives” broadens the perspective and looks for alternative models in dialogue with experts from the arts, political education and terrorism studies: They reconstruct destroyed cultural assets, develop strategies against extremist radicalisation and study what motivates people to leave terrorist groups. In all this, Lee’s intelligent essay never loses sight of the colonialist western image of the Middle East.

Jan-Philipp Kohlmann

Ugo Ulive left his native Uruguay in 1967 to move to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, where two years later he realised three short films at the newly founded Centro de Cine Documental de la Universidad de los Andes: “Caracas: dos o tres cosas”, “Diamantes” and “Basta!”. The latter was part of the Leipzig retrospective “Film in the People’s Struggle for Liberation: Latin America” in 1972. Inspired by Antonin Artaud’s concept of the “Theatre of Cruelty”, it stands out for disturbing images of an autopsy that reveal the degree of dehumanisation under the influence of imperialism. In “Caracas: dos o tres cosas”, also in the form of an experimental collage, Ulive, roaming the streets of Caracas with his camera, contrasts the public face of a divided society with audio fragments from radio, advertising and pop music.

Florian Wüst

The Europe-wide protests against Chile’s military dictatorship were expressed not only by political activism, but by a host of artistic actions. The colourful aesthetics of the Unidad Popular’s street art, popularised by the Ramona Parra Brigades, became a visual trademark. Based on this model, the Brigada Pablo Neruda, for example, whose members included well-known Chilean artists exiled in Paris like José Balmes, Gracia Barrios and Guillermo Núñez, realised a 60-metre-long mural on the fringes of documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977. Its creation was documented in Franz Lehmkuhl’s film “Chilenische Wandmalerei” (1977–80), screened in Leipzig in 1980. In his agitation film “Chile lebt”, co-produced with Michael Börner, the Chilean journalist and filmmaker Juan Forch uses pictures of the Brigada Pablo Neruda to express what keeps hope in his homeland alive: international solidarity. In 1979, Forch returned to Chile from exile in the GDR.

Florian Wüst

Haiguang dreams. Of his dead grandmother, his birthplace Lěng Shuǐ Jiāng in China, his performances and art projects and his job at a wholesale warehouse in Leipzig. But Haiguang not only dreams, he also films. Himself and his surroundings. Persistent, stoical, sometimes with a handheld camera, sometimes using a tripod – knowing that there is another layer under one’s everyday life that can only be perceived if one dares to search for meaning beyond the visible. If you dare to lie down on a crossing in the park and wait for what happens. If you dare to address the pressure to perform in Chinese society through a performance dragging a car tyre through Beijing. If you dare acknowledge your own fears and doubts and reveal them. Stylistically confident and constantly shifting between places and levels of meaning, Haiguang interlaces his life and dream in eight vignettes in which emotions condense and take on a form that goes beyond the personal. He interweaves the elements of his everyday life between the art academy and his parents’ coal shop in Changsha with equally precise and poetic descriptions. Thus, a puddle by the roadside can become the very place that connects him with his granny across space and time.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

What does a person’s library say about them? James Paul Dallas doesn’t just create a portrait of a life, but also shows a present in which possession, memory and identity are all becoming shaky. In early 2025, the anonymous protagonist guides the director via mobile phone through his empty apartment in Brooklyn. What can stay and what can go in what was his home for 20 years? The kitchen crockery is first up, then the books. Giacometti and Basquiat can stay in New York. But please pack up everything between Lequeu and Brick. A course is thus tracked through an intimate microcosm. It’s not just one individual’s paths to wisdom that are being measured out here, but also his desires, preferences and guilty pleasures. The footage gives fragmentary glimpses into a private world, piquing the curiosity and sparking the imagination of all those watching: what were all the things that happened in this apartment? What sort of person lived here? And why does he have to give up all these things, and maybe even a part of himself?

Borjana Gaković

This documentary, whose title is a line from one of Pablo Neruda’s poems, is a snapshot of Chile after two years of military dictatorship. In the agitational Cold War rhetoric typical of Studio H & S, it portrays both representatives of the regime and the victims of the terror, who are beginning to organise themselves as they search for the arrested and disappeared. Walter Heynowski, Gerhard Scheumann and Peter Hellmich had spent several months in Chile in early 1973 to record Allende’s reform efforts as well as the machinations of the far-right forces. Hellmich stayed longer: On 11 September 1973, he managed to film the legendary footage of the bombing of the Presidential Palace, conducted the first interview with General Augusto Pinochet after the coup and filmed political prisoners in the Chacabuco concentration camp in the Atacama Desert. For the extremely risky interviews and filming of “Eine Minute Dunkel macht uns nicht blind”, Studio H & S had to send a West German team – Gerhard Biroth, George Boultwood and Frederico Füllgraf – to Chile. Their true intention behind the transparent pretext of “filming the landscape for the promotion of tourism” and documenting “the economic success of the Pinochet government” remained undetected, as Füllgraf remembers, despite constant surveillance and thanks to all kinds of tricks. This screening is the premiere of the restored and digitized version of the film which was supported by the Förderprogramm Filmerbe (Digitisation of German film heritage funding programme).

Florian Wüst

“El primer año” documents the first year of the Unidad Popular: the rude awakening of the ruling classes of Chile as they are faced with the democratically elected socialist government. From the immediate economic sabotage of the right wing through celebrating workers, the situation of the Mapuche, the agrarian reform, the nationalisation of coal and copper mining and Fidel Castro’s visit, up to the “March of the Pots” by bourgeois women crying for bread, of which they have plenty, the cycle of achievements and difficulties is complete. Besides their journalistic interest, Patricio Guzmán and his collaborators sought to capture the atmospheric aspect of the departure towards a fairer society under Salvador Allende, which is what makes “El primer año” such a moving document of its time. Chris Marker offered to produce a French version with the help of the SLON film collective, which is preceded by photographs by Raymond Depardon, accompanied by a foreword on the history of Chile. Guzmán continued his work on the chronicle of events until he was forced to leave the country after the military coup of 11 September 1973. It was only in Cuban exile that he was able to successively finish his masterpiece “La Batalla de Chile” (1975-79) together with Pedro Chaskel. Each of its three parts was acclaimed at the International Leipzig Documentary and Short Film Week and the Berlinale Forum.

Florian Wüst

Romantic, mystical, folkloristic: Theodor Kittelsen's (1857–1914) oeuvre as a painter is not just dedicated to nature but also to legends and trolls – and has influenced artists to the present day. Natasha Nikitina for example, whose film takes up Kittelsen's twelve-part series of pictures "Soria Moria Palace" and his eponymous book: The young hero Askeladden sees the golden palace of Soria Moria in the distance and sets out to reach it; an allegory of the golden future that can be earned with a lot of hard work and dedication. In her film, however, Nikitina focuses more on the atmospheric element, letting a troll in a rock wake up and fall asleep again, letting geese and other birds take flight, letting fog and dusk turn into night and back into a glowing morning. A tribute to the artist, but also to the myth-enshrouded Norwegian landscape in general.

Marie Ketzscher

A Palestinian woman, Hind Mashahra, longs for motherhood, but this seems hardly possible as her husband is serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison and is barred from marital visits. Smuggling her husband’s sperm out of prison may be the only chance for her to become a mother again. The documentary follows Hind as she sets out on a risky mission to obtain and deliver her husband’s sample to a fertility clinic. Her repeated attempts are hampered by the traffic, checkpoints, and the short life of semen, perishing within just hours. Unadorned in its language, the film stays close to Hind’s inner experience in the throes of drama, shaped by the reality in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as in quieter moments of waiting that are no less charged. Weaving in accounts of other prisoners’ wives, the documentary chronicles a Palestinian woman’s journey as she pursues motherhood at an extraordinary cost.

Sevara Pan