During the Unidad Popular election campaign in 1970, the Ramona Parra Brigades mobilised young activists across the country. They painted political messages on facades and walls using brushes and buckets of paint. In “Brigada Ramona Parra” (1970), Álvaro Ramírez – who continued to work as a filmmaker in exile in the GDR – documents the sometimes daring work of one of these groups. Leonardo Céspedes’ “Pintando con el pueblo” in turn shows the new direction of Chilean cultural politics under Salvador Allende. Artists and art students create a huge mural in front of the presidential palace, La Moneda, in Santiago, under the eyes of passers-by. The site becomes a stage for a rally organized by the Unidad Popular.The film ends with a speech by Allende about art as “an art for all the people”. The 16mm distribution print held by the Arsenal archive is probably the only surviving copy of “Pintando con el pueblo”. It was digitised for this retrospective.

Florian Wüst

A theatre stage, Hamlet: the "call for freedom": The ones who declaim it have learned their craft. Right here, in Rostock, they had begun their studies a month before the German reunification. 35 years later, they remember. 1990: They come from different backgrounds, from East and West. They are strangers, live in prefabricated homes. And they quickly find themselves in a maelstrom sweeping across the whole of the East: Like the factories around them, the theatre school is to be "phased out". At the same time, the "Sonnenblumenhaus" is burning in Rostock-Lichtenhagen. They must learn to organise themselves. Like pieces of a jigsaw, individual tales, supplemented by archive images and historical rehearsal videos, come together to form a picture of those times. Embodied by today’s students, who re-enact scenes from the past, the past is reflected in the present. The story of the East German student movement of the early 1990s has been almost completely erased from the collective memory today. As in Rostock, nothing at Leipzig University reminds us that the existence of a number of scientific or artistic institutes and institutions is owed solely to their commitment. "Die Klasse von 1990" is an urgently needed corrective to a Western-dominated historiography, and a lesson in self-empowerment and democracy.

Grit Lemke

Paul’s sister is sad: Ever since his little dog passed, her big brother has stopped drawing the fantastic comic adventures in which he and his dog were the heroes. His little sister doggedly insists that he finally complete that one unfinished drawing. And lo and behold, his beloved dog comes back to life in the pictures. Together, the two set out on a last, eventful journey. Maybe this makes it easier for Paul to say farewell. Beautifully drawn in blue and white, the film itself is designed like a comic.

Lina Dinkla

Building bridges over and over again. That is what keeps Florian and Malene busy, because how could it be otherwise: After all, the two children live on opposite sides of a brook but want to play with each other all the time. But then the war comes – and Florian is no longer allowed to visit Malene, because she now lives in enemy country: the brook has become barbed wire. In her child-oriented cut-out adult film (and vice versa!), Anita Killi explores the different ways young and old perceive life, visually inspired by the Norwegian painter Theodor Kittelsen. The microcosms of the little ones are lovingly captured, from playing in the snow to rubbing their noses together, while Killi also directs her attention to the arbitrariness of most conflicts. “War never dies, it just sleeps from time to time”, Florian’s father says, and: It’s the adults who wake it up. But maybe the succeeding generations will come up with something new after all?

Marie Ketzscher

In fluid sequence, the birth of a world is depicted as a bioastronomical event. Nebulous, whirling gaseous spheres condense, becoming molten membranes, then a flashing planet. Descent into its erupting electronic forces, to the nucleus, finds the life-spark doubling and multiplying, ascending toward consciousness, into crystal symmetries. An awareness of the whole is focused into the beginning of superconsciousness. This film was preserved with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Pyramid Films