A delicate white ray approaches the frame of a dark picture, bounces off and changes direction. The ray begins to ramify into a geometrical shape. Various algorithms became the co-authors of this generative work that explores the physical laws of reflection. The code-generated soundtrack reacts in real time to the gradually transforming sequences of figures.

Coarse pixelated lines burst into our field of vision. They seem to communicate, but in a strange language. A little later they explode in a blaze of colours, while old-fashioned test patterns sneak into the background. Memories of a not-too-distant era come to mind, when everything was analogue and pixels could only dream of their big future.

On the one hand, the title of this film refers to the tradition of numbering the individual sheets of graphic sequences. On the other, it refers to the speed at which a film is projected, which is 25 frames per second. Every drawing resembles the previous one, almost like a copy. In fact, they differ only in details – which, however, gain significance in motion.

Twelve image tiles merge in a rhythmic dance that explores the intrinsic relationship between sound and image. The elements in the tiles, created by painting and scratching directly on the 16mm film strip, respond to the hand-drawn soundtrack and engage in a surprising and surreal dialogue. Their language cannot be understood, only felt.

Single frames from a direct animation appear on the screen in staggered repetition. The shapes painted, printed and scratched on 35mm material evolve, with minimal time lapses, from one edge of the frame to the other. A trace is left, telling of time itself and asking: When exactly is “now”? The past, present and future are spinning in the chaos of moments.

Hand-coloured and from the mind of one of the 20th century’s most innovative abstract filmmakers, “Abstronic” combines abstraction and electronics to produce a playful flow of images reminiscent of an abstract painting in motion. Mary Ellen Bute, who was also a painter, created the film using electronic images generated by a specially designed oscilloscope in combination with traditional animation.

Using rhythmic, ecstatic music and fragments of folk songs, Yasmine Djedje-Fisher-Azoume takes us to the mythic ancestors, goddesses, and guardians of the Bété people on the Ivory Coast – the place where the director’s ancestors came from. In her film study, inspired by traditional wooden sculptures and masks, she transforms these into many-shaped female characters through coal drawings and copper reliefs. Spinning, multi-faced and all-seeing, dancing in fluffy garments, they perform rituals and unfold an infectious choreography. The whole film pulses to this rhythm, so it comes as no surprise when one figure literally releases a stream of creative energy.
This stream is so strong that it extends into the present day – to a modern temple where living goddesses rotate in the endless flow of existence. Unlike the lifelessly arranged displays in European museums, witnesses of colonial violence, Djedje-Fisher-Azoume collects a pantheon here of what she honours and deeply moves. A temple that exists only for those who know their own origins and treat them with respect to derive from them strength for the presence and the future. The whole film, from the tip of its roots to the buds, is pervaded by this power of mystical self-knowledge.

This compilation of four films demonstrates the capabilities of the ANIMAC analogue computer, the predecessor to the later Scanimate video synthesizer, which would kickstart a new era in motion graphics during the 1970s. The ANIMAC’s jaunty and fluid forms, created using manually controlled cathode rays which drew on screen in real time, give an early example of electronically designed and animated characters.

Sorensen, DeWitt and Winkler were a dream team of artist engineers, a talented trio whose fluency in new media and technology won them numerous awards and accolades. Their skills in video synthesis and processing are deeply visible in this dreamy, psychedelic drift through synthesised New Age landscapes made of vapourwave colours and swirling, fractal-like shapes.

It sprawls, cracks, bursts: The balcony of two flatmates is slowly but steadily overgrown by a red climbing plant with evil-looking tubers. And our flatmates? Sit in the middle, stoically smoking, ignoring the bursting windows behind them. There was a funny rain – but not water.
With this poignant and charged one-take idea and beautifully realistic character design, Stella Hood examines the dilemma of the eternal spectator: Here are two figures who register that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world but simply continue with their daily routines. Who neither get worked up nor wonder nor take action. And whose lethargy is hilarious, not least because it is an uncomfortable reminder of our own inaction. What global crisis could the two be ignoring so nonchalantly? Stella Hood leaves this open, even though the plants make climate change an obvious choice. In any case, a parcel delivery is expected. Have a look downstairs? Sure, “but not today.” “Nah, not today,” the other one replies. “Perhaps tomorrow, we’ll see.”

Sardinia, 1940. The harmless term “horsing around” takes on a very serious and ultimately tragic meaning for 14-year-old Michele and his 11-year-old friend Ventura. When they learn that the peasants have sold their best horses for serious money to the state and thus to the military for the approaching war, the two boys take a decision that is as naïve as it is intuitive: They free the herd in a daring nighttime operation. Their happiness is short-lived. Betrayed by a villager, they are caught on the way home and Ventura is shot dead. A senseless death? Or a sign of special bravery, as the ambiguous Sardinian film title suggests?
Director Giovanni Columbu, a Sardinian himself, has dedicated his late animation debut to his grandmother who once told him the story. He took the liberty of adapting it with brushstrokes on paper, his style drawing primarily on the charms of historical painting schools, animation techniques and cinema genres. Columbu’s associative visual language, marked by shades of black, white, and grey, is animated by impulsive hatchings, countless dots, and generous elisions. The soundtrack, too, sets rather sparse nuances – subtle illustrations that draw on Sardinian cultural traditions while opening a space for universal metaphors.

The Indonesian word “bendungan” can have various meanings. It is a term for very different structures that can contain, hold back, or block water, a dam for example, an embankment or shoreline stabilisations on rivers and oceans. For this experimental work, Jee Chan, a representative of an artistic practice between (dance) performance and expanded choreography, has talked to three persons who live near water in Indonesia and the Netherlands. Both countries are linked by the European colonisation of Southeast Asia and the ensuing crimes. Each of the incidents shared in this film reflects a different perspective on this period and its consequences, tells another story without seeking explicitly to “write history”.
Jee Chan addresses the question of how memory and knowledge become manifest not only in our memory but also in our socio-spatial environment, in waterscapes and the human body. Using choreographed gestures in tranquil long takes, oral history, and interventions in space, they make memory tangible as a multi-layered activity tied to its environment.